Dudley Bus Station tram stop
The tram stop at Dudley bus station, under construction on Tuesday 18th March 2025. The castle forms a nice background to this scene, but whether it will be visible from the tram stop once the rest of the bus station is completed remains to be seen. The Metro describes this stop as "Dudley Bus Station", although the rebuilt facility is usually referred to rather grandly as "Dudley Interchange". Note the significant slope of the platforms here, all four of the new tram stops in Dudley are built on slopes due to the hilly nature of the town, but this is the most obvious example.

In regards to gradients the Tipton Road stop is at an elevation of around 165m, and the summit adjacent to the Churchill Precinct is around 214m. That means the line climbs around 49m over a distance of around 1100m. This is an average gradient of around 1 in 22, although there are steeper sections. For instance the 250m long climb up Castle Hill sees a rise of 14m, a gradient of around 1 in 18.

In fact the line climbs almost continuously from Wednesbury, the elevation at the bottom of the junction slope where the tram line meets the South Staffs railway alignment is about 125m. It's around 3 miles, or 4815m from there to the Tipton Road stop, and the climb is around 40m which gives an average gradient of around 1 in 120 on the railway alignment. However the steepest section on the South Staffs is the 1.2 mile stretch between Dudley Port and the Tipton Road where the gradient is around 1 in 58. This was steep enough to require banking locos for some freight trains.