Heaton TMD is a railway

traction maintenance depot The motive power depot (MPD) or locomotive depot, or traction maintenance depot (TMD), is the place where locomotives are usually housed, repaired and maintained when not being used. They were originally known as "running sheds", "engine shed ...

situated in the Heaton area of

Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle upon Tyne ( RP: , ), or simply Newcastle, is a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. The city is located on the River Tyne's northern bank and forms the largest part of the Tyneside built-up area. Newcastle is ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, it is located next to the

East Coast Main Line The East Coast Main Line (ECML) is a electrified railway between London and Edinburgh via Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle. The line is a key transport artery on the eastern side of Great Britain running broa ...

, around east of

Newcastle Central station Newcastle Central Station (also known simply as Newcastle and locally as Central Station) is a major railway station in Newcastle upon Tyne. It is located on the East Coast Main Line, around north of . It is the primary national rail station ...

. Heaton was a sub-shed of

Gateshead Gateshead () is a large town in northern England. It is on the River Tyne's southern bank, opposite Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle to which it is joined by seven bridges. The town contains the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, Millennium Bridge, Sage ...

between 1963 and 1967.

History

Heaton Locomotive Depot geograph-2354955-by-Ben-Brooksbank

Heaton Locomotive Depot geograph-2899256-by-Ben-Brooksbank

Originally built by the North Eastern Railway to provide

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...

s serving principally the extensive Heaton

marshalling yard A classification yard (American and Canadian English (Canadian National Railway use)), marshalling yard (British, Hong Kong, Indian, Australian, and Canadian English (Canadian Pacific Railway use)) or shunting yard (Central Europe) is a railway ya ...

s and freight traffic, but also a considerable proportion of main line and local passenger traffic from . The location meant that it provided motive power to the and steep

Riverside Branch The Riverside Branch was a double-track branch line, which ran between Riverside Junction in Heaton and Percy Main West Junction in Percy Main. The line opened in May 1879, later being electrified in 1904, as part of the Tyneside Electric ...

. Unliked by crews due to the need to pass through three tunnels and the resultant toxic smoke in their cabs, in 1905 it was electrified using 750 VDC technology, with power supplied via both overhead catenary and, within the tunnels, third-rail. Both of the BTH/Brush 640 hp (BR Class ES1) locomotives were based at Heaton, designed as a Bo-Bo with central cab. They worked from the shed until 1967. Coded 52B in the NE Region (Newcastle District) under

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

ways, in 1954 it had an allocation of 95 locomotives, comprising:16x 4-6-2; 17x 2-6-2; 1x 4-4-0; 14x 2-6-0 (9 LNE + 5 LMS-type); 14x 0-6-0; 12x 2-6-2T; 1x 0-6-2T; 18x 0-6-0T; and 2x ES1's. On 22 March 2022 a

TransPennine Express TransPennine Express (TPE), legally First TransPennine Express Limited, is a British train operating company owned by FirstGroup that operates the TransPennine Express franchise. It runs regional and inter-city rail services between the major ci ...

Class 802 derailed at Heaton depot and collided with concrete barriers. There were no injuries reported.

Present

After demolition and redevelopment to diesel traction in the 1960s by

ways, today the depot is operated by Northern, and mostly houses stock operated by them and Grand Central. The depot code is HT. The basic allocation consists of Class 156 and British Rail Class 158 diesel multiple units operated by Northern. Although not allocated to the depot,

Class 180 The British Rail Class 180 is a class of 14 Diesel multiple unit#Diesel–hydraulic, diesel-hydraulic Multiple unit, multiple-unit passenger trains manufactured by Alstom at its Washwood Heath factory in 2000/01 for First Great Western (FGW) . T ...

and Class 800 units,

and

London North Eastern Railway London North Eastern Railway (LNER) is a British train operating company. It is owned by the DfT OLR Holdings for the Department for Transport (DfT). The company's name echoes that of the London and North Eastern Railway, one of the Big Four ...

storing units and/or contracting out maintenance at this depot. Northern Class 158s and Class 150s also regularly visit Heaton for maintenance.

Network Rail Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. Network Rail is an "arm's leng ...

New Measurement Train The New Measurement Train (NMT), also known as the ''Flying Banana'', is a specialised train which operates in the United Kingdom to assess the condition of track so that engineers can determine where to work. It is a specially converted InterCi ...

is allocated to Heaton and can be seen stored on site, although not as regular as it used to be. Maintenance on its recording equipment is carried out at the

Railway Technical Centre The Railway Technical Centre (RTC) in London Road, Derby, England, was the technical headquarters of the British Railways Board, and was built in the early 1960s. British Rail described it as the largest railway research complex in the world. Th ...

Derby Derby ( ) is a city and unitary authority area in Derbyshire, England. It lies on the banks of the River Derwent in the south of Derbyshire, which is in the East Midlands Region. It was traditionally the county town of Derbyshire. Derby gai ...

Sewage and clean out

Heaton is used by the main express operator of the

to store stock overnight. In 2004–06, this led to a dispute between the RMT and then operator

GNER Great North Eastern Railway, often referred to as GNER, was a train operating company in the United Kingdom, owned by Sea Containers, that operated the InterCity East Coast franchise on the East Coast Main Line between London, Yorkshire, No ...

. Legally in the UK, train operators are allowed to discharge of sewage per carriage per journey, onto the railtrack. Most Mk3 carriages have only holding tanks, not fully compliant toilet tanks. Further, Heaton then had no toilet clean-out facilities. However, in the 2000s both the RMT and politicians were concerned at the environmental impact of this legacy issue. In 2006 the RMT agreed waste tank and clean out developments at Heaton with GNER, plus new clean out procedures at all other depots, to solve an ongoing dispute over sewage spray.

Access

The depot is closed to the general public. Only those with an official pass can access the depot, or those attending the occasional open days organised by Northern. The nearest station, from which the depot can also be seen, is Chillingham Road Metro station, whilst the nearest mainline station is . The entrance to the site is from Benfield Road, just south of where the ECML crosses it.

References

Notes

Sources

* {{Baker-GBRailAtlas Buildings and structures in Newcastle upon Tyne Railway depots in England Transport in Newcastle upon Tyne