Manchester Metrolink hit by severe delays as fans head to Man Utd game and Justin Bieber gig
Travel chaos across the city after a bungling maintenance worker crashed his vehicle into a vital junction damaging points
A BUNGLING maintenance contractor caused the failure of virtually the whole of Manchester's Metrolink tram network today - as tens of thousands of fans headed to the Manchester United game and a Justin Bieber concert.
The worker crashed a rail vehicle into a vital junction, damaging points and causing severe delays for thousands of commuters since this morning.
The delays continues into this evening as the city staged two big events - a Europa League game against Fenerbahce at Old Trafford and a gig by pop brat Bieber at the Manchester Arena.
Double the usual number of trams ran on the Altrincham line until 8pm to cope with football fans heading to Old Trafford - but other routes were crippled with passengers forced to wait for replacement buses.
There was a reduced service on the Eccles line - with anyone heading for the Arena forced to get a shuttle bus from Media City in Salford.
And severe delays hit the Bury, East Didsbury and Manchester Airport lines.
Fed up commuters tweeted pictures of the "endless" queues for buses including at Piccadilly Station.
Engineers were today frantically trying to fix the problems as an investigation was launched into what happened.
But tram bosses admitted the network was brought to its knees by an outside contractor whose vehicle damaged signalling points during overnight maintenance work at Cornbrook station.
It mean scheduled services were unable to use the network.
Many people took to social media to vent their anger.
Jack Glennon tweeted: “@MCRMetrolink Thank you for making me late, I’ve really enjoyed missing out on my university education I pay for because of you guys.”
Simon Ramsden said: “When you’re trapped between stops on a non moving @MCRMetrolink tram!! #NotMoving.”
A Metrolink spokeswoman said: “During routine overnight engineering works, a set of points at Cornbrook were damaged by a contractor’s vehicle.
“We were able to temporarily repair the points in time for this morning’s service, however we still need to manually operate trams through Cornbrook junction and this is still causing delays to services.
“This morning’s incident has caused widespread disruption to the Metrolink network and we’d like to apologise unreservedly to customers who were affected."
Services were manually operated through Cornbrook in the morning - casuing knock-on delays to other services.
Fro 2.30pm bosses decided to halt all services between Cornbrook and MediaCityUK to ease disruption during the after-work peak and the football.
Engineers were inspecting the lines this evening but it is so far unclear if the disruption will continue into tomorrow.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368