{"id":61720,"date":"2025-04-30T01:58:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T01:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/61720\/"},"modified":"2025-04-30T01:58:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T01:58:10","slug":"metrolink-issues-update-after-electrical-fault-brings-city-centre-trams-to-standstill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/61720\/","title":{"rendered":"Metrolink issues update after electrical fault brings city centre trams to standstill"},"content":{"rendered":"

An electrical failures halted city centre trams entirely\"AA damaged pantograph at the centre of the Metrolink power issues(Image: Jake Lindley \/ Manchester Evening News)<\/p>\n

Metrolink has issued a vital update after an electrical fault caused chaos on the tram lines through Manchester city centre<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trams across the city were brought to a standstill today (Tuesday, April 29), with commuters left scrambling for buses and taxis<\/a>. Metrolink<\/a> has now confirmed that, following the damage near to the Deansgate-Castlefield stop earlier today, repairs have now been completed and services will be resuming as normal on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

A tram was stranded just outside Deansgate<\/a> at around 10.15am, with the pantograph that contacts the overhead wires damaged and the doors still open where passengers were forced to evacuate.<\/p>\n

Trams stacked up<\/a> from Castlefield Viaduct through to St Peter’s Square. But overhead lines had been damaged by the faulty pantograph on the tram outside Deansgate, with the resulting power outage stopping services through the entire city centre.<\/p>\n

The Ashton<\/a> line was suspended completely, with other lines were redirected away from the city centre amid the loss of power. Power was only restored around the evening rush hour, but disruption had built up.<\/p>\n

On the other side of town by Exchange Square trams were running up to Exchange Square before being held between there and St Peter’s Square and turning round back towards Victoria.<\/p>\n

Mid afternoon saw a solitary tram pull up to St Peter’s Square, where it remained as the way forward was blocked.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile up ahead at Deansgate Castlefield an engineering team were deploying specialist equipment onto the tram tracks to tackle the fault, while another got to work where the broken down tram was blocking the way.<\/p>\n

TfGM\u2019s Interim Director for Metrolink, Ian Davies, said: “First of all I’d like to apologise for any inconvenience caused by the damage to the overhead lines today.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpecialist engineers have been working hard on site throughout the day to repair the damage as quickly as possible and get the network back up and running.<\/p>\n

“The incident was caused by a damaged pantograph \u2014 the part that connects the tram to the overhead line, which in turn damaged the wires and triggered a safety shutdown.<\/p>\n

“Engineers repaired the damage and will be sending recovered parts away for technical investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cRepairs have now been completed, but tram services will remain affected for the remainder of the evening, while the damaged tram is recovered and the lines are tested, and I would advise all passengers to check for the latest travel updates before they travel.<\/p>\n

“However all Metrolink services will be operating as normal from first thing tomorrow morning (Wednesday).<\/p>\n

“A full investigation into the root cause of the issue will be carried out and I would like to thank all of our customers for their patience.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An electrical failures halted city centre trams entirelyA damaged pantograph at the centre of the Metrolink power issues(Image:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[1379,748,31847,17630,393,4884,2465,8086,26383,31848,1026,760,1263,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-61720","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manchester","8":"tag-ashton-and-mossley","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-castlefield","11":"tag-deansgate","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-manchester","15":"tag-manchester-city-centre","16":"tag-metrolink","17":"tag-st-peters-square","18":"tag-tameside","19":"tag-traffic-and-travel","20":"tag-transport","21":"tag-uk","22":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114424440688743444","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}