(Image: STEVE BROCK)
Today’s Object of the Week is a modest new addition to a familiar North East station, remembering a remarkable man whose vision changed the way generations travelled.
Thousands of passengers pass through Newcastle Central Metro station every day, heading to work, the shops, appointments or home.
Now, among the familiar sights of the station, a new plaque tells the story of a Sunderland-born man whose vision helped make those everyday journeys possible.
Professor Tony Ridley, who died in March aged 92, was the driving force behind the Tyne and Wear Metro during its formative years and helped take a hugely ambitious transport scheme from the drawing board towards reality.
Professor Tony Ridley, the Sunderland-born civil engineer who played a pivotal role in turning plans for the Tyne and Wear Metro into reality (Image: NEXUS)
A respected civil engineer, Mr Ridley was director general of the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive, now known as Nexus, from 1968 until 1975.
He was part of a team of visionary planners faced with the question of how to create a modern public transport system for Tyne and Wear.
Their solution was ingenious - take existing railway lines that were in decline and link them together with new tunnels beneath the city centres and a bridge across the River Tyne.
Together those elements would form the backbone of the Metro system familiar to generations of passengers today.
But conceiving such a system was one thing.
Professor Tony Ridley at the opening of Northumberland Park Metro Station in December 2005 (Image: NEXUS)
Persuading politicians to back it, finding the money and actually beginning construction was quite another.
Mr Ridley oversaw the planning process and the award of funding before seeing work finally get underway.
He remained in charge for the first year of construction after building began in 1974.
Ironically, the man now credited by Nexus with playing such an important role in making Metro happen was himself famously doubtful about the audacity of the scheme.
He said that they would “never get away with building a Metro system”.
They did, and it transformed public transport in the North East.
Tony Ridley at the Tyne and Wear Metro in 1997 (Image: NEXUS)
Mr Ridley would not, however, remain in Tyne and Wear long enough to see passengers step aboard.
In 1975 he left the PTE to become the first managing director of Hong Kong’s Metro system, before going on to manage the London Underground.
His distinguished career later saw him become president of the Institution of Civil Engineers and an Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London.
But the legacy of those years in his native North East remained.
Members of Tony Ridley’s family, including his wife Jane, her daughter and grandchildren, unveil the plaque celebrating his contribution to the Tyne and Wear Metro at Central station in Newcastle (Image: STEVE BROCK)
Cathy Massarella, managing director of Nexus, said Ridley had made an “extraordinary contribution” during his career and had taken the Tyne and Wear Metro “from an idea into a reality”.
Recommended reading
Battle-scarred flag from Trafalgar to go on show in North East 221 years on
Life through the lens of a man who fell in love with the Yorkshire Dales in the 1940s
Why this Durham playground gravestone has a haunting connection to the Titanic
She added: “He paved the way for a system that revolutionised local public transport in North East England.”
Ridley’s family were among those at Central Metro station on Friday, October 16, when the commemorative plaque was unveiled in his memory.
More than half a century after he helped oversee the early stages of one of the North East’s most ambitious transport projects, the engineer who wondered whether they would ever “get away with” building it now has a permanent place within the system he helped make possible.