Sheffield Supertram – End of The Line

Middlewood is the northern terminus of the Yellow Line, out past Hillsborough. It has a single line for trams to park next to the roadway, with space for two trams to sit in line. The tram line runs along Middlewood Road A6102, but deviates off it for terminating trams. This terminating point is before, but a short walk from, the town of Middlewood, which is more or less the edge of the built-up Sheffield area, although linear settlement continues along the A6102.

If you're on board a Yellow Route tram, the stop will be referred to as Middlewood Park & Ride, and Middlewood does not disappoint – a reasonably large car park awaits you, with free parking. There seems to be no rule that you have to use it a park-and-ride, I suppose you could walk into Hillsborough or Middlewood.

I visited it around 12pm on a clear, sunny Sunday in October.

Overall, Middlewood seems to do its job as a small park-and-ride well, people were using it as such, even on a quiet Sunday lunchtime. It seems a logical place to end the line, with room to constructed the siding necessary, although there isn't much to do up there but wait for the tram back – most people have got off already. It does serve some nearby low-rise council blocks, as well as more suburban residential developments across the road.

Meadowhall Interchange is the north-eastern terminus of the Yellow Route. It serves the large Meadowhall shopping centre, as well as interchange with Meadowhall bus station and railway station.

Meadowhall (or Meadowhell, if you're so inclined) is a large shopping centre, a combined-arms sensory assault, and a horrifying, dystopian vision of the future. Built in 1990 on the sight of a former steelworks, as a scheme to murder Sheffield and Rotherham city centres, it houses basically every high-street shop you could want, as well as an extensive food court. It has excellent public transport connections.

I visited around 1pm on a fairly dismal Saturday in late October.

Meadowhall is built in the Don Valley, which was once one of the busiest industrial areas in the world. The valley provided an ideal transport corridor in hilly South Yorkshire - the river itself is navigable, and it features two railway lines. That not being enough, the powers that be decided the M1 needed to run through it. This necessitated elevating the motorway, but even an ordinary viaduct would take up too much space, so they had to get creative.

This double-decker monstrosity is amongst my favourite pieces of infrastructure, and you get a lovely view of it from the IKEA restaraunt. Also pictured is a tram (at Tinsley/Meadowhall South), and one of those signs.

This map is attached to one of those info-boards, and it gives you some idea to the insanity. The tram route splits in a Y-junction - the left fork curves round Meadowhall and approaches Meadowhall Interchange from the north, which always serves to disorient me. With the right fork, the tram tracks merge with the mainline railway, as this is the route the Tram-Trains take to Rotherham.

As the bloody great motorway might suggest, Meadowhall is quite a car-dependant place. The roads are wide and straight, and the traffic lights treat pedestrians as an afterthought. This is fine, if you're sensible and follow marked routes, arriving and leaving at Meadowhall Interchange. I am not sensible. Most of the time, a trip to Meadowhall is timed by how long I can last before the general atmosphere forces me out for fresh air. Once that happens, the urge that I can "find a shortcut" tends to overwhelm me.

I've mostly written about Meadowhall and the Don Valley - there isn't much to see at the tram stop itself. It's a single island platform, with two tracks for trams to terminate. There isn't quite cross-platform interchange with the trains, although it's a very short walk through a little waiting area with ticket and snack vending machines. A set of stairs, or a long ramp, connects to an upper level with a train ticket office, and a covered bridge connecting to the TSY building, which has a ticket office for buses and trams, and a further bridge taking you across the road and the Don into the shopping centre.

I have perhaps been a smidgen less than neutral in my portrayal of Meadowhall, but it is useful, in the sense that it concentrates lots of shops in one place. The area may be built for the car, but the inside of Meadowhall is of course pedestrianised - in fact Meadowhall is so large it gives its corridors street names, and the interior is mapped on Google Maps. Of course, Meadowhall is private property - you won't find street homelessness here. This is why I call it a dystopian vision of the future. Or, you know, it could just be a shopping centre.

Halfway Park & Ride is the southwestern terminus of the Blue Line, in the area of Halfway. It sits on B6053 Eckington Road. I visited on the same day I visited Herdings Park, at about 15:45.

