Just before dawn on April 6, 1992 more than 300 trainspotters, photographers and journalists gathered in the dark and drizzle of Bury station. They were there to witness something unique - the departure of the first ever Metrolink service.
Just after 6am the maiden tram was on its way, making the 11 stop journey to Victoria station, and a new era in public transport in Greater Manchester was born. Keith Whitmore, chairman of Greater Manchester Transport Heritage, was among the passengers onboard.
"It was a gleaming tram - it felt new," he recalled in 2016. "It was full and there were so many photographers, it was like a celebrity coming into the city centre."
Read more:
Three months later the Queen would visit that same platform to officially launch the Metrolink network. But it had taken 10 years of hard graft to get to that point - and many more years grappling with possible solutions to Manchester's north/south rail divide.
Metrolink wasn't Manchester's first tram network. Starting out life as a horse-drawn operation the Manchester Suburban Tramways Company had run from 1877 to 1949. By 1930 the network had grown to 160 miles, making it the third largest in the UK.
But, after the Second World War, when buses became a cheaper option, trams fell out of favour and the lines were closed. However it soon became apparent that might have been hasty decision.
As cars filled the streets, congestion became a big problem and a glaring lack of cross-city train connections trains only worsened matters. Greater Manchester County Council - which held the reins from 1974 to 1986 - began to look at possible solutions to ease the logjam.
The problems stemmed back to the birth of railway travel in this country when, in the 1840s, competing Victorian rail companies built Manchester's two main stations, Piccadilly and Victoria, at opposite ends of the city centre. Ideas for schemes to connect the two stations have been around pretty much ever since .
An underground railway tunnel was mooted as far back as 1839, while in 1903 and 1914, plans were drawn up for an underground tramway. In 1966, a proposal for a £21m suspended monorail came to nothing. As did Project Gondola, operation skybus and a draft monorail scheme.
In 1971, the Pic-Vic tunnel - an electric rail route beneath the city centre to connect Piccadilly and Victoria - came closest to fruition. It even got as far as exploratory excavations, but with money tight because of the energy crisis, vital government cash was pulled and the scheme went the same way as its predecessors.
But finally, in 1982, a Rail Study Group was formed to look at solutions to the challenge of moving Manchester's growing population. Made up of Greater Manchester Council, GMPTE and British Rail, their solution was to create the country's first modern street-running rail system.
They drew a draft 62-mile network consisting of three lines; Altrincham - Hadfield/Glossop; Bury - Marple/Rose Hill and Rochdale - East Didsbury. In March 1987 a demonstration showing how the line could work was held on a freight line next to Debdale Park in Gorton using a London Docklands Light Railway train.
The group's efforts paid off. In 1988 government funding was approved by two Acts of Parliament passed giving construction the go-ahead.
Metrolink initially opened with just two lines - Bury-Victoria and Altrincham- Piccadilly, with a street level tramline through the city centre connecting the routes. Over the next 30 years it would grow to cover a 64-mile network, with 120 trams serving 99 stops across all but three of the 10 boroughs of Greater Manchester.
Transport historian Paul Williams says that before Metrolink came along, rail links between the north and south of Greater Manchester left a lot to be desired. "In the mid-70s there was no train service to Bury at all on a Sunday," he said. "During the rest of the week you were looking at services every 15 minutes at best, but more likely every 20-30 minutes."
It hasn't always been all plain sailing though. There have been point failures, weather calamities and recent concerns about increasing anti-social behaviour.
Hundreds of interred bodies from centuries ago were discovered on Cross Street during works for the Second City Crossing in 2014, and expansion works have demanded patience from businesses and the public.
But there have also been visits by Prime Ministers and royalty - and a wedding celebration - along the way. In 1999, Tony Blair braved the rain to open the first part of the Eccles via Salford Quays line - jumping from the platform to glad-hand the public. Three years ago Boris Johnson took a tour of the building site at Pomona for the Trafford Park extension.
In 2016, a tram was wrapped in gold to celebrate the Olympic success for Team GB, and in 2013, actor Kenneth Branagh recorded a message for passengers heading to the Manchester International Festival. Happy Mondays frontman Shaun Ryder, Charlatans singer Tim Burgess, TV presenter Dermot O'Leary and Manchester City stars Roberto Mancini, Joe Hart, Vincent Kompany and James Milner have also all had celebrity guest stints as Metrolink announcers.
Trams would become a makeshift ramp for the Red Bull City Trial motorbike riders in the summer of 2013 and couple Jenny Crompton and Julian Shaw would catch a tram on their newly-opened namesake route on their wedding day.
Most dramatically, Metrolink took centre stage in a Corrie storyline in 2010, when an imaginary tram crash was the centrepiece of t he show's 50th anniversary. But, most importantly, Metrolink has changed the way the people of Greater Manchester travel.
