Tyne and Wear Metro services via Gateshead resumed on Tuesday 31st December 2024 following strengthening works on the Gateshead flyover by Gateshead Council.
As you will recall, in the lead up to Christmas a safety inspection of the flyover led to the Council making the decision to close it t all traffic. Whilst, Metro trains don’t run on the flyover the tunnels they do run through are immediately below this and although initially services ran at a reduced speed it was decided – again for safety reasons – that all services should be suspended.
That meant that from 19th December 2024 services were running in two halves. North of the River Tyne was fine with services travelling from Monument to Airport and Monument to St James via the North Tyneside coast. However, south of the river – where there are no maintenance facilities – a reduced frequency service only could run between Heworth and South Shields/South Hylton.
This remained in place until New Year’s Eve when trains started running through central Newcastle and Gateshead again, albeit at a reduced frequency. No services run on New Year’s Day with a full service set to resume again from Thursday 2nd January 2025.
Cathy Massarella, Managing Director of Nexus, said (on 30th December): “Gateshead Council have successfully completed strengthening works on the Gateshead flyover, to prop a pillar directly over the Metro tunnels. Our infrastructure and operations teams are currently finishing tunnel inspections to make sure trains can safely run through them again and moving our trains to where they need to be. Thank you to our customers for their patience and understanding during this ongoing period of disruption.”