Garff MHK Daphne Caine has called the lack of completion date for the horse tram tracks a ‘disgrace’.

In this week’s Tynwald sitting Infrastructure Minister Tim Crookall explained he is ‘not hopeful’ the horse trams will run this season and that the Department of Infrastructure has had ‘considerable difficulty’ to secure the materials to finish the tramway, as it continues to wait for the points it ordered in January from Germany.

He added that he hoped to ‘sort that issue’.

Mr Crookall said he was ‘very disappointed’ not to be able to give a date for completion.

FEASIBLE

The department should know by the end of this week if it will be feasible to run the horse trams this year.

It plans to run the tramway to the bottom of Broadway for now and return to Tynwald later in the year to get its original proposed scheme to terminate the trams at the war memorial approved.

Mrs Caine, a trustee of the Douglas Bay Tramway Heritage Trust, felt the department had been ‘incompetent’.

She said: ‘If that is their plan I think it’s a disgraceful way for any government department to operate.

‘The area around the bottom of Broadway is a complete mess and needs a serious tidy up before summer visitors arrive. Also, how Loch Prom is left doesn’t seem to me to be a very suitable gateway to the Isle of Man.

‘But it looks for the foreseeable future that the prom will remain a complete shambles. Potentially there will be no possibility for people staying in Loch Prom hotels to jump on a horse tram to access the electric railway for years to come, and until Minister Crookall’s promised statement we are still in the dark as to when any horse trams will be able to operate.’

She added: ‘The integrity and competence of the department must be in question when they cannot be trusted to replace a globally significant heritage railway.

‘Pinching away any part of our heritage railways risks destroying the unique network the island has to offer visitors and residents.

‘The horse trams are unique in the world as a Victorian public transport service operating on their original route.

‘Anywhere else they would be celebrated, here they look likely to be sacrificed by a department that can’t deliver two miles of road and tramway on budget or within an acceptable timescale.’

She went on to ask Enterprise Minister Alex Allinson about the heritage and tourism value of the tramway, to which he responded that it was ‘invaluable’.

‘There was a slightly more encouraging response from Alex Allinson,’ Mrs Caine added. ‘We will have to wait to see if that is reflected in how they are operated and promoted.’

On Monday, a TV crew filmed a horse tram travelling along the track but the minister assured members that it was purely done along a short, straight piece of track and they couldn’t be run along the full length of the already completed works as it is ‘dangerous’ to travel up and to turn around to ‘go against the traffic’.

Mr Crookall pledged to return to Tynwald in June with a full cost breakdown to show members exactly ‘where all the money has gone’.