Our bustling street view takes us back to Gateshead in the early years of the last century.
This was Wellington Street and the approach to the High Level Bridge crossing the Tyne into Newcastle. In the centre of the scene, one of the many trams that rumbled through the town between 1880 and 1951, while on the right we see Gateshead East - one of the town's two lost railway stations.
Today, the town is among the largest in the UK not to have a station on the National Rail network. But there was a time when it was served by both Gateshead East and Gateshead West.
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They were situated not far apart on a triangular junction close to the approach of the southern end of the High Level Bridge. Gateshead East Station began operating in 1850, adjoining Wellington Street - also the site of the town’s tram terminus. (It wasn't until 1923, after decades of discussion, that the first trams travelled across the High Level Bridge between Gateshead and Newcastle)
Trains stopping at Gateshead East ran back and forth between Newcastle and South Shields, and between Newcastle and Sunderland. Some of the stations on both routes would much later become stops when the Tyne & Wear Metro system arrived.
Our two more recent images of Gateshead East come courtesy of Whitley Bay-based amateur photographer, Trevor Ermel. One shows the station in 1977 towards the end of its working life, while the other shows the site in 1991, a decade after its closure. Trevor points out: "The station closed in November 1981 when the Metro took over the route to South Shields."
Meanwhile, Gateshead West Station could be found off nearby Hudson Street. Operating from 1868, it served passengers travelling between Newcastle and Durham (via the Team Valley), and Newcastle and Blackhill in Consett. Customer numbers fell sharply after World War II and, although it was not one of the stations named for closure in the 1963 Beeching Report, it would fall silent in November 1965.
In August of that year, an announcement appeared in the Evening Chronicle from the British Railways Board telling of the imminent "discontinuance of railway passenger services from Gateshead West Station".
Gateshead East Station has been totally demolished, but the platforms at the former West station remain.
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