A North Tyneside rail stop
WE step back to 1979 in our gritty, atmospheric main image.
It shows Percy Main railway station in North Shields looking West.
A passenger is wrapped up against the cold as a train pulls into the opposite platform.
In the background a giant chimney at a waste incinerator pumps out smoke.
The scene very much depicts an image of the old industrial North - but change was just around the corner.
Today, where there was an old railway station is a shiny, modern Metro station.
Like many of the crumbling stations on the suburban rail lines to the coast on both the North and South of the Tyne, the old Percy Main stop was incorporated into the new Metro system in the early 1980s.
Back in time, Percy Main - which derived its name from the Duke of Northumberland’s family - was a small village housing the families of men who worked on the River Tyne and in the local pits.
The railway station, which served the community, was in operation from around 1840 on the circular route that took in Newcastle, Tynemouth and Whitley Bay.
The station consisted of two platforms linked by a metal lattice footbridge (which today resides in the National Railway Museum in York).
There was also a signal box at the site.
Goods trains ran at Percy Main until 1968 and, 140 years after it was opened by the Newcastle and North Shields Railway, the station closed in 1980.
The old buildings and platforms were demolished and a new Metro station was opened in November 1982.
The incinerator chimney no longer looms over the area, and a SITA UK household waste recycling centre is now in operation. ■■Our superb main image from 1979 was taken by Kevin McGahon.
It appears in the recently published book, Rail Rover: The Northumbrian Ranger in the 70s & 80s, Amberley Books. £14.99.
The book recalls travelling the 1970s and 80s railway routes of the North East using just a £2.60 weekly ticket.