Perhaps the only interesting thing about Halfway Park & Ride is it's name – nobody knows its source. A popular folk etymology is that its "Halfway to London", as it's 10 kilometres as the crow flies from Sheffield Cathedral, about an hour on the tram from Malin Bridge. Out here, you are clearly leaving the city, with farmer's fields and low-rise housing forming our backdrop.

Halfway tram stops serves three places; the P&R, the Halfway estate, and the post-industrial waste. I didn't take the time to explore Halfway Estate, but Wikipedia tells me it was an interesting expirement in social housing – designed with green space, district heat, and a layout such that no two houses face each other.

As for the tram stop itself, it's paired with some electric car chargers, as well as a small lay-by where the 120 bus turns around.

Halfway has a moderately sized park and ride attached. Like the one at Middlewood, it is unstaffed and free-to-park, with you then paying the normal fare for the tram into town. I expect the idea of it is to attract traffic from the nearby M1 Junction 30, since much of the surrounding area is rural. It was reasonably well-used, although the tram stop was not busy at all while I was there. The tram stop is at the roundabout where Eckington Road meets Station Road, although forty years too late to offer interchange with the long-closed Killamarsh West station. This railway line is now the "back way" into Sheffield, only used for freight and diversions (one of which I am lucky enough to have been on).

The wait wasn't that long – about 15 minutes – but there's not a lot to do. I enjoyed a packet of crisps, while one of my fellow passengers played on the tracks.

Halfway tram stop is also the terminus for some of the 120 buses – those operated by Stagecoach. Having ridden trams all afternoon, I made perhaps the foolish decision to ride the bus back into town. It follows a similar route to the Blue Route; one must imagine that whatever version of the 120 existed before the Supertram got very busy. However, since taking it now is a stupid decision, it was very quiet. As was the bus; our hybrid model caught me by suprise as it silently pulled out of the lay-by. I did enjoy the views from the top deck, but it took a little while.

Herdings Park is the terminus of the Purple Route. It's situated in south-west Sheffield, in Herdings Park (yes, in).

I visited in a cold sunny winter's Friday, at about 14:45.

The Purple Route is the least frequent of Sheffield's tram routes, running once an hour! on weekdays and Saturdays, and twice an hour on a Sunday. It starts at Cathedral, and parallels the Blue Route as far as White Lane, where it continues a short while along A6102 Norton Road, before branching off onto a single-track alignment, where it runs along the boundary of Herdings Park on dedicated ballasted track.

The combination of the very low frequency, and the track running in the park creates a strange situation where walking on and around the tracks feels very safe. Luckily, walking on track ballast is very uncomfortable.

One of my favourite things about Sheffield is how you will get suprised by views when you least expect it. You can see the whole city from this bus stop, and my phone camera doesn't do it justice, especially with weather like this, it was incredible. The large grey building centre-frame is the Royal Hallamshire Hospital, for orientation.

In the second picture, you can see the buses which supplement the infrequent trams for people heading into the city. It's a very scenic bus stop, and I could have pulled off the artsy shot a lot better if I wanted to embed rocks and triangular steel into my stomach. This was taken from behind the buffer stop – no Lottas were put in harm's way.

The Purple Route – why so infrequent? I don't know, I'm not Stagecoach, nor Travel South Yorkshire. It seems like there's only one tram that runs the route, and presumably, two on Sundays. There is more stock available on a Sunday, since other routes run less frequently, but equally, every time I've gone past the depot, they've had trams in bed.

Perhaps it's lack of drivers which prevents them running more frequent service. Either way, it feels like a big waste, to spend all that money on tram infrastructure to run a service less intensive than the busses. I suppose the Purple does provide extra capacity on most of the Blue Route, however, the tram-tree-tunnel into a park is too lovely not to use more.

Overall, Herdings Park is a nice little park with an unusual but lovely tramway, although it's not especially tranquil, due to the main road. The stop also could serve the residents of Herdings, which is reasonably dense council development. It could, however, really do with more frequency.