We step back 40 years for our view of Newcastle Central Station.
On the face of it, not a lot has changed along Neville Street and beyond since 1982, although the towering blot on the landscape that was Westgate House was demolished in 2007. The station itself remains - a reassuring constant in a city that slowly transforms around it.
It was officially opened on August 29, 1850, by 31-one-year-old Queen Victoria, 13 years into her 64-year reign. It was a high-profile affair, with the rail companies selling viewing places of the royal party in special stands erected inside the station.
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Since then, the Central Station has been the main gateway to Tyneside and, for many stepping off their trains, it’s their first glimpse of our region. It was the great Tyneside railway pioneer Robert Stephenson, his second in command Thomas Harrison, and esteemed architect John Dobson who were the leading lights in its planning and development.
With its neoclassical frontage and triple-curved roof, the Central Station remains a stunning building and one of the finest in the city, and Dobson’s techniques were later adopted at other stations. It turns out, however, that impressive as the station is, an even grander one had been envisaged by Dobson, who was appointed architect to the project in 1846. His original vision had a lot of the grandeur of Rome but it never came to fruition.
Meanwhile, the station’s development was complicated by the geography of the city, and the need to bridge the steep Tyne gorge between Newcastle and Gateshead. The Central Station’s development and opening went hand-in-hand with that of the High Level Bridge, which was completed a year earlier, in 1849, and paved the way for the first direct Newcastle to London rail services. The combined cost of the station and the bridge came to £600,000.
The station has grown and developed over the years. The portico was opened in 1863, the train shed was extended southwards in the 1890s, and the adjoining Metro station was opened in 1981. At the turn of the last century, the station was famed for its highly complex diamond crossing, prompting appearances on many postcards of the day as “the largest railway crossing in the world”.
Meanwhile, the Central Station’s historic entrance was transformed in recent years as part of an £8.6m makeover which saw the glazing over of the 19th century arches, turning the once cheerless front portico into a traveller-friendly area. Annual passenger numbers before the pandemic were approaching nine million, and the Central Station’s 12 platforms remain the starting point for rail journeys the length and breadth of Britain. It also happens to be one of six Grade I-listed active stations in the UK, and one of the country’s “cathedral” stations.
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