THE future of the Tyne & Wear Metro is bright. Well... bright yellow, grey and black to be precise. And five-car, built by Stadler in Switzerland – although a number of the components (windows, wiring and drive systems, to name but three) were manufactured in the North East, some within a few miles of the network.
Over the course of the next two years, Stadler will complete the delivery and commissioning of the 46 new Class 555 trains to replace the Metro’s entire existing fleet of Metro-Cammell-built ‘Metrocars’ (known as Class 599 for use on the main line), which are as old as the system itself.
The Metrocars were based on the German Stadtbahnwagen Type B and fairly advanced for their time, incorporating wide gangways between vehicles and Jacobs bogies (a type of articulation) – both
