The £104 million project to dual 4.6km of track on the Tyne and Wear Metro between Pelaw and Bede is continuing and as it reaches the final scheduled month of work good progress continues to be made. With £95 million worth of funding coming from the government’s Transforming Cities Fund the result of the work will be increased capacity on the network as well as increasing resilience for recovery from service disruption.
The work includes the upgrading of a freight line which runs adjacent to the Metro line and will enable extra services to run on the line to South Shields once it is completed. Trains will be able to run every 10 minutes following the work allowing 24,000 extra passengers a day to be carried. Three separate sections of line are being dualled, they are from Pelaw to Hebburn (800 metres), Hebburn to Jarrow (1.4km) and Jarrow to Bede (600 metres).
The work is all on schedule to be completed in time for the reopening of the line on 4th December. The last update from Nexus in October stated that 3km of track has been installed, including the replacement of five junctions.
This is the station at Jarrow where work is on progress on preparing the platform edges for the passage of oil tankers into the Jarrow Oil Terminal. The current freight line can be seen on the far right. On the extreme left is a sculpture to commemorate the Jarrow marchers. (Photograph by Trevor Hall, 31st October 2022)