It was known, along with the adjacent locomotive works, as Greenesfield or Greensfield, after a Mr. Greene, from whom the North Eastern Railway (NER) bought the land [citation needed] .

However, in that same year, the Redheugh Incline was closed, thereby allowing the track running alongside the southern wall of the shed to be lifted, and an extension built to accommodate three larger 60' 0" turntables [citation needed] .

In the 1920s, the arrival of large 4-6-2 "pacific" type locomotives (the Vincent Raven designed NER "2400" class which became "A2" under the LNER, and the Doncaster built Gresley "A1s" designed for the GNR), necessitated converting the adjoining locomotive works' tender shop into a shed which could accommodate them, as even the 60' turntables in the main shed were not large enough.

The rebuilding of the shed in the 1950s would include the provision of a 70' turntable which these locomotives could use, but this would soon become obsolete with the phasing out of steam traction under the BR 1955 Modernisation Plan.

Unlike its counterpart which vanished with the steam locomotives, and consisted of a tank on top of its own substantial brick structure in the yard to the South of the shed itself, this sat on the roof at the northwestern corner of the building and thus would have presented no obstruction to any reorganisation of the external trackwork.

It would also encompass South Gosforth Car Sheds, where the Tyneside electric stock was stabled, including the NER Class ES1 shunting locomotives for the steeply graded Quayside Branch.

An idea of the volume of freight - particularly coal - traffic once handled within a relatively small geographical area by Gateshead, Sunderland and their various sub-sheds can be gained from their 1950 locomotive allocations with no less than 59 Q5, Q6 and Q7 0-8-0s for heavy mineral workings (Borough Gardens alone had 22) along with almost 200 assorted 0-6-0s.

(54D until 1958) - provided facilities for locomotives working the lines in and out of Consett, (only the former Stanhope & Tyne route remaining for traffic to and from the steelworks by 1980, when the plant finally closed) as well as being allocated snowploughs which were essential in winter due to the town's location being a high fell on the edge of the Pennines.

Newcastle Central station pilots and various other smaller locomotives for local passenger trains and goods workings were also based at the depot.

In BR days, the shed continued to house mainly ex-NER/LNER locomotives, the BR standard classes being somewhat conspicuous by their absence from north east lines (one exception being a modified batch of the massive "9Fs" which had been specially fitted with large Westinghouse air pumps; these locomotives were stabled at Tyne Dock shed and employed on the heavy iron ore trains to Consett Steelworks where the pumps were needed to operate the air powered doors on the large bogie ore hoppers).

Bowes Bridge, which never had its own shed code, was also a sub-shed of Gateshead and was allocated a pair of N10 0-6-2 tanks for working the sections of the Tanfield Branch level enough not to require rope haulage.

By 1957, this was marked on the OS map as an engine shed, which suggests that locomotives from the soon to be closed Borough Gardens MPD had been transferred to Gateshead.

In 1996, part of the former works was used as an exhibition space for Antony Gormley's "Field for the British Isles", consisting of 40,000 small terracotta figures.

The line between the south end of the bridges also remains open, allowing freight trains access from the ECML and Newcastle-Carlisle route to Tyne Dock.