Tyne and Wear Metro

There was an art gallery.

Uh, I walked around, and then I took the, the Tyne and Wear Metro all the way to Tynemouth or Tynemouth, or you tell me in the YouTube comments how I'm supposed to be pronouncing it 'cause I really w- I wanted to go to Tynemouth because that's the spiritual start of the wall even though the trail doesn't start there.

I thought it would, it would be, it would be cool to go to the seaside there and dip my toes in the water and then do it at the other end.

So I got to Tynemouth, took the train.

Yeah.

Interestingly, the new system was operated on a trial basis as a three-line system with at least two services serving each station and some truly bizarre and, like, Tyne and Wear Metro-looking interlining.

Mm-hmm.

This is widely regarded as an extremely stupid idea and was scrapped after just a few months in operation because it was impossible to operate.

Those thieving, incompetent bastards.

If they run an absolutely wonderful service top to bottom that never went awry, and I'd, I, I'd be way less inclined to think, "You know what? They're running a tight ship over there on, on the Nexus, Tyne and Wear Metro."

Mm.

Like, maybe they know what they're talking about, and maybe they can have the, the, the credibility and the authority to sort of, like...

We've got an almost non-existent Northumbrian service.

And we've got services that ought to be Tyne and Wear Metro adjacent at minimum.

This overlap of requirements on an almost exclusively two-track railway leads us to a simple conclusion.

The northern east coast mainline isn't fit for purpose.

It brings a substantial catchment, further catchment, onto that line.

The trouble with the Northumberland line is, well, firstly, it's not electrified at all.

But secondly, that it is not integrated nearly well enough into the wider, well, frankly, it should be a Tyne and Wear Metro branded section of railway.

The map I've put up next to my face here is kind of showing what that would look like.

There's tubes everywhere.

There's a Metro Newcastle.

Well, yeah, well, if you look back, so I like to look at, I try to be strategic.

A lot of people in medical education are very, they're sort of detailed, they're down in the weeds, and we're not strategic enough.