It has been confirmed that services on the Tyne and Wear Metro network between Park Lane and South Hylton won’t run until the new year with Network Rail needing to complete major repairs to an electrical substation which recently suffered flooding. The disruption on the Metro line has been ongoing since Thursday 17th November and it now looks as if it will carry one for at least another 6 weeks.
As reported earlier this week services were suspended to allow Network Rail – who own the infrastructure on this section of line – to undertake a full assessment of the damage caused and now after this has been completed they have decided a full rebuild of the substation is needed.
Paul Rutter, East Coast Route Director for Network Rail, said: “We’re really sorry for the impact this is having on Nexus customers. The flooding has damaged our substation so significantly that we need to rebuild it before it can safely power Metro services between Park Lane and South Hylton again. We’re working with our colleagues at Nexus to find other ways to help people get to where they need to be, but the complex repairs mean that no services are likely to run on this section for the next few weeks. In the meantime, passengers should check before they travel and allow extra time for their journey.”
Currently the Metro is running a service from Pelaw to Park Lane , but only at a 24 minute frequency instead of the usual every 12 minutes. The one good thing about this revised service from an enthusiast point of view (although likely to be lost on normal travellers) is that the trains have to use the crossover to access platform 2 at Park Lane – a short section of rare track!
Metro tickets will also be accepted on Stagecoach buses 8, 10, 11 and 20 between Sunderland and South Hylton during this period of disruption. There will be Metro services at University, Millfield, Pallion or South Hylton until further notice.
John Alexander, Metro Operations Director, said: “We appreciate our customers will be frustrated by this news and we are working with Network Rail to see if the repair time frame can be shortened. Until the substation is rebuilt we cannot offer a Metro service between Park Lane and South Hylton, while the service between Pelaw and Park Lane is reduced to a train every 24 minutes rather than every 12 minutes. While this reduced Metro frequency, alongside Northern Railway trains, is coping with demand we know the inconvenience it is causing. Between Park Lane and South Hylton we continue to advice customers to use local buses, with Metro tickets being accepted. We still hope to arrange a replacement bus service if we can find operators with the driver capacity to support this.”
In the normal timetable the 05.03 Mondays to Fridays and 05.06 Saturdays only services from South Gosforth to Park Lane also do the facing crossover into Park LanePlatform 2 to ryurn back therey.