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Throughout the 1920's welding was used largely for the repair of structures such as Brunel's Saltash Bridge, but it was also being increasingly considered for new construction. By 1927 the revolutionary new technique of welding had been applied to a single span girder bridge of 55 feet in length at Turtle Creek in the USA and by 1928 a 175 ft railway bridge at Chicopee Falls. The first important European structure was erected at Lamberg in be Poland in 1929 followed by structures in Germany, Czechoslovakia and Australia. In 1931 work began on Newport Bridge, the well known lift bridge over the Tees.
This was a riveted structure and required another bridge on the northern approach to cross the LNER railway line. The consulting engineers were a firm called Mott Hay and Anderson and the contractors were Dorman Long and Co, the bridge was designed to follow the curve of the embankments on the approach and was skewed slightly to the rail track. Poor soil conditions meant that the number of spans was increased from 3 to 5 while curving the upper flanges allowed for a reduction in the amount of material required for the embankments. The Girders used were fabricated at the Newport Iron works in the old Ironmasters district of Middlesbrough, just across the river from the bridge. The bridge came into use in February 1934 and was the UK's first all-welded steel bridge, 216ft between abutments and designed to carry a 100 ton 4 wheeled vehicle.
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