An excellent trip on the Weardale railway yesterday afternoon - having spent a few hours at the Shildon Musueum, I took a short hop on Northern's Bishop line up to Bishop Auckland for my adventure.

The Weardale railway creeps into Bishop Auckland (West) alsmost as an apology - an unlocked gate in a high security fence is the unsignposted entry - but at least the web site had given me a prior clue where to find it, and the gate was physucally open with a grassy slope down to the platform





A sight for sore eyes - Class 122 bubble car 55012 arrives to take me on the trip all the way up to Stanhope



The scenery is beautiful as the line follows up the rural river valley, crossing the river at severl places and calling at statins which feel remote - little wonder that passenger traffic ceased long before Dr Beeching was on the scene











Mid-trip, we passed the afternoon "tea train" - a service that runs on many weekends and comprises a top and tail set of mark 2 (?) coaches running an out and back excursion from Stanhope. Two manual frames at the loop and the crossing is a long-winded process, but on a lazy Sunday afternoon that really doesn't matter; the same applies to the 5, 10 and 15 m.p.h. limit sections along the line with a top speed of 25 m.p.h anyway



There's a big Christmas market too - to the extent that the carriages are carrying Santa branding all year.



Journey's end at Stanhope is a gem of a station and I could have done wiht longer there.  Having said which, the majority of the passengers start and end their journey there by car, so are not under the train turn around constraint



And so back to Bishop Auckland, with a fairly tight connecting trot back around the Royal Mail depot and across the B&Q Car park to the Northern Station.



Wonderful memories of trips on less urban lines 40 years ago ... heritage memories for me are not so much steam but riding beding the driver in first generation multiple units or (as with yestreday) the very occasional single car.

 

Gosh, they must have knew you were coming Grahame. Was the red carper really for you ?

 

Absolutley not!

I suspect it was for guest parties arriving for the tea train, escorted to their seats and glad-handed on the train. I understand they had some 50 customers at £25 a pop - £20 for children - on that train which would have far more helped their business plan / finances than the Bubble Car.

I was the only one to join at Bishop Auckland for the round trip to Stanhope ... there's a significant marketing opportunity for the connection now that the Northern service is up to every hour; previously, the Weardale service hasn't made it all the way into Bishop Auckland even the three round trips of the day, and when it has it's left a very ling wait for passengers on and/or off the infrequent Sunday services to / from Darlington.

 
and calling at statins which feel remote...........

Yep, my statins make me feel spaced out too !

A great typo to start off a Monday. Keep 'em coming grahame !

 
This rail line is fascinating, its main customers were the limestone quarries which operated on the hillsides from Frosterley onwards. The line was operated by BR into the 90s to transport cement from Eastgate, which ceased in 1993.
Before then BR ran a Summer Sundays service to Stanhope, extending a Saltburn to B. Auckland train, rather like the GWR operation to Okehampton.
Hertfordshire Railtours ran an HST up to Eastgate on at least one occasion.

In those days you could then catch a bus to Alston for lunch and return via Killhope lead mine or walk the numerous mineral line connections.
If they upload, this being the second attempt, two photos showing the extent of the mineral railways in the area and a rout description.

 


I am seeing your attachments ... and also noting that there's a £1 discount off your rail ticket if you produces a Kilinghope Lead Mine ticket from this year, so obviously some co-ordination.

There looks ... to my slightly-educated eye ... lots of real opportunities.  I suspect there are major long term issues with ownership and maintenance though.  Personal thought is that this line is probably one of the ones worth going that "extra mile" for.     I was ... relieved .. to hear the staff telling me the Bubble Car was unusually quiet and giving me "tea train" numbers.  On one hand, I suspect abstraction and on the other I sense a national rail connectivity that has only just become workable on Sundays with the Darlington train now frequent enough to always connect, and the marketing not yet reaching people.

Interesting to see the loco fleet standardised to class 31 and carriages to Mark 2d (?) - a lesson in pragmatic operation with the benefit of interchangeable parts and real skill building up, perhaps?  Mind you, who on earth would think of putting a couple of locos on the end of a rake of coaches ... oh - wait ... 

It's never gong to be the steam haven of North Yorks Moors - but it could have a really significant future, especially if it leverages the 200th anniversary of the Stockton and Darlington ...

 

This link explains the history of the line, especially the recent history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weardale_Railway

Bus timetables
https://www.weardale-travel.co.uk/wpc2.html

 
I was up there 6 weeks ago on an excursion which gave a bit longer at Stanhope.  It is lovely well restored station, although, as you would expect, not up to dealing with an influx of 400 passengers so that it was somewhat crowded on our visit.  The line itself is attractive following the river for most of its length.

