High Level Bridge

• Network Rail gives the railway 120 ft and the road 96 ft above high water; bridgesonthetyne.co.uk gives the tracks 112 ft. The drawing takes 120 and 96 (two pages, and the photograph's 24 ft between the road and the rail head agrees).
• The 141 ft pitch is the published 125 ft span plus the 16 ft cornice slab; the photograph's two spans, scaled by the columns' 9 ft 11 in, read 139.8 and 141.5 ft; OSM's five pier outlines are 138.7 ft apart on average (1.6% less). The drawing keeps 141 ft and puts the middle pier where OSM puts it.
• The 125 ft span and 17 ft 6 in rise are taken as the rib's own chord and rise, springing from the piers' cornice slabs 8 ft from their centres: the rib's edges read at eleven places along one span of the photograph fit one circle of about 119 ft radius, which a 125 ft chord with a 17.5 ft rise gives (120 ft); the slab reads 16.4 ft wide, Network Rail's 16 ft.
• The piers' widths are the photograph's (two piers within 0.3 ft): the body 14.6 ft under the cornice, the shaft 11.6 ft above the road, the pylon 11.5 ft; the foot is drawn at Network Rail's 16 ft (a batter the photograph shows only as about 2 px over 17 ft); OSM's outlines are 18.1 ft long (perhaps the footings).
• Every height above the road surface (the rib's crown, the rail deck's fascia and its parapet, the road deck's depth, the pier's courses and pinnacles) is read off one photograph (Benjamin Smith, 15 July 2026) at 4.75 px a foot (the columns' 9 ft 11 in pitch reads 47.1 px on one span), to about 0.5 ft; the drawing's edges were laid back on it and agree within about 1 ft. A second photograph has not read them (lesson 63).
• The abutments: the structure's length is published (1,338 ft) and OSM's outline puts the end piers 384 ft and 401 ft from the ends, but no source gives the abutments' own dimensions. They are drawn as plain ashlar walls rising from the ground to the rail deck's parapet, from the end of the structure to the abutment shafts; the listing's 'arcaded' faces are not drawn (a side view of the Gateshead end shows plain ashlar with the road's arch in its end face).
• The piers' foot: the river bed is drawn 14 ft under high water; the foundations (30 ft of silt over rock, Nasmyth piles; Network Rail) are not drawn.
• The ground is EU-DEM at 82 ft (25 m) along the line (one reading, the bridge itself smoothed), drawn straight between readings.
• The paint is read off the photograph's sunlit parts (cream stone: the column about #BDA58D, the rib #BAA78E; the dark underside #1B1513) and agrees with Network Rail's 2008 repaint 'to restore the original colour'; the stone is the lit pier about #886F53.
• The wooden temporary viaduct, the 1955-59 steel rail deck, the 1983 removal of one of three tracks and the overhead line's masts are not drawn; the rail deck is drawn as today's single-level top with a balustrade, as the photograph shows it.
• The trains: 1J79 Middlesbrough to Newcastle (Northern, 4 June 2026) and 2J48 Metro Centre to Newcastle (3 June 2026) are timed through High Level Bridge Junction into Newcastle (railchecker.app); the first is pathed for a Class 158, 168, 170 or 175, the second for a 150, 153, 155 or 156. The unit actually used on any day is not confirmed here.
• The rails are drawn at the published 120 ft with the deck top 2.2 ft below, read off the photograph; today's track (two, from 1983) and its ballast depth are not given by any source found.

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