Hope-Dodds's 1930 volume's only waggonway-gauge figure — 'about 48 inches' for early Tyneside 'Newcastle roads' generally — is not attached to Heaton or Heaton Banks specifically

In the introduction to its "Collieries and the Coal Trade" chapter, T. E. Forster's contribution to Madeleine Hope Dodds's 1930 Northumberland County History Vol. 13 states that early Tyneside wagonways, "About 1640" onward, ran on wooden rails "about 4 inches square in section fastened to wooden sleepers and ballasted, the gauge being about 48 inches." A full-text pass of the volume (cross-checked against its own index) confirms this is the only gauge figure given anywhere in the book. It describes "Newcastle roads" as a general regional practice across an unspecified span of decades and lines — it is not stated to be Heaton's gauge, Heaton Banks's gauge, or any other individually named colliery's line.

Two things follow. First, Hope Dodds/Forster records no measured or reported gauge specific to Heaton or Heaton Banks (see claim-heaton-banks-colliery-closed-1745-no-gauge-recorded, which found the same absence in Newcastle's Historic Environment Record). Second, the one area-wide figure the volume does give — roughly 48 inches (4 feet) — differs from the 4 ft 8½ in (56.5 in) figure central to this vault's Willington/Stephenson standard-gauge thread (claim-willington-report-main-line-stated-four-foot-eight-inch-no-half-inch, claim-stephensons-4ft8in-gauge-predates-1829-only-final-halfinch-dated-there). As a rounded, general "about" figure covering an unspecified range of lines and decades, it cannot be read as positive evidence against the later, more specific figure either — the two describe different things (a vague regional average vs. a measured single site) rather than contradicting one another directly.