Teeside Metro 3: Thinking ideal worldly

Adding on from the last post; what if we were to try and make a 'real metro' in the Middlesbrough area?
This is of course purely ideal world, blue sky thinking and is never going to happen but nonetheless....

This proposed greenline will aim to link in the suburbs of Middlesbrough/Stockholm which would otherwise be without rail transport and such is using new lines. These lines however are all above ground with there being no immediate need for tunneling.

Inglesby Barwick

The line will start/end somewhere around this large estate in the south west. Depending how extreme we want to be there could be two stations; one towards Yarm on the south end of the estate then one more towards the north east of it; or just the one station, likely located on the east.
It could even be that we may need three stations with two on the east or just two stations on the east. This is a large estate surrounded by a fields.
I will be going with the simplest, one station option with the station placed towards Ingleby Way.

South Thornaby

Cutting along by the A174 between Thornaby and the industrial estate we have a good location for another station. Its very far from Thornaby station proper.

Hemlington

After a large greenfield area we then reach Hemlington/Acklam. I would plan to cut between the two following the A174's green shoulder to avoid having to do any tunneling through built up areas.

Acklam

I would place the next station east of St.Mary's college after some major golf course avoision. This station again has a large residential capture area and is far from the railway line proper.

After Acklam we then head east to join the mainline just south of the proposed hospital station. We then follow this up through the city centre and westwards until we reach the northbound part of the journey....

Hartburn

With the Fairfield route we have two possible alternatives.
1: Loop around the western edge of the estate.
2: It seems there is a disused railway alignment (currently sans tracks) running right through the centre of the built up area. If we could follow this catchment would be amazing.

I will assume 2 is possible (this is ideal world thinking afterall) though 1 would not be too much different.

The Hartburn station would be located not far east of the primary school. Around Ingleby Grove looks good.

Fairfield

We have a big enough area next that I would ideally place two stations, a south and north Fairfield. Lanark Close and Premier Road perhaps for rough locators?

Hardwick

Right on the edge of the estate we have our final staiton, Hardwick. Again to describe location I will say 'near the primary school'.

Again apologies for the ugly as sin map, I'm really not in a mood for trying to make something 'proper' and nice looking at the moment, especially for a side-interest. Maybe in the future.

Teesside Metro 2; some improvements

So, in the previous post I roughly outlined what they're doing with their super budget 'only the most minor improvements we can get away with' metro design.
I fully understand the reasons for doing this of course, Teesside is a bit small and oddly put together for a metro- very spread out and with a very off-centre centre (that being Middlesbrough city centre) and a big river cutting right through it.

The true improvements that would be made to the Teesside Metro, if anything would be cuts. As I've mentioned many small towns have multiple stations which is just silly overkill.
But, even beyond I get into ideal world stuff there are some improvements that can be made to the existing metro proposal...

Hartlepool

Only as far north as Hartlepool central? Yes, this is a nicely central station and yeah Hartlepool isn't huge but it does have 100,000 people and this entire system is for half a million. The north really needs some service.
Looking at things from a very normal Metro perspective as I did in Tyne and Wear I'd place three stations north of Hartlepool Centre- Headland, St.Hills then finally Hart. All of these being on the existing railway line.
This probally is a fair bit overkill though so a merger of St.Hills and Hart would seem logical. I will note here for anyone from Hartlepool reading this- yes, Headland isn't actually on the headland. I could find no better name for this station located just west of it though.

Norton

There seems to be quite a significant gap between Billingham station and Stockton station. A huge chunk of the Middlesbrough-Stockton area live up here yet there are no plans for stations.
Ideally I would place two here, a North Norton towards Calf Fallow Lane, west of the A19, and a South Norton, just by where the A1027 cuts across the railway.
Having at least one Norton station (South Norton is in the most built up area so I'd go with this one) is an absolute must.

Darlington

Somewhat similar to Hartlepool, Darlington is a rather large town of close to 100,000 people yet is only being served by one station. What is odd here though unlike in Hartlepool is that there is already another station further north in Darlington; for the metro to go to bot Darlington Central and North Road really seems quite a basic thing to do and I've no clue why they're not doing this.

These extensions are all extensions to be made without diverging too far from the existing plans for a metro that involves just upgrading the existing lines and I would sorely hope the authorities behind the Teesside metro plans considers these points.

I'm not in an artistic mood at all today so a rough map-

Something completely different- The Teesside Metro

There are currently major plans being gone through for a 'Tees Valley Metro', which is odd though interesting.

A lot is said about Newcastle being too small for a metro and it being lucky in having what it does have- this though is forgetting that Tyne and Wear is the 5th biggest urban area in the country with well over 1 million people.
Teeside meanwhile...its even smaller. Middlesbrough and the surrounding region are only in the 300,000s population wise. True there are the significantly sized towns of Hartlpool and Darlington not TOO far away with just under 100,000 people each but these places are pretty darn far from Middlesbrough.

So it is that we have the Teesside metro plans...They're not really for a true metro at all. What they are is plans to upgrade train services in the area.
The current railway system down Middlesbrough way is rather strange with there being lots of tiny towns with their own train stations- in some cases tiny towns even have two- Nunthorpe with only 5000 people has Gypsy Lane and Nunthorpe Central; Eaglescliffe and Marske are also small places with two stations.
Compare this to the situation up towards Newcastle meanwhile where you have large towns such as Consett, Stanley, Blyth and of course Washington, without any rail access at all and you can clearly see something odd down Middlesbrough way....with this their half-metro would seem to be a decent idea. They've already sort of got one set out with their regular rail system.

So. What will the Middlesbrough Metro look like?
This-