A large fire in the former Debenhams building on Princes Street has led to part of the Edinburgh Trams route being closed whilst in Sheffield it’s a points problem that is the cause of service changes at Cathedral.
Starting shortly before 0300 on Thursday 9th July 2026 in the empty former Debenhams store on Princes Street, the fire saw six appliances and two height appliances tackling the blaze at its height. Its not believed there were any injuries and an investigation is underway to determine the cause.
With the building now unsafe (its expected that at least the top two floors will need to be demolished), Princes Street was closed to all traffic and that of course includes the trams.
The time of the fire meant that all trams were at the depot and as a result it has not been possible for any form of split service to run with no trams running between West End and Newhaven. A normal service was continuing to operate from Edinburgh Airport to West End.
Ticket acceptance was put in place on Scotrail between Edinburgh Gateway and Edinburgh Waverley and Lothian Buses services from West End to Newhaven.
It is not known when trams may return to Princes Street with a full safety inspection needed before this happens.
There have also been service changes on the South Yorkshire Supertram on 9th July as well. This has been down to a points fault at Cathedral and has meant that both the Tram-Train and Purple route services were unable to serve the stop.
Purple route trams ran from Herdings Park to Sheffield Station before reversing with Tram-Train services running from Rotherham Parkgate to Sheffield Station. The day also saw a broken down tram at Arena which meant at one stage no services could go beyond Cricket Inn Road so you had Tram-Train services only running from Cricket Inn Road to Sheffield Station (the Yellow route was also impacted).