Newport-on-Tay trains had ceased to run beyond Newport-on-Tay East station to Tayport on 22 May 1966 so that the railway line could be breached to build the bridge's southern approach road. The Dundee – Newport ferry also closed promptly later in 1966 on the opening of the Tay Road Bridge. However, the ferry terminal buildings and slipways still survive at the foot of Boat Hill as a boat repair yard. An excavation carried out by Headland Archaeology in the farm of North Straiton near Newport-on-Tay uncovered part of a Bronze Age cremation cemetery and a line of postholes. Five human cremations
Tay Bridge disaster anomalously high because of peculiarities of the site (one of the highest points on the Wirral.<ref name="The Wirral Hundred/The Wirral Peninsula"></ref>): a wind pressure of would overturn railway carriages and such events were a rarity. (To give a subsequent, well documented example, in 1903 a stationary train "was" overturned on the Levens viaduct but this was by a 'terrific gale' measured at Barrow in Furness to have an average velocity of , estimated to be gusting up to .) A new double-track Tay Bridge was built by the NBR, designed by Barlow and built by William Arrol & Co. of