After a gap of around two months between departures, the scrappings of the redundant original Tyne and Wear Metro trains has resumed with six having left the network to be cut-up over several days at the start of June.
The six latest departures are 4010 (3rd June), 4040 (4th June), 4013 (5th June), 4025 (6th June), 4018 (9th June) and 4021 (10th June). All six were sandwiched between two of their still operational sisters to be moved from Gosforth Depot (where they’d been stored out of service, some longer than others) to Howdon from where they were collected by lorry and taken to Denham Metals in Shildon, the company who have the contract to cut the trains up and reduce them to mere scrap metal.
Of these latest scrappings, the departure of 4040 is probably the most significant. This was one of four trains (the others being prototypes 4001 and 4002, as well as 4083) which didn’t go through refurbishment at Wabtec in the early 2010s and were restricted in that they could only work with each other and not with those which did go through this work. With 4002 and 4083 having already gone for scrap, and 4001 long-term stored and earmarked for preservation at the North Tyneside Steam Railway (although still currently stored at Gosforth), there wasn’t much hope for a resurrection for 4040 and so its move for scrap probably isn’t a big surprise.
The move of these six for scrap means that 25 of the fleet of 90 have now headed off. That leaves another 65 which remain on the Tyne and Wear Metro network, but not all of these are operational.