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 have been advanced in the last 40 years, leading to 'forensic engineering' reinterpretations of what actually happened. The disaster inspired several songs and poems, most famously William McGonagall's "The Tay Bridge Disaster", widely considered to be of such a low quality as to be comical. The German poet Theodor Fontane, shocked by the news, wrote his poem "". It was published only ten days after the tragedy happened. C. Horne's ballad "In Memory of the Tay Bridge Disaster" was published as a broadside in May 1880. It describes the moment of the disaster as: "Hatter's Castle", the 1931 novel of