Sunday 5th April 2026 saw the latest section of the West Midlands Metro network open with services to Millennium Point on the Birmingham Eastside extension getting underway. But things didn’t quite get off to the perfect start with an abandoned car at St Chad’s meaning there was no service between St Paul’s and Millennium Point for a few hours in the morning.
The line is a short extension to the extension network and is just the first phase of the Birmingham Eastside line which will eventually get as far as High Street Deritend, with plans in place for this to go even further and serve the new Birmingham City FC stadium.
Two new stops are added to the network at Albert Street and Millennium Point. That at Albert Street is a permanent addition to the network and will remain in place even after further extensions follow but that at Millennium Point is a temporary affair. Although temporary Millennium Point is a vital stop on the network as without it this part of the extension would not have been able to open.
The remainder of the currently approved and under construction Eastside extension will open in the next few years. However, it is delayed by HS2 works around Curzon Street station with the Midland Metro Alliance unable to really get going with the construction works until they have been completed. Significant work has been finished on other sections on the Eastside extension though, including at the end towards High Street Deritend. No planned date for trams getting beyond Millennium Point has been publicly confirmed as yet.
For now we have a line which is just over 0.2 miles long and is just the start of the latest expansion of the West Midlands Metro. It is due to be joined by phase one of the Black Country line as far as Flood Street in Dudley this year, with council officials in Dudley having given a date of 28th August for that to open, although no official confirmation of that has ever come from Transport for West Midlands.
The extension will be served by trams from Wolverhampton St George’s seven days a week. The pattern of working will be Wolverhampton St George’s-Millennium Point-Edgbaston Village, in that direction only with no trams from Edgbaston Village currently scheduled to run onto the extension. The daytime Monday-Saturday frequency onto the extension will be up to every 15 minutes.
Onto the first day and 55 was the very first tram to carry passengers onto the extension. But the planned Wolverhampton St George’s-Millennium Point-Edgbaston Village service wasn’t possible to start with because there was a car abandoned on and blocking the tracks close to St Chad’s. This meant trams were running from Wolverhampton (Station and St George’s) to St Paul’s with one tram then running on a circuit between Millennium Point and Edgbaston Village.
After the car was removed normal services were able to resume from 1000.
The sun comes out from behind the clouds as services start to Millennium Point with 55 having done the honours of carrying the very first passengers on the extension.
The other stop on the line at Albert Street is the location for this shot which shows 55 again at the start of services on the line. (Photographs x2 by Shiv Patel, 5th April 2026)
Sophie Allison, Managing Director of West Midlands Metro, and Sandeep Shingadia from Transport for West Midlands, pose in front of the first tram at Millenium Point.
The morning disruption meant that trams from Edgbaston Village did run to Millennium Point after all. In a scene not due to be repeated in normal service for the foreseeable future we see 55 coming off Corporation Street onto the extension.
The reason for the disruption. A car abandoned beyond St Chad’s tramstop and waiting to be moved. (Photographs x3 by Michael Morton, 5th April 2026)
Later in the day and things had settled down allowing a normal service to resume. Here we see 58 in its Peaky Blinders wrap at Millennium Point waiting to head off to Edgbaston Village. This was the 1433 departure from Wolverhampton St George’s. (Photograph by John Binch, 5th April 2026)