Railways of the North Pennines

The Rise and Fall of the Railways Serving the North Pennine Orefield

Dr Tom Bell

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2015
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• eBook ISBN:
  9780750973465
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Technology & Engineering

This illustrated history describes how the two pioneering railways of northern England, the Stockton and Darlington and the Newcastle and Carlisle railways, developed from unsuccessful canal proposals and how they, with the ill-fated Stanhope and Tyne Railway, initiated the development of the railway system that served the North Pennine Orefield. It reveals the public and private railways as well as proposed lines, and the recovery and extensions of the Stockton and Darlington Railway until the North Eastern Railway took over in the early 1900s. Dr. Tom Bell's impressive research also explores the subsequent slow but continuous decline, as the minerals became exhausted, to the situation today when all that is left are three different tourist lines, one of which is trying to revive the mineral traffic.

Table of contents

• Title
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Canal Proposals, Roads and the Early Railways
• 3 The Railway Mania in the North Pennines
• 4 The Main Line of the Proposed Wear Valley Extension Railway of 1845
• 5 The 1845 Proposals for the Allen Valley
• 6 The Alston Branch of the N&Cr
• 7 Amalgamation and Financial Restructuring Within the Stockton and Darlington Group of Railways
• 8 Improvements to the Wear and Derwent Junction Railway
• 9 Rookhope, Stanhope and Westgate
• 10 The Hexham and Allendale Railway
• 11 Barnard Castle and the Tees Valley Railway
• 12 The Cumberland and Cleveland Junction Railway
• 13 The Final Attempts to Reach Alston from the Valleys of the Tees and Wear Including the Wear Valley Extension Railway of 1892
• 14 The Long Decline
• 15 The Tourist Railways
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• References
• Plates
• Copyright