Northumberland Park Metro station is a station on the Tyne and Wear Metro Yellow Line. It serves a new housing development known as Northumberland Park. It is situated between Palmersville and Shiremoor, close to where the single-track freight-only Network Rail line diverges northwards towards Ashington. The station has proved popular with over 320,000 passengers using the station in the 2008-9 period.
The Metro station began operating on 11 December 2005 and was officially opened on 13 December 2005 by Prof Tony Ridley, the first Director General of Nexus. The station is purpose built for Metro and is the first new station to be built since the Sunderland extension in 2002. It is located immediately west of the site of the Backworth railway station, which closed on 13 June 1977 and was demolished prior to the construction of the Metro. Backworth was the only station on the North Tyneside Loop not included in the system, apart from Heaton station (which was on a part of the alignment not used in the Metro).
The station is also served by bus route 19 which links Northumberland Park with the Silverlink Business Park, Royal Quays and the Shields Ferry.
In October 2007, a large hole under the track appeared, which was spotted by a Metro driver. All trains from Shiremoor station and Benton station were halted. This hole was first determined to be a collapse of the underground mines below and caused widespread media coverage, causing fret among the public believing the new station was subsiding (which could affect the newly built housing estate and Sainsbury's supermarket). This was all downplayed and the hole was fixed, with normal service resuming 3 weeks later.
Famous quotes containing the words park and/or station:
“Borrow a child and get on welfare.
Borrow a child and stay in the house all day with the child,
or go to the public park with the child, and take the child
to the welfare office and cry and say your man left you and
be humble and wear your dress and your smile, and don’t talk
back ...”
—Susan Griffin (b. 1943)
“...I believe it is now the duty of the slaves of the South to rebuke their masters for their robbery, oppression and crime.... No station or character can destroy individual responsibility, in the matter of reproving sin.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)