Gateshead Railway Works
Gateshead was, prior to 1910, the headquarters of the NER's locomotive department, being at the time home to the company's main works. These stood alongside the sheds, overlooking the River Tyne. Part of the works occupied the site of the original Gateshead Station, where trains from London terminated prior to the construction of the High Level Bridge and the opening of Newcastle Central Station. The train shed of this station subsequently became the works' No. 1 erecting shop (where the final assembly of the locomotives was carried out), and the hotel adjoining the station became home to offices. On the opposite side of the running lines, at the Eastern end of Chater's Bank sidings, a roundhouse built sometime between 1895 and 1898 (and demolished in the late 1960s during the conversion of the shed into a diesel depot) served as the works' paint shop. By 1957, this was marked on the OS map as an engine shed, which suggests that locomotives from the soon to be closed Borough Gardens MPD had been transferred to Gateshead. After 1910, the production of new locomotives at Gateshead was discontinued, these being subsequently built at Darlington. The works continued to maintain and overhaul engines up until 1932, when the decision was made to close them. They were re-opened for the maintenance and overhaul of locomotives during the Second World War, receiving a new 60-ton crane, in order to ease the pressure on Darlington, and remained open until 1959, when they closed for the last time. In 1996, part of the former works was used as an exhibition space for Antony Gormley's "Field For The British Isles" consisting of 40,000 small terracotta figures. Most of the works was subsequently demolished in 2002 along with the adjacent engine sheds, although some of the buildings nearest the river have survived and have been converted into apartments.
Read more about this topic: Gateshead TMD
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