 

Each to their own...

 
Up for sale - see the Northern Echo [[ and also our thread on Okehampton ( http://www.passenger.chat/8218 ) ]] ...

 
New station - Kingfisher Halt. From the Northern Echo


I have to ask "how much is it going to cost?" and "how much would the same thing cost if it was on the National network?"

 
There seems to be some progress in reopening this line. It has become part of the Auckland Project. This from the Northern Echo

https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/18706035.weardales-heritage-railway-get-monetary-boost/?ref=twtrec

 
On the Coffee Shop forum, we had several separate topics, all relating specifically to the Weardale Railway.

Simply in the interests of clarity and continuity, I've now merged them all here.

By the way, while I was doing that, it made for some fascinating reading back through those posts.

CfN 

 
From the BBC:

 
Yes, the railway bug bites very early in life. I reckon I was bitten before my dose of chicken pox, a childhood right of passage in my day - thank God now for vaccines. Christmas was always a magical time for a child and during that season, on a day that my dad wasn’t at work, the highlight for me was him setting up on the living room floor his childhood Hornby Dublo train set for me to admire its running - but certainly not to touch!

Roll on Christmas 1966 and my first Hornby ‘O’ gauge tinplate arrived, courtesy of that wonderful white-beared chap, and I could finally get my hands on my own. The bug had left its permanent mark.

Come the following Christmas and an even more amazing item was shown to me; it was my grandfather’s ‘O’ gauge steam engine, dating from just after the First World War. It was an 0-4-0T crimson liveried locomotive, powered by liquid methylated sprits. The meths reservoir was in a metal tank just under the footplate feeding a couple of burner wicks that heated the boiler. Helpfully the tank had an overflow plug so that the correct amount of spirit could be loaded without running the boiler dry. The engine had no throttle - it was either stationary, hissing away loudly, or running at full chat. The only way to temper its speed was to load its train with suitable weights to stop it toppling over on the curves.

Now our 1960s living room was full of 1950s modern furniture - think Festival of Britain. The chairs and settee were all on spindly legs with a 6” to 7” clearance underneath - certainly enough clearance for an ‘O’ gauge tinplate track layout - and what layout is complete without a tunnel?

The great day arrived and the track was laid including the big settee tunnel. The train was assembled with suitable stones and half bricks as ballast and the locomotive prepared for its adventure - tank filled and match applied. The fun was about to start, and when the engine started spewing steam from its safety valve and cylinders it was given a gentle push - and off it set, careering around the lounge and through the tunnel with its heavy train in pursuit. This young boy was utterly delighted at the spectacle.

It was then that things started to go awry - the overflow plug of the meths tank fell out. Meths, being what it is, immediately leaked out and ran with surface tension over the whole locomotive and, of course, it immediately ignited. It was now a high speed blue ball of flame thundering around the lounge floor - like Cassy Jones’ last ride - including under the highly inflammable furniture.

Horrified, my mum screamed, “John, Stop it!!”  My dad shouted, “How?!!”

It was finally arrested short of a house fire and peace once more reigned in the land - but young me detected a certain tension in the air. Never again was grandad’s steam engine allowed to be run in the house.

In August 1968, the 15 Guinea Special was run in the northwest of England - the last UK British Railways steam train. Now 15 guineas was way beyond the pocket of my father and what is not so well known is that for several weeks before the final event, identical specials were run at far more affordable prices. My dad booked us on one of these, which I would guess to be in July 1968 when I was just finishing my first year at junior school. Liverpool to Carlisle, via Manchester, Blackburn and Hellifield - up the famous Settle and Carlisle.

The lefthand photograph was taken at Carlisle on that very trip looking reluctantly out of the driver’s window of 70013 “Oliver Cromwell” - and why, dear audience, am I looking so miserable? Well like all boys of my age, I knew far more than my dad, and his killjoy instruction not to stick my head out of the window up the Long Drag. Thus yours truly ended up with painfully sharp ash in his eyes. Nevertheless, the day sticks in my memory as ‘one of those events’.

Fifty years later and there was a re-enactment and this time I would be buying the tickets. At Manchester Victoria, shortly after the Class 7 had coupled onto its train my dad showed the crew the 1968 photo.

“Well, you’d better get another!”, they said - hence the right hand one. This time in the driver’s seat. Looking at the controls, I knew I could have taken it away - Standard Class 4T being the largest I have driven.

A couple of decades now in the heritage railway world and hopefully many years more. That bug is a lifetime infection.