In 2019/20 - the last year before the pandemic sent passenger numbers tumbling - more than 44 million journeys were made on the network. Paul Williams says it's been proved 'time and time again' that the Metrolink gets people out of their cars and onto trams, meaning it has crucial role to play in Greater Manchester's fight to lower carbon emissions.
"Metrolink is very, very expensive to build," he said. ." But if you spend the money wisely it's been proven, time and time again, that Metrolink moves people from their cars onto the tram.
"It also creates more journeys, which might sound like a bad thing, but what I mean by that we have have people who feel isolated or lonely, they're not able to get to the shops for instance. For them the option doesn't tend to be car, or bus or tram. It's more likely to be tram or not travel at all."
Metrolink has also had a huge impact on the villages, estates, suburbs and towns it serves. In 2014 research by the Nationwide Building Society found that living near a Metrolink stop added an average £8,300 on to the value of your home.
And it's hard to imagine, for instance, the transformation of Prestwich, recently named by the Sunday Times as one of the best places to live in the UK, without the arrival of the Met 30 years ago. So what happens next?
There have long been calls to create an orbital route connecting towns in the north and east of Greater Manchester, preventing the need to go 'in and out' of the city centre. In 2020 Oldham MP Jim McMahon MP called for a meeting with the Secretary of State for Transport to discuss a proposal for a tram link between Bury and Middleton, which would 'hopefully' extend through to Oldham.
He even published a map showing how the tram network could look, with a link between Heaton Park, calling at Middleton, and then connecting to Westwood tram stop, while also proposing a link from Oldham Mumps through to Ashton.
A year earlier a speculative map, which envisioned how the network could look in 2040, was drawn up by Ed Howe from property and development specialists Urban Info Manchester. It included including new lines to Warrington, Wigan, Bolton, Stockport and Glossop, among other places, and the use of tram trains to reach places currently not served by Metrolink.
Officially Transport for Greater Manchester say the 'short term ambition' is to extend the Manchester Airport line to the new Terminal 2, using a £2.1m grant from central government. Studies are also being carried out looking at the feasibility of orbital routes, being pushed for by Mr McMahon.
A longer-term proposal is for the development of 'tram-trains' where the Metrolink could share lines with conventional trains. Routes under consideration include: Manchester to Marple; Manchester to Glossop; Manchester to Wigan via Atherton and Stockport to Manchester Airport. And a version of the old Picc-Vic tunnel could even make comeback, if TfGM bosses get their way.
One idea being explored is for a cross city centre underground service to be in place by mid-2030s. 'This would be a major investment which will need careful planning', TfGM say.
Of course it all comes down to money. For his part Andy Burnham has vowed to push for at least £1 billion from the Government to expand the network into Bolton, Middleton and Stockport.
It's part of the Mayor's ambition to see Greater Manchester have a transport system along the lines of London. It will see buses and trams brought under public control - as part of a rebranded Bee Network - with a new ticketing system and capped fares allowing passengers to make as many journeys per day as they like.
Mr Burnham said: "Over three decades Metrolink has become an iconic symbol for Greater Manchester, and I am immensely proud to see the network grow, adapt and persevere after a difficult two years. Like the millions of passengers who have used Metrolink since it first opened in 1992, the network has embarked on its own journey to becoming recognised as one of the best light-rail systems in the world.
"It is also the largest in the UK, having trebled in size following investment of around £2bn between 2010 and 2020. This paved the way for an unprecedented expansion project which brought new lines to dozens of local communities across Greater Manchester, with extensions to Rochdale via Oldham, Ashton-under-Lyne, East Didsbury and Manchester Airport.
"We don’t want to stop there. Metrolink forms a key part of the Bee Network, our vision of an integrated London-style public transport system joining together trams, buses, cycling and walking by 2024. As a world-class transport system entirely owned, managed and run at a local level it demonstrates how we are leading the way and developing a blueprint for other city-regions to follow when it comes to improving intra-city transport and connectivity.
"We want to bring Metrolink to even more of our residents, with potential expansions to Bolton, Middleton and Stockport – as well as the introduction of tram-train services – all being investigated. It has already been proven that Metrolink provides a boost to the local economy, while also improving access to employment, education and healthcare, particularly in our more deprived communities.
"This is vital when a third of people in our region have not got a car. New routes have also removed millions of potential car journeys from our roads and thousands of tonnes worth of carbon dioxide from our air, helping Greater Manchester realise its ambitions of becoming carbon neutral by 2038.
"We have only got to this stage thanks to the hard-working Metrolink staff who have kept the network running, some of whom have been on this journey since it began, and I hope that it will continue to grow in the years to come."
READ MORE:
