Why is the Metro shaped like a pretzel?

The Tyne and Wear Metro is a marvel of the British railway network: the only true metro system outside of London and Glasgow1, with fully accessible stations, beautiful typographic design, and only the occasional closure because someone stole all the copper wiring again. But amongst railway nerds, it is also known for one more puzzling detail: it’s a pretzel. 1 Many sources describe it as a “light rail” network. I would point out that it runs on refurbished heavy-rail lines, spends much of its time underground, and, most importantly, recently switched away from its old tram-based stock to the same family of fleet used on Berlin’s U-Bahn, Minsk and Lisbon’s metros, and Glasgow’s Subway, so if you’re counting it as “light rail” then Scotland has some explaining to do. © Nexus That’s right: you can, if you want, catch a Yellow Line train at Monument, go all the way around the coast, wind up right back where you started, and continue all the way down to South Shields just to rub it in.…