{"id":54001,"date":"2024-06-01T22:00:16","date_gmt":"2024-06-01T21:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=54001"},"modified":"2024-06-01T18:45:16","modified_gmt":"2024-06-01T17:45:16","slug":"in-pictures-25th-anniversary-of-west-midlands-metro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=54001","title":{"rendered":"In Pictures: 25th Anniversary of West Midlands Metro"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday 30th<\/sup> May marked the 25th<\/sup> anniversary of the West Midlands Metro with trams having now been back and running in the region for a quarter of a century. Although there have been nods to the anniversary (including a competition for children to design an anniversary logo and a quiz for the older members of society) the actual anniversary day itself was a fairly low key affair, and one which didn\u2019t get off to the best start thanks to overhead problems. Andy Walters captured the sights of the day.<\/p>\n

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On a normal day services are due to get underway on the system at 0432 with a working from Wednesbury Parkway to Edgbaston Village and then it\u2019s a 15 minute frequency until things increase from just after 0615. Unfortunately, on anniversary day this didn\u2019t happen with the first departure not happening and then when the first tram came out at 0448 there was a power supply issue which led the service to be suspended. Services did finally get underway from 0730 (50<\/strong> the first working of the 26th<\/sup> year).<\/p>\n

The main event of the day was the unveiling of the 25th<\/sup> anniversary which took place in a ceremony at the depot attended by the nine year old who had designed the logo, members of staff from her school and local politicians. All the trams in service had the logo applied but these were covered over and not unveiled during the day.<\/p>\n

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44 did come out of the depot planning to start the service shortly after 0445 but there was then a power supply problem which meant it had to return to depot under battery power as seen here.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Before things did go wrong at the start of the day the first ticket of the day was issued and here it is!<\/p><\/div>\n

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There are four drivers still on the Metro who have been employed since the system opened. John is one of them and is seen here posing in the undergrowth at Edgbaston Village alongside 47.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Mike has only been driving since 2015 but was a conductor before then and had the honour of being the last conductor on a T69. He\u2019s here at Edgbaston Village with 52.<\/p><\/div>\n

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43 had a temporary unofficial name applied for the day. Gerwyn John was a Service Coordinator at Midland Metro who died aged 53 whilst still employed by the company and his name was carried on T69 16 until its withdrawal.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Trams in service had the anniversary logo applied but these were, in the main, covered over as seen here on 40.<\/p><\/div>\n

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One tram did manage to show off the logo. This is a close-up of it on 55. (All Photographs by Andy Walters, 30th May 2024)<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday 30th May marked the 25th anniversary of the West Midlands Metro with trams having now been back and running in the region for a quarter of a century. Although there have been nods to the anniversary (including a competition … Continue reading →<\/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\/54001"}],"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=54001"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54009,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54001\/revisions\/54009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}