When a trip on the railway was an adventure...

AT 1pm, on May 12, 1868, the great and the good entrained at Darlington and were entranced by the first railway journey into deepest Teesdale.

To reach their new line, they had to trundle out to Barnard Castle, back and forth over the river at Gainford, on a track that had been completed in 1856. Then they crossed the Tees for a third time, going over a viaduct built in 1861 when the railway was taking on the extraordinary heights of Stainmore.

The Darlington and Stockton Times (D&ST) on that opening May day could not contain itself, saying that the viaduct “presents to the eye of the passenger one of the most delightful views which can be imagined, the background consisting of the crumbling ruins of the grand old castle, whilst to the front is spread out a perfect forest of fresh lightsome verdure, enlivened by the merry rippling of the Tees”.

Once over the viaduct, the South Durham and Lancashire Union Railway turned south on its way over the top to Tebay. The inaugural train, jam-packed with company directors, turned north-west onto the new line: the Tees Valley Railway which followed the course of the river eight miles up to Middleton-in- Teesdale.

The Duke of Cleveland had turned the first sod for the new line on November 9, 1865, but it had taken twoand- a-half years to complete.

“The works, as you know, have been somewhat retarded by the climate which prevails in this district,” said the vicechairman, Henry Pease, on the opening day.

The first village the new line came to was Cotherstone, “famous for its cheeses, and now for the first time furnished with a neat little station,” said the D&ST.

Then it was over the River Balder – “a graceful viaduct of nine arches of 30ft span, the structure being 100ft in height” – and on to Romaldkirk, where the newspaper reporter encountered “the only incident of regret” on the line.

“In consequence of the high prices asked for land by the landowners in this vicinity, the company have not yet felt themselves justified in placing a station here,” said the D&ST, “and Romaldkirk, with its fine old parish church and many interesting and literary reminiscences still remains unaccommodated.”

The local landlords didn’t hold out much longer, though, and a station soon opened.

On went the railway. “The line now attains a higher level and skirts the moor on the left, whilst on the right the scenery partakes of the character of an ever-varying panorama,” said the D&ST.

It went whistling through Mickleton and then over the River Lune on “a noble erection of five arches of 50ft span, and 60ft in height”.

The line had cost £8,000-amile to build, and at £5,000 each, the two viaducts were the most expensive items.

They were designed by Alexander Nimmo and Thomas F MacNay, who were not big-name engineers but had worked under Thomas Bouch on the remarkable constructions at Deepdale and Belah on the Stainmore line.

The D&ST was particularly taken by the Lunedale viaduct.

“The view from this situation is magnificent,” it said. “On either side of the rail the visitor may carry his glance for miles along the rocky, silvery Tees, garnished on each or either side with lovely landscape, whilst Laithkirk stands out prominently to the north and lends its pleasing quaintness to complete the general effect.”

From Lunedale, it was less than a mile to the line’s terminus at Middleton “where a very unobtrusive and becoming structure has been erected on a commanding position”.

Although the main body of the town is on the north of the river, the station was on the south so the directors didn’t have to fork out for another major bridge.

“Middleton is the beau ideal of rustic beauty and quietude,” said the D&ST.

“Nature has been lavish with her gifts, and they have not hitherto been destroyed by the sometimes-ruthless inventions of man.”

Everyone got out that opening day to have a good look at those gifts.

“At the station, the directors were met by two bands by whom they were preceded into the village, at the entrance of which a beautiful triumphal arch had been erected, with the motto ‘Success to Enterprise’ inscribed in evergreens,”

said the paper.

A celebratory cup of tea was drunk in the London Lead Company’s school room where the local vicar, The Reverend WL Green, thanked the grace of God that no one had been killed during the line’s construction.

He also thanked the railway directors for listening to the dales folks’ petition against Sunday trains. The railway’s chairman, The Reverend Thomas Witham, of Lartington, replied by saying that the directors had seen “that no letters had been delivered in the Dale on the Sunday, and had no wish to make any alteration to such a matter. They had entered upon a contract with the Government for the delivery of the mail bags, but as the Government had made no arrangement for Sunday delivery, he was happy to say that the directors did not intend to run a train on that day (applause)”.

After several more speeches, everyone got back on the train and returned to Barnard Castle for 4pm, when “a splendid dinner”

was served in the King’s Head Hotel, followed by yet more speeches.

And so the day came to an end, and the dale was opened up. Stone and lead were both taken away, but just as important was what the line brought – tourists.

In the 1880s, when you could leave Darlington at 7.13am and be in Middleton at 8.30am, cyclists came by the trainload, carrying their new-fangled machines with them.

In the 1890s, you could leave London at 2.30pm and be in Middleton in time for dinner at 9.15pm.

This golden age came to an end when the line closed to passengers on November 30, 1964. Nowadays, cyclists are still to be seen, but they travel along the trackbed under their own steam.

THERE is much debate about the “Water Bridge”. We used that name here a couple of weeks ago about the little bridge at the south end of Shildon Tunnel.

Jim Armstrong was one of several callers to say that the only Water Bridge that he knew of was the one that took the 1856 Shildon Tunnel Loop Line over the Gaunless to the south of Bishop Auckland. “You could dam the beck there and as it was fairly straight you could go swimming there,” he says.

“The people of South Church used it regularly.”

Other callers believed the people of St Helen Auckland knew the 1825 Stockton and Darlington Railway Bridge over the Gaunless as the “Water Bridge”.

(This was one of the world’s earliest cast iron railway bridges and its deck now lies in the National Railway Museum car park at York. A whisper is that next year it is coming home to Locomotion at Shildon.) And a Barnard Castle caller pointed out that the Water Bridge is actually the curious castellated footbridge over the Tees in his town.

It is an aqueduct, built in 1893 to support a pipe carrying water from up the dale to Teesside – and was just beneath the railway viaduct that Darlington and Stockton Times so raved about in 1868.