Edinburgh Trams: Ice on cables halts all services as engineers dispatched

Edinburgh Trams has announced this morning that their service is currently suspended due to ‘icebreaker trams’ unable to break up ice gathered overnight on the overhead tram lines.

The tram service said their ‘icebreaker trams’ have experienced a ‘technical fault’ which they are not able to identify yet and all services will not be able to resume until the ice melts or engineers are able to fix the problem.

Engineers from both Siemens, who are maintainers of the overhead line, and Edinburgh Trams are currently on-route to inspect the line and the trams.

Once an issue has been identified, the operator has said they will be able to put a timescale on when service can resume.

The news comes as icy conditions across Edinburgh to continue to impact services as temperatures drop to freezing.

Edinburgh Trams has commented that this job will be made easier when daylight comes and they ‘should hopefully have information soon.’

Lothian Buses will accept tram tickets as the service is suspended.

A spokesperson from Edinburgh Trams said: “What we have right now is a situation where there’s ice formed on the overhead line which is not uncommon and to prevent that or to break that up we send out what we call ‘ice breaker trams’ to literally break off the ice but for some reason this morning the trams attempting to do that are failing due to technical faults we don’t know why that is at the moment.

The trams are currently suspended due to a 'technical issue.' (Photo: Lisa Ferguson)

"We can’t run normal service trams until we’ve broken the ice from the line or when it has melted.”

"We have ticket acceptance in place with Lothian Buses so anyone who has a tram ticket or who purchased a tram ticket unknowingly can use that on Lothian Buses who operate similar routes generally.”

The fault is happening across all lines and Edinburgh Trams is thanking users for their patience as they fix the problem.

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