Over the weekend of Saturday 22nd and Sunday 23rd November there were some unusual destinations for LRVs on Manchester Metrolink’s Airport line. On the Saturday one of the four cars which have recently ended up on the Airport line caused disruption which meant that some services were unusually terminated at Martinscroft whilst on the Sunday early morning engineering works meant trams were having to stop at Wythenshawe Centre. Steve Kemp was on hand to record these destinations on camera.
3091 at Benchill on 22nd November with the unusual destination of Martinscroft.
3090 stands at Northern Moor with a service for Wythenshawe Centre.
3074 departs Wythenshawe Park with a service on the morning of 23rd November to Wythenshawe Centre. (All Photos: Steve Kemp)
According to the Metrolink website this morning the whole network is suspended apart from Bury – Piccadily due to ‘adverse ice conditions’. As I look out of my window there is no evidence of any frost or ice. It appears that Metrolink are as far as ever from solving this problem.
Ok, on taking the dog for a walk there is a light frost in other parts of the village, but nothing severe. The East Didsbury – Rochdale service at 1045 is shown as operating with severe delays, all other riutes still showing suspended.
There had been a spell of freezing rain in some areas overnight and even though icebreakers were out they were unsuccessful in their efforts.
Apparently a similar event occurred in Prague on December 1st which brought that network to a standstill during normal service hours! There is a video clip of the spectacular efforts to get trams moving on Youtube. If you copy this into your browser you can see the results. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoZb32PwL78
When I looked out of my window this morning at nine o’clock it was foggy and my car was frozen solid.We along with other countries are having some strange weather at the moment,the lastest phenomenon is a weather bomb.As Steve says freezing rain forms ice on the overhead as opposed to frost which is cleared pretty quick by running an ice breaker.
I think ice on the overhead was’nt their only problem.I would suspect that rain would have frozen in the points at certain locations,causing problems with detection.What about point heaters I hear you say.Well when they renewed the track through the city centre they never put back the point heaters.
It must have been a nightmare for the staff at metrolink who have to work with sub standard equipment provided by tfgm.The irony is that metrolink will probably get fined by tfgm.Yet it is tfgm who have provided the equipment for ratp to run the system for them.