METRO CHIEFS are threatening to suspend services to Sunderland, after a spate of thefts has brought the transport system close to collapse.
"If we don't get our wheels back, we won't send any more trains. It's as simple as that," an official told Newcastle Stuff, yesterday.
Drivers have been advised by bosses not to wait at stations for more than thirty-seconds, as that's all it takes for locals to jack a carriage up and have it away with the wheels.
Officials are also concerned about the disappearance of dozens of seats, although Sunderland police have made a breakthrough, after arresting members of a gang based in the city's Pennywell area.
"They swooped on several houses on that estate, where they found residents had sold their three-piece suites and were using property belonging to the transport system instead," an insider said.
"We like to use high quality furnishing on our trains, but we may have to introduce wooden benches on that route."
Nobody in Sunderland was available for comment, yesterday morning.

The Quay To Success

COUNCIL CHIEFS have been stunned by the number of people wanting to move to the newly developed Quayside. Hundreds slept outside last month, hoping to snap up prime spots.
"There's a lot of money being spent down there," an official told us. "And everyone seems to want a piece of the action."
Evidence of this new-found wealth was everywhere, as our reporter discovered on a visit last week. Barry Greaves (pictured) recently traded up from his last location, at the bottom of Pink Lane.
"It's cush doon here, there's far more cash about. I can make a fiver an hour, nee bother," Greaves claims. "That gets me a few bottles and leaves enough for some tabs for the bairns back home."
But it may already be too late to pack your job in and join the boom.
The city's legion of upwardly mobile professional beggars have snapped up the top spots, mainly around the Newcastle end of the Millennium Bridge.

Gothic Horror Show

COUNCIL CHIEFS are installing surveillance cameras on Eldon Green, to monitor the behaviour of a bunch of Goths who gather there and terrify local people and traders.
These fearsome youngsters have already defied efforts by the authorities to stamp out their weird and anti-social behaviour. In our last issue we reported on efforts to rid the city of the infestation with poison.
One of their main critics is Helena Holford, who runs a dress-making business called Pinpoint, next to Eldon Green. She's been complaining to the local press that takings have slumped because customers are simply too scared to walk past the youths.
Rather than relocate her business, Ms Holford believes the council should remove the hundreds who've gathered on 'Hippie Green' for decades.
In an interview with the Evening Chronicle last month, she said she'd had to call the police after two youngsters were seen having sex in the lane behind Eldon Green.
Newcastle Stuff understands it was this development which prompted the council to install the cameras.
Ms Holford was unavailable for comment. Mind, it was four in the morning when we rang her.

Signs Of The Times

BUILDERS WORKING on a new restaurant in Pudding Chare cleverly rearranged some of the letters of its previous name, into the sign pictured on the left. Nearby Evening Chronicle staff didn’t find it amusing and called the police, who ordered the new owners to remove it immediately.
Now open and trading under the name of Diablo, the bar/cafe has a decidedly fiendish theme to it, in keeping with its location, a mere kick in the arse from the legendary Victorian Bigg Market boozer, Hell’s Kitchen.
There is also an upstairs room which would make an excellent music venue - a fact which hasn’t gone unnoticed by one of the proprietors, Rob Lockheart, who has been involved in the local scene for many a year.