The Stainmore sign on top of the railway world

A great battle was fought on Stainmore in 954AD for control of Northumbria, and Erik Bloodaxe, the local king, was killed and buried beneath a stone cross, the remains of which can still be seen in a layby beside the A66.

And then the railway powered its way over the top, opening on July 4, 1861. It marked its achievement by placing a metal sign on the summit which included the vital piece of information that it was 1,370ft above sea level – the highest point any railway in England reached.

The Stainmore summit. Picture: Mark Keefe

Initially, there were timber signs which celebrated the conquering of the summit, but in the late 1920s or early 1930s, the London & North Eastern Railway replaced them with metal signs.

This seems to coincide with other metal signs being placed beside the East Coast Main Line by the LNER – one marks the Stockton & Darlington Railway and another, beside the Tees Viaduct, at Croft-on-Tees, points out the distances to London and Edinburgh.

A sign from the same era beside the mainline in Darlington

But the railway over Stainmore, which ran from Darlington to Tebay, closed on January 20, 1962. The tracks were lifted with indecent haste, the extraordinary viaducts were blown up and pulled down, and the summit signs were cut down. One went to the National Railway Museum in York and the other to the Head of Steam museum in Darlington.

Taking a torch to the Stainmore sign. Picture: Mark Keefe

So although the places where the Romans rested and where Erik Bloodaxe met his bloody end were commemorated, the triumph of the railways in conquering the Pennines went unmarked.

“For the 150th anniversary of the opening of the railway in 2011, one of the ideas we came up with was to get a replica sign installed,” says Mark Keefe, a volunteer at the Stainmore Railway Company which this weekend is holding its Easter Rally. “We raised £5,000 and got it laser-cut, and when it was delivered to us, I was given the project of getting it up.”

The Keefes set to work on the new sign. Picture: Brian Wastell

Mark and his wife, Sue, and his daughter, Ellie, painted the sign, and with other volunteers including Willie Steele, who farms in the area, managed to get it in place. Brian Wastell, of Darlington, was on hand, and he has kindly sent us in some pictures of it going up.

“It isn’t far away from the spot where the original one was,” says Mark, whose grandfather and uncle were among the protestors against the line’s closure when the last train went through in 1962 although he wasn’t born. “We parked up in the A66 layby, climbed onto the moors where there are a couple of water gulleys and a round sheep pen from which we could just about work out the right point for it.”

And so once again, from the Romans to the railways, there was a full compliment of markers up on the summit.

•  In the early 1990s when the A66 was widened, the Rey Cross was lifted and archaeologists were very disappointed when the could not locate the remains of Erik Bloodaxe who supposedly slept beneath the stone. The best guess now is that he lies somewhere out on the fell…

The signalbox on Stainmore was surrounded by sidings, and some cottages were nearby for summitworkers

MEMORIES 566 mentioned Stainmore summit as we learned that Cllr Heather Scott, the leader of Darlington council, had grown up in one of the four “summitworkers” cottages that were near the signalbox at the very top of the railway world.

Now there is only the remote sign to remind us that the railways ever conquered the Pennines, but once this was an important line, taking Durham coal and coke to fire Cumbrian industry and then bringing back high quality iron ore for the blast furnaces of Teesside.

Up on the summit, there were wide sidings controlled by the signalbox, and engines could fill up with water which came from the Summit Reservoir which had been dug high on the moors of Moudy Mea to the south – even here, the railway was beaten by the Romans as there are the remains of a signalling station on Moudy Mea.

Railway historian Ken Hoole tells how at the end of the 19th Century, “the line over Stainmore was a busy one, with mineral trains running night and day, raising the echoes across the moors as they blasted their way up to the summit or rumbled slowly over the viaducts.

“The first mineral train of the day left West Auckland at 12.20am, due at Summit Cabin at 2.24am, and the last left at 10.30pm and reached Summit at 12.58am.

“There were six passenger trains in each direction ‘over the top’, all of which started or terminated at Darlington.”

Crossing the amazing Belah viaduct, to the west of the Stainmore summit. Picture: Brian Wastell

In the 1930s, there was an additional, unpublicised, passenger train every second Friday. It carried 150 miners who had been injured at work to convalesce in the Durham Miners’ Association’s Conishead Priory, at Morecombe Bay.

Indeed, the line over Stainmore had many happy holiday associations for the working people of the North East as it took them on the annual excursion to Blackpool.

There were, though, not enough year-round passengers to make the line pay, and although there was a concerted campaign to keep it open, the Minister of Transport announced on December 7, 1961, that it could close. British Railways moved with amazing speed and announced that the last trains would be on January 20, 1962.

Railway enthusiasts on the lasat train over the summit make an unscheduled photo-stop at the sign. Picture: Mark Keefe

The finale of the line was expected to be a scheduled diesel train, but the Railway Correspondence & Travel Society ran a special steam-hauled train for the occasion from Darlington to Tebay with photographic stops at Kirkby Stephen East and Ravenstonedale.

“Those onboard were told that although they would be stopping at Stainmore Summit, no one was to get off,” says Mark Keefe, “but as one chap told me: ‘Once the first 200 folk jumped off, the rest just followed!’.”

The last train to the summit. Picture: JW ARmstrong Trust

THE Cumbria Easter Rally is on Easter Saturday and Easter Sunday, April 16 and 17, and features vintage buses, vans, wagons, cars, tractors and commercial vehicles, plus there are craft and food fayres, and the Kirkby Stephen East station will be open, although no trains will be running. It is a massive event that is centred on Kirkby Stephen but also includes neighbouring settlements like Brough and Winton. If you go over, make sure you wave at the Stainmore summit sign as you go past. It is clearly visible on the south side of the A66 just before you begin the impressive descent into Cumbria.

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