A head for heights above the River Tyne
FANCY trying this? These workers busy constructing the new Queen Elizabeth II Metro Bridge certainly had a head for heights on this day 40 years ago.
The scene above the River Tyne in February 1978 was reminiscent of the famous images captured 50 years earlier of 1920s workers fearlessly clambering around the emerging structure of the Tyne Bridge high above the river.
The Metro Bridge is perhaps one of the less famous of the River Tyne’s iconic crossings, but it has been vital to the region’s transport infrastructure for nearly four decades.
Built in the mid-to-late-1970s, the QEII bridge was the most vital engineering solution in the long-awaited development of Metro.
It was an historic project, connecting Newcastle and Gateshead with a light railway system, which became the envy of other cities.
The QEII bridge, the sixth across the Tyne, was officially named by Her Majesty the Queen on November 6, 1981, as part of the official Royal opening of the Metro system.
The Royal opening was part of a threeweek 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.
The first Metro trains in passenger service actually crossed the bridge in August 1980 when the Metro system first started running.
When construction started in 1976 it was quickly decided that trains should cross the river on a 368-metre bridge, rather than in 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.”
Thanks to the efforts of the workers in our photograph and teams of others, the vital QEII Metro Bridge is today something thousands of passengers cross every day without giving it a second thought.