Crunch meeting held on failed trams
The makers of the West Midlands’ broken down trams say they are training up British workers to speed up the repair effort.
Metro Mayor Andy Street and senior executives from Transport for West Midlands held a crunch meeting with bosses from Spanish-based manufacturer CAF at the Wednesbury depot.
CAF have accepted that the cracks which appeared in the door frames, which caused the metro service to be suspended earlier this month, are down to a “design fault”.
Engineers from Spain and other parts of the world where they have experience fixing similar issues are now training up British workers in order to speed up the repair programme.
Work involves taking the affected trams apart and replacing the broken frames with strengthened new ones.
Engineers are only able to work on one frame on either side of a tram at the same time to ensure further damage to the vehicle is not caused.
In total, 21 of the Urbos 3 fleet which were delivered in 2014 are affected. Bosses are looking to get 12-15 back in use safely in order to bring back a reasonable service for the public.
There is still no time frame for when trams might be up and running again but it is hoped a clearer picture will be available in the next fortnight.
The latest suspension is the third time in just nine months services have faced such disruption.
Anne Shaw, executive director for Transport for West Midlands, said: “The meeting has gone very well.
“We’ve got their full co-operation in terms of trying to make sure we’ve got the trams repaired as fast as possible to get the service back up and running as soon as we can.
“We’re still working through the details (of the timeframe) but they are becoming a lot clearer now so in a couple of weeks time, I’ll be a lot confident of giving further information about when the services will resume.
“We’ve had engineers that have come in from Spain and other locations that have been working on similar issues.
“So we’ve got quite a lot of people here at the moment training up some local people so they can do this work with CAF. We will have double shifts to do the repairs as quickly as possible.
“CAF have accepted it is a design fault and they are applying all of those repairs in terms of replacing all of the panels.”
She added: “We are just as disappointed as everyone else in terms of the reliable service we want to give to our customers and that they deserve.
“The best way for us to get this service back up and running as quickly as possible and safely is to work really hard with CAF. We’re all in this together and the commitment is there.”
Josu Imaz, CEO of rolling stock for CAF said: “The West Midlands is a priority customer for us, we know how important the Metro system is to the people here.
“We take this issue very seriously and have our best engineers and staff working on the solution.
“We are working closely with Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) and are committed to supporting TfWM to restore a safe and reliable tram service as soon as possible.”
As well as repairs to the trams, work also continues at the Wednesbury depot, near the Great Western Street stop, on extending the Metro line to Dudley.
