{"id":19651,"date":"2017-12-03T13:40:09","date_gmt":"2017-12-03T13:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=19651"},"modified":"2021-02-11T20:55:23","modified_gmt":"2021-02-11T20:55:23","slug":"in-pictures-testing-underway-on-bilston-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=19651","title":{"rendered":"In Pictures: Testing underway on Bilston Road"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As previously publicised Bilston Road was reopened to traffic from Saturday 2nd December following the completion of the major track relay project between Priestfield and The Royal. Although the road is reopened this doesn\u2019t mean that trams are running back to Wolverhampton St George\u2019s just yet as the next week will see commissioning and driver training along this section, which hasn\u2019t been in use since June. The first major testing along the line started on Sunday 3rd December.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Testing is taking place as an extension of the normal service. Trams from Grand Central are still terminating at Priestfield but instead of reversing and returning to Birmingham they are then continuing out of service along Bilston Road all the way to Wolverhampton St George\u2019s. On the early morning trips in Sunday 3rd December there were also engineers on hand at certain sections of the line, including at signals to check that everything was working as it should have been.<\/p>\n<p>The first day of testing saw trams <strong>19<\/strong>, <strong>27<\/strong>, <strong>31<\/strong>, <strong>36<\/strong> and <strong>37<\/strong> in service and thus becoming the first trams to run in daylight. Previously <strong>18<\/strong> had been used on two separate occasions for the initial test runs in the early hours of the morning.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_37718\" style=\"width: 560px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?attachment_id=37718\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-37718\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-37718\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-37718\" src=\"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/1.19-aw-550x309.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"309\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-37718\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">19 travels along the new track on Bilston Road. The destination still states Priestfield.<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_37719\" style=\"width: 560px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?attachment_id=37719\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-37719\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-37719\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-37719\" src=\"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/2.19-aw-550x309.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"309\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-37719\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Another view of 19 on Bilston Road, this time as it heads back to Priestfield.<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_37721\" style=\"width: 560px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?attachment_id=37721\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-37721\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-37721\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-37721\" src=\"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/3.27-aw-550x309.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"309\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-37721\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">27 slowly approaches the signal as it passes the newly installed junction for the Wolverhampton City Centre extension. Engineers are on hand to make sure the signal works as expected.<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_37722\" style=\"width: 560px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?attachment_id=37722\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-37722\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-37722\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-37722\" src=\"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/4.37-aw-550x309.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"309\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-37722\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">37 at Wolverhampton St George\u2019s. Although not yet in service again the sight of a tram here is welcome!<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_37723\" style=\"width: 560px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?attachment_id=37723\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-37723\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-37723\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-37723\" src=\"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/5.35-aw-550x309.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"309\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-37723\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">35 pulls away from Priestfield and enters the street track section along Bilston Road. (All Photographs by Andy Walters, 3rd December 2017)<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As previously publicised Bilston Road was reopened to traffic from Saturday 2nd December following the completion of the major track relay project between Priestfield and The Royal. Although the road is reopened this doesn\u2019t mean that trams are running back &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=19651\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19651"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19651"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37724,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19651\/revisions\/37724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}