UK RAILWAYS

At the weekend I drove to Scotland, and rather than doing the usual M62
or A66, I kept going up the A1 for a bit, turned left, and then left
again onto the A698 to Longtown via Weardale and Alston.

I found a lot of railway relics in the high Pennines, including the
upper end of the Weardale line, which doesnt seem to show on maps at
all, not even a dotted line, much less the usual dismantled railway.

If you start with a 1:5000 aerial photo here
<http://www.multimap.com/map/photo.cgi?client=public&X86741&YS8954&gr
ide=&gridn=&scaleP00&widthp0&heightA0>, the trackbed is clearly
visible as a line coming from almost exactly the top left hand corner of
the photo and running west-southwest, parallel to the main road. It
goes under a bridge under the minor road which crosses it before curving
a bit more southward and running alongside the river. How much further
up did it go, where did it end, and why doesnt it show on the maps?

Up at Alston itself of course there is the narrow-gauge South Tynedale
Railway on the trackbed of the former branch line which finally
succumbed to an anti-railway Department of Transport in 1972, having
fought off closure for 5 years, and at I believe the same time as the
last part of the Keswick line was lost. Many very massively constructed
viaducts to see from the road before the trackbed finally crosses the
valley on a largeish viaduct and heads northeast to Haltwhistle. Looks
like it would make a very interesting walk.

The road turns west when the Tynedale reaches the viaduct, but heading
or Brampton I kept passing more signs of ex-railway, this does show on
the map, it appears the Tynedale had another route to the main line
which follows the course of the main road to Brampton. Not long after
it merges with the Newcastle - Carlisle line another abandoned trackbed
branches off northwest heading towards Longtown.

Why so many railways in an area that can never have been rich in
traffic? When did this other half of the Tynedale close? Why was it
built in the first place? And what is the story of the line towards
Longtown?

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Pyromancer wrote:


That region of Britain *was* rich in traffic; mainly agricultural,
but also mineral traffic. There was never much passenger traffic, but
most railways in Britain were built for carrying freight, not people.

The North Eastern Railway was the most profitable of all the
pre-grouping railway companies, largely due to the thriving
agricultural and mineral traffic throughout its region. Alas, the
Great Depression (1929-41) badly affected mineral traffic and the
LNER, into which the NER had been grouped in 1923, never recovered
financially and was loss-making until Nationalised in 1948.

Pyromancer wrote in message
news:EDTLsvBrgexAFwS0@pyromancer.firstnet.co.uk...

A quick Google brought up the following, which I think explains what you saw
in the Brampton area.
http://www.railscot.co.uk/Newcastle and Carlisle Railway/body.htm

I think the answer to the why so many railways question is that the area
was rich in mineral resources (coal, iron, limestone, etc.) and that was the
main motivation for many of the lines.

Roger

Pyromancer wrote in message
news:EDTLsvBrgexAFwS0@pyromancer.firstnet.co.uk...

I have now also found this site, which details the history of the Weardale
line.
http://www.weardale-railway.org.uk/history.htm

Of course, the usual warnings about websites apply...

Roger

TP wrote in message
news:98rbc092uhmaba8sdpr3mpssb5hk2g4laq@4ax.com...

The UK economy had been adversely affected by Mr Churchills mistake of
listening to the advice of Montagu Norman and putting Sterling back on
to the Gold Standard at the pre-WW1 exchange rate of USD 4.84 (the rate
had been 4.40) in 1925. The effect on much of the North Easts
industry - any of it that depended on exporting goods - was severe.

Montagu Norman (Governor of the Bank of England) then went to the USA,
and in concert with Horace Greeley Schacht, his oppo at the Reichsbank,
urged the easing of monetary policy. The US treasury, in acceding to
this request, inadvertently made money available to investors to bid up
the price of shares, which ultimately triggered the Great Crash of 1929.

Churchill later admitted that he knew little about economics, but he did
know that shooting Montagu Norman would have been A Good Thing.

The LNER were affected by Mr Churchills mistake almost at the outset,
and were instructing their staff to make economies as early as 1925.
Perhaps their biggest economy measure on the loco front was to buy
hundreds of surplus freight locos from the government at a knock down
price, rather than build new. Hence their standard heavy hauler was the
Great Central 8K, or LNER O4, as it had been adopted as a war standard.
Several of the locos ended their careers as far afield as Australia.

--
Tim

Tim Fenton wrote:



An interesting perspective, Tim. Thank you.

It was a dark and stormy night when Tim Fenton
wrote in article <2imev5FnvrfhU3@uni-
berlin.de>...

Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, to give the old rotter his full string
of names. One of only three Nazis to escape the guilty verdict at the
first Nuremberg trial.

Grebbsy
--
All vampires suck, but not all who suck are vampires.
(--B.J.Kuehl)

In addition to the minerals mentioned in other postings the area around
Stanhope,Wearhead and Allenheads was until the mid 1980s a major source of
flourspar, a lead ore, and the mines had extensive underground narrow gauge
systems whose locos occasionally appeared on the surface. Only last month I
photographed one of the last battery locos, plus a wagon labelled
Explosives at the Grove Rake mine near Allenheads which is being
demolished. North of Alston until very recently there were several small
private coal mines using narrow gauge track

Mick P


Roger H. Bennett wrote in message
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