Maintenance workers on the Tyne and Wear Metro were out in force again over the weekend after the network was severely affected by Storm Malik which led to the system being completely suspended on Saturday 29th January. The majority of services were able to resume from the start of service on Monday 31st January after the dedication of the team working across the weekend.
There were fallen trees and downed overhead wires across multiple locations requiring work – on a similar scale to that seen in November in the wake of Storm Arwen which was described at the time as the worst storm to hit the network since it opened over 40 years ago.
Martin Kearney, Nexus Chief Operating Officer, said: “Our workforce has once again risen to the challenge of another major storm, which caused widespread damage to the Metro network. The recovery operation has been on a similar scale to the scenes we saw during Storm Arwen at the end of last year. My thanks go to our customers for their patience during that period of major disruption. And my thanks go to all of our employees who have worked so hard, both during and after Storm Malik hit. The engineers have got through an astonishing workload. Our teams were dealing with three incidents of fallen trees, downed and damaged overhead wires in North Tyneside, debris on overhead lines and other debris blown on to tracks. It was a really challenging weekend.”
Services remained suspended between Benton and Monkseaton throughout Monday 31st January to allow the final repairs to be completed on the section between Palmersville to Northumberland Park in a joint operation with Network Rail. These were finally completed in time for trains to resume on Tuesday 1st February.