{"id":9051,"date":"2014-09-11T20:05:59","date_gmt":"2014-09-11T19:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=9051"},"modified":"2014-09-15T13:53:08","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T12:53:08","slug":"in-pictures-midland-metro-urbos-3-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/?p=9051","title":{"rendered":"In Pictures: Midland Metro Urbos 3 update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Midland Metro\u2019s new Urbos 3 trams continue to be in passenger service every day but since the first day there haven\u2019t often been four in action at any one time with normally just two running with occasionally a third joining in. Of course from Saturday 6th September the Midland Metro line is only running between Birmingham Snow Hill and Priestfield due to rail replacement works which has reduced the number of trams needed on a daily basis but the introduction of the CAF built trams hasn\u2019t quite gone according to plan anyway.<\/p>\n

On the very first day or Urbos 3s in service there were problems when 20<\/strong>, which was to be the first tram in service, was delayed departing by 20 minutes Birmingham Snow Hill . Although 20<\/strong> did operate on day one it has since spent some time out of service having suffered a broken window during the first day.<\/p>\n

There have also been complaints over the new trams with the seats said to be uncomfortably hard and they have struggled to keep to time due to the slowness of the doors opening and closing. There have also been comments about the lack of opening windows and that they get very hot (similar to the CAF vehicles in Edinburgh). But it should be remembered that these are new vehicles and will take some getting used to for both passengers and crew alike – there aren’t many new vehicles in the world which don’t have a few issues during the first few weeks.<\/p>\n

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20 waits for the official launch of Wednesbury Parkway.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Speeches at Wednesbury Parkway during the launch.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Passengers wait at Birmingham Snow Hill to board 20 ahead of its first passenger journey to Wolverhampton St George's.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Another view of 20 at Snow Hill.<\/p><\/div>\n

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A commemorative ticket issued on the first day.<\/p><\/div>\n

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On 6th September Urbos 3 18 demonstrates the crossover at Priestfield on the first day of the short running. (All Photos: Andy Walters)<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Midland Metro\u2019s new Urbos 3 trams continue to be in passenger service every day but since the first day there haven\u2019t often been four in action at any one time with normally just two running with occasionally a third joining … 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\/9051"}],"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=9051"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9091,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9051\/revisions\/9091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.britishtramsonline.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}