Trams beyond Chorlton

The tram tracks are now being laid down the centre of Hardy Lane. Slowly the construction of the line to connect the airport with the centre of Manchester is coming along. I'm recording the progress with photographs.

As Hardy Lane is not a busy thoroughfare for cars reducing the road to single line traffic shouldn't cause any long tail backs. However the siting of the station at the junction of Mauldeth Road West and Barlow Moor Road might isn't ideal. Not ideal for foot passengers who will have to cross two main roads to reach the platforms. You have a similar situation in Droylsden and there are no cycle lanes to contend with there.

The picture below is from the Manchester Libraries Archives. It shews the tram times to reach the centre of town from the outlying districts in 1917.


Depending on which part of Chorlton-cum-Hardy you lived in it could take from between 20 minutes to 50 minutes to arrive at Piccadilly. It is maybe marginally faster on the Metrolink these days but then you have to factor in the time to walk to the station.

No longer a wide road

The end of an era for Hardy Lane, a big wide road to nowhere is now reduced to single line traffic running east and west. Mark the date as Sunday 6th January when the first barriers were installed. Now inside those barriers the road is being hacked away for the foundations of the new tram track. If the progress is anything like the development of the tramway extensions in the other parts of Manchester then expect the barriers to be still there in twelve months time.

Tram Bridge Over the Mersey

In four years time trams will be thundering over this bridge over the River Mersey. From road speed, that's slow, down Hardy Lane onto the Meadows and up the ramp and down again. This was the picture yesterday. No work was being done but the clatter of construction could be hear from further down the proposed line. Only a few hundred metres from the sedate footbridge at Jackson's Boat.

Other pictures

Tram Bridge over the Mersey

Let's see how the new tram route to Manchester Airport is progressing. These photographs were taken on Friday 1st of June, 2012. Seen many wagons and other vehicles going down Hardy Lane to the site where the bridge over the River Mersey is going to be constructed. It's higher than I anticipated. You could easily get a small boat or yacht with a mast underneath. Not that I have ever seen any navigation this high up the river. The occasional canoe but never a sailing craft. It's going to be another four years before the whole route is completed.

The bottom picture is at the Jackson's Boat end of Hardy Lane. An elder tree is in bloom, the old bridge to the pub is on the left. It makes for a pretty country scene. You'd never guess that suburbia is on the doorstep.

So despite all the disruptions and digging up the little bit of countryside there are still tranquil places.

Road or it that Lane Re-opened

At last the roadworks are gone, the road re-opens again. But when the construction team comes to lay down the tram track then severe distruption will be for months. The picture is at night and has a quality like an oil painting, yes it is blurred. That's the bookies at the corner of Hardy Lane and Barlow Moor Road. Need to take more photographs for this junction will change forever.

New Bridge on the Mersey

The map shews a new bridge to carry the new tram route to Manchester Airport. It takes a straight route from the end of the Hardy Lane as a roadway across the meadow land to the River Mersey. The old footbridge to Jackson's Boat can be seen north of the new tram route. This will be all be completed by 2016. It's been a long time since the plans were first proposed. So long ago it has become a distant memory of when I did work in Wythenshawe and they were announced. But work has started, it is no longer a description on paper and those are real foundations in the photograph.

The Open Street Map people have gone forward in time and have put the new route onto the existing road layout. Bridge building, even just footbridges, used to be such a massive engineering achievement but if you think how many have been opened in recent years over the River Mersey, the River Irwell in Manchester and the River Thames in London it is fairly commonplace.

Open Street Map Reference

Tram Works #1

The new tram to the airport is going to rumble down this quiet wide road. So over the next year, or is it more like two years, the construction and changes are going to be recorded because we know things will never be the same once the route is opened. A documentary in numerous installments. A minute long, filmed in a sort of time-lapse style, on a quiet grey winter's day in January. Return in the springtime, check the progress, if any....

Tram to the Mersey

The forthcoming year will see the start of the construction of the tram track to the airport down Hardy Lane. Brace yourself for months of traffic delays and walking disruption, as anyone who has visited the roads up to Droylsden where a new tram route is being laid down will testify. We've already been photographing the preliminary construction work and will be publishing the progress. Oh the heady delights of something new to blog about rather than just the past.

But back in the 1930's with the electric trams running on the streets of Manchester one of "the countryside on your doorstep locations" would be alighting at Hardy Lane and walking a mile down to Jackson's Boat for the charm of the River Mersey and the green fields of Sale and Chorlton.

"Manchester Municipal School of Art organised a competition to produce pictorial posters for the Manchester Corporation Transport Department trams and buses between 1933 and 1934. In all, eighteen designs were used; the corporation paid the School of Art two guineas in order to use them. Their unusual shape was designed to fit on the back of the driver's cab."

You can see all eighteen designs thanks to Greater Manchester Archives at
Mcrarchives' Flick Collection

Trips to Dunham Park, Platt Fields, football, the new Central Library, Bollin Valley at Hale were just some of the destinations on the municipal public transport system.

Lane closed

This is still the scene at the end of Hardy Lane at the end of year 2012. No entry, roadworks that have stalled, months of traffic delay and many more months to come. But those underground utility pipes need to be replaced and improved before the tram comes thundering down the lane on the proposed route to the airport. When that tram comes Hardy Lane will never be quiet again.

It is still possible to reach the place where this photo was taken by a diversionary route.