AT Preston-le-Skerne, the overgrown trackbed of one of the country’s pioneering electric railways can be seen disappearing eastwards towards Teesside. With rabbits hopping amid nettles, it looks more like a farmer’s field than an industrial line that, 100 years ago, was one of the first in the country to be electrified.
In fact, the only sign that this was once a railway line is a piece of paper pinned to a tree, pictured below. It marks the spot where a railwayman was struck by a train and killed nearly 60 years ago. “Hit by a train at work,” says the note. “Respects from your family.”
George Forrester, 48, of Ferryhill, died on April 4, 1957, apparently walking to work in the Preston East signalbox on the Shildon to Newport line. His death warranted only two paragraphs in The Northern Echo of April 6, 1957.
Someone, somewhere clearly has more information about this sad story. It would be fascinating to find out more.
THE Shildon to Newport line featured on the front of Memories 237. It was electrified as an experiment on July 1, 1915, so that ten locomotives – purpose-built at Darlington’s North Road – could haul coal to Teesside.
The line started at the marshalling yards at Shildon – the most extensive sidings in the country in which much of the output of the Durham coalfield was collected for onward transmission – and it followed the trackbed of the Stockton and Darlington Railway under the “cattle bridge” to Newton Aycliffe station, at Simpasture. From there, it branched off, running east through Newton Aycliffe and under the A167 near the caravan storage area – you can still see the remains of a bridge from the dual carriageway.
Now in Ricknall, it crossed the Skerne onto a tall embarkment from which it looked down on the isolated Blacksmith’s Arms pub as it approached what is now the A1(M). The motorway was built on top of its electricity station.
Over the A1(M), it passed the spot where George Forrester lost his life, and then ploughed through the scattered farms of Preston-le-Skerne. It passed the sites of two deserted Mediaeval villages, Heworth and Elstob, before going beneath a surviving farm bridge at Howe Hills.
The line then crossed Rykeneild Street, the Roman road, where a crossing keeper’s cottage is still called Elstob Crossing. After a few hundred yards, it crossed another minor road at Bishopton Crossing where another keeper’s cottage survives, guarded by carved gateposts.
Then it joined the Hartlepool to Durham line, which goes through Stillington.
Where the current line veers north-east to the coast, our electric line plunged south, through the estates of west Stockton – Bishopsgarth, Fairfield and Hartburn – until it rejoined the Stockton and Darlington Railway at Bowesfield. The S&DR took it over the Tees into the Tees Marshalling Yards near Newport, where it delivered its coal cargo.
This electrical experiment was ahead of its time. In 1935, when its equipment needed replacing, it was converted back to steampower, and it was closed on June 22, 1963.
DAVID SHEVELS, “ex-Shildon now exiled to West Auckland”, was one of many to get in touch following Memories 237. He remembers that near Shildon sidings there was a “1:134” gradient post, which meant that the line sloped gently towards Teesside.
“The problem with the loaded trains going down the gradient was braking, as in those days wagons did not have brakes operated by the driver,” he says. “In 1922, loads were increased eastwards from 1,000 tons to 1,400 tons. On one occasion, loco No 6 hauling 1,400 tons overran a signal as the driver was unaware of the weight of his train, and it collided with a steam locomotive.”
During the 1960s and 1970s, Shildon’s enormous sidings were lifted to create the wide space that is now occupied by the Locomotion museum. David remembers that during the 1970s, a “Shildon Shuttle” ran from near the station, through the sidings to the cattle bridge.
EMPTYING SIDINGS: David Shevels' picture of the "Shildon Shuttle" running through the sidings in the mid 1970s
He also recalls the rebuilding of the Spout Lane bridge, at the head of the sidings, in time for the 1975 railway carnival. Even today the bridge is awkward, but back then, when there were no footpaths, it was positively dangerous – a danger not helped by the famous plethora of signs that assaulted drivers with information.
Two of the signs belonged to the North Eastern Railway (NER) and so dated back to before 1923, and one of them was so old it banned “locomotives and other engines” from crossing the bridge.
TOO MUCH INFORMATION: The approach to Spout Lane bridge, Shildon, in 1968
MEMORIES 237 wondered why the hill, on the north side of the museum, down which Spout Lane descends is called “Elephant’s Trunk”.
Peter Carson was one of several correspondents to explain: “When the original road bridge over the railway was in place, the hill had a sharp decline, but on reaching the bottom there was a small rise to go up over the bridge, so coming down it on a sledge was like sliding down an elephant’s trunk.”
DARLINGTON’S North Road built its first two electric engines – which were known as “Bo-Bos” – in 1902 to work an electrified track on Newcastle’s Quayside. These were known as Bo-Bo No 1 – which is preserved in Shildon’s Locomotion museum – and Bo-Bo No 2.
It then built another ten – numbered Bo-Bo No 3 to Bo-Bo No 12 – to run on the Newport to Shildon line. Memories 237 featured an early picture of Bo-Bo No 3 on its front cover.
ELECTRIC DREAMS: Bo-Bo No 3 takes to the Shildon to Newport line on either June 19 or 20, 1915
“The picture must have been taken on either June 19 or 20, 1915,” says Richard Barber, “because the locos were dispatched from the Darlington works on June 18 and the line’s overhead power cables where energised on June 21 – as there are gentlemen on the roof of No 3 in your photo, it could only have been taken on those two dates mentioned, as 1,500 volt DC would have given them a nasty shock!
“Also, No 3 is still in workshop grey. By July 1, when it worked the first train on the line, it had been painted NER black (like the steam locomotive in front of it.”
VINCENT RAVEN, the NER’s chief mechanical engineer, viewed the Shildon to Newport line as a testbed ahead of the electrification of the East Coast Main Line. It proved successful during the First World War, so he asked North Road to build a13th electric locomotive which he expected would be the first to run on the mainline.
SUPER SIDINGS: A re-routed Flying Scotsman passes through the Shildon sidings – where the Locomotion museum is today – in about 1960. This picture was taken from the Spout Lane bridge area by David Shevels
It was known as EE1 – Electric Express. “It had six motors installed, rated at 300hp each, and it was tested on the Shildon to Newport line with the NER dynamometer car, which later became famous by confirming Mallard's 126 mph record,” says David Shevels.
It was designed to haul 450 tons at an average speed of 65mph and a top speed of 90mph. It had sloping bonnets at either end to cope with the curved platforms at York and Newcastle.
But it never got to see the curved platforms, as the recession of the 1920s and 1930s prevented mainline electrification. However, it did get to run on the mainline – No 13 took part in the 1925 parade which celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, but it was pulled by a steam engine.
TEST RUN: No 13 hauls a 16 passenger coach test train on the Shildon to Newport line
NO 13 was not a Bo-Bo. No, no. Not a Bo-Bo – whatever Memories 237 said. Edward Scarlett of York and Jim Harper were among many people to try to explain...
The configuration of steam engines is described by Whyte notation – a system devised in 1900 by Frederick Methvan Whyte of the New York Central Railroad. It gives the number of leading wheels followed by the number of driving wheels followed by the number of trailing wheels: 4-6-4, for example.
This system is used in the UK and the US, but the rest of the world uses the UIC classification. UIC counts pairs of wheels – properly known as "wheelsets"; informally known as "axles".
UIC gives an upper case letter to the number of consecutive driving axles, ie: A has one driving axle, B has two, etc. It then gives numbers to the number of non-driving axles, starting with 1.
And, for additional information, it adds a lower case o to indicate that the axles are powered by their own motors.
Electric engines used the UIC system. And so a Bo-Bo came to be a Bo-Bo (two driving axles powered by their own motors).
No 13, as anyone can see, was different. It was a 2-Co-2 (two unpowered axles followed by three individually powered axles followed by two unpowered axles).
So now we know-know about the Bo-Bo.
AND finally, Colin Foster in Scarborough offers another theory about why the electrification was not extended to the mainline. “As well the economic problems of the 1920s and 1930s, the board of the LNER – the successor to the NER after 1923 – passed over the far-sighted Sir Vincent Raven as its chief mechanical engineer, and gave the job to Sir Nigel Gresley.
“He was a steam man through and through and he developed his famous Pacific locos as a cheap alternative to electrification.”
Many thanks to everyone who has been in touch about the Shildon to Newport line
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