Not for the first time, we see workers with nerves of steel high above the murky waters of the Tyne busy in the construction of a vital bridge across the river.
If the brave fellows who built the Tyne Bridge with the minimum of health and safety support in the late 1920s are remembered in classic film and photographs, these chaps had a similar head for heights working nearly 100 feet up on the Queen Elizabeth II Metro Bridge 45 years ago.
Situated between the High Level and King Edward VII Bridges, the bridge is one of the less famous of the iconic crossings linking Newcastle and Gateshead, but has been integral to the region’s transport infrastructure for over four decades. Built between 1976 and 1980, the QEII bridge was the most vital engineering solution in the long-awaited development of the Metro.
READ MORE: Tyneside 70 years ago: 10 photographs from around our region in 1953
When work on the Metro began, it was quickly decided that trains should cross the river on a 368-metre bridge, rather than in more expensive tunnels dug beneath the river. The river bed was excavated and two concrete abutments were built to support the steel structure.
David Howard was Director General of the Tyne and Wear Passenger Executive, now Nexus, when the project was completed. He said at the time: "Tunnelling would have been deep and expensive and would have made stations at Central and Gateshead deeper and more difficult for the public to use.
"We used 4,000 tonnes of steel to build the bridge. Extreme temperature changes can cause the bridge to expand or contract by about 150 millimetres over its total length, so it has an expansion joint to allow for this, believed to be the longest of its type in Europe."
Built from opposite banks of the river across the Tyne gorge, the two sections of the through-truss steel construction finally met over the river on August 1, 1978. The final cost was just over £6m.
The bridge, the sixth across the Tyne, was officially named by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on November 6, 1981, as part of the official Royal opening of the Metro system. The opening was part of a three-week transport festival on Tyneside, designed to encourage people to try the Metro.
There was a huge fireworks display, a transport treasure trail, competitions - including one with a first prize of a Spanish holiday, a balloon race, a public transport cavalcade and exhibition, specially commissioned souvenirs and cheap fares.
READ NEXT:
- A lost world of 1970s Tyneside pubs is recalled in 10 gritty photographs from Jarrow
- Back to school on Tyneside in the 1980s - 10 classroom photographs
Where was this Tyneside location from TV's Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?
A now-vanished Newcastle record store was getting ready to open its doors
Low Fell in Gateshead - the fashionable Tyneside suburb built away from noise and grime
