Brierley Hill, W Midlands - Merry Hill Monorail - postcard c.1980s

• Postcard

   

• Picture / Image:  Merry Hill Monorail, Brierley Hill, West Midlands
• Publisher: ETW Dennis
• Postally used: no
• Stamp:  n/a
• Postmark(s): n/a
• Sent to:  n/a
• Notes / condition: 

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Image may be low res for illustrative purposes - if you need a higher definition image then please contact me and I may be able to send one. No cards have been trimmed (unless stated).

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NOTE: All postcards are sent in brand new stiffened envelopes which I have bought for the task. These are specially made to protect postcards and you may be able to re-use them. In addition there are other costs to sending so the above charge is not just for the stamp!

I will give a full refund if you are not fully satisfied with the postcard.

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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The Merry Hill Centre (officially Intu Merry Hill) is a shopping mall in Brierley Hill near Dudley, England. It was developed between 1985 and 1990, with several subsequent expansion and renovation projects.

The centre has over 250 shops, a separate retail park, cinema, food hall and ten-thousand parking spaces. Adjacent to the main shopping centre is a marina called The Waterfront accommodating a number of bars, restaurants and the offices of HM Revenue & Customs. The Dudley No.1 Canal passes though The Waterfront and along the edge of the shopping centre before descending to Delph Locks.

The centre's original developers and owners were Richardson Developments but it has had a number of other owners including Chelsfield, Mountleigh and Westfield. It is currently owned by Intu Properties.[3]

An elevated monorail was opened at Merry Hill in June 1991, but this closed in 1996 as a result of a combination of technical problems and safety concerns (especially the difficulty of evacuation), exacerbated by a dispute between the owners of Merry Hill and The Waterfront which at this time were owned separately. The infrastructure was later removed, leaving only one disused monorail station and part of the old railings visible—on top of the Marks and Spencer store roof.

The monorail cost £22,000,000 to build, the construction work taking place along with the final phase of the shopping complex in 1988/89, but due to health and safety concerns it did not open until 19 months after the centre was complete.

There were to be five stations, with the system extending over the canal and terminating close to the site of the former Round Oak railway station where an interchange with a Midland Metro extension was proposed. However, only the first four stations were completed.

The system was officially opened on 1 June 1991. The actual public opening was delayed while Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate investigated evacuation procedures. After operating for a short while, the monorail was temporarily closed again in 1992,[14] but ran sporadically until 1996.[15]

After the system was put up for sale in 1996,[14] the trains and track were transferred in 2001 to the Oasis Shopping Centre, in Broadbeach, Queensland, Australia, to enable expansion of its own monorail system.

At the end of Monorail service, a "monorail replacement bus" service operated between the UCI Cinema and The Waterfront car parks. This service utilised two Travel Merry Hill owned MCW Metrobuses.