19th May 2025: The Stainmore route, by Chris Rowley

Chris, a timetable planner