Been and gone already - a photo on Flickriver

The original trams of Greater Manchester disappeared in 1951 as Stockport Corporation's last one clanked into the depot for the last time. But by the 1980s, Greater Mancheser Passenger Transport Authority was thinking about the bad traffic congestion on the city's radial roads and in the city centre; and the parlous condition of some of the region's local railway services.

And so Metrolink was born - a conversion of the local railways from Bury to Manchester Victoria and Altrincham to Manchester Piccadilly, with a street tramway joining the two main stations. Planning started even before bus deregulation and the abolition of Greater Manchester Council in 1986, and construction began by the end of the decade.

The first phase of the system opened in 1992, and was an immediate success. There were many problems to overcome: two of these are encapsulated in this photo.

The initial barrier was cost: the system had to come in under a tight budget or be cancelled. This gave planners a dilemma: build Metrolink with reduced height platforms along the routes to Altrincham and Bury, or build the city centre stop platforms the same height as the outer railway stations? The latter path was chosen and senior GMPTE staff have since told the museum that it was this solution, or no Metrolink at all.

The other problem was that some of the on-street running would be in narrow thoroughfares that must be shared with other traffic, notably buses. This led to a bottleneck at the top of Market Street and the solution was to have Market Street as a station running in one direction only at this spot - not ideal, but the pragmatic solution at the time.

Alterations since have allowed a 'proper' two-way stop in Market Street, so the awkward arrangement you see here has gone. So have the T68 original Metrolink trams, and so has GM Buses - the split-off GMT bus operating company, owned by the local authorities of Greater Manchester but split up and sold off in the 1990s. So overall this is a fairly recent photo from our archive, but even so a lot has changed. If you're keen to see what the T68 trams looked like, the prototype '1000' is in the Museum of Transport alongside buses from the GM Buses fleet.

If you'd like to know more about the Museum of Transport Greater Manchester and its collection of vintage buses, go to www.motgm.uk.

© Greater Manchester Transport Society. All rights reserved. Unauthorised reproduction is strictly prohibited and may result in action being taken to protect the intellectual property interests of the Society.

Taken in: UK / England / Manchester (show map)

Taken on: January 1, 1992

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