Coming just a couple of weeks since damage to the overhead wires caused major disruption to West Midlands Metro services, there has been further problems with a power failure meaning no trams were able to run into Birmingham City Centre for periods on Sunday 24th and Monday 25th March.
The failure in one of the substations meant that trams were only able to run between Wolverhampton St George’s and Soho Benson Road with passengers for Birmingham City Centre advised to transfer to trains at The Hawthorns. Repairs were made to the substation allowing a through service to resume during the morning of Monday 25th March.
And then if that disruption wasn’t enough some engineering works on the Birmingham City Centre section meant that Wednesday 27th March saw all trams from Wolverhampton terminating at Bull Street for around an hour during mid-morning.
With a number of trams now fitted with batteries I’m at a loss to understand why, especially on the Monday, they couldn’t be used to provide at least a reduced service.
Whilst I do not know the definitive range for the CAF URBOS 3 on battery power I would imagine the distance between Grand Central and Soho Benson Road is very much greater than that which could be achieved on a single charge of the battery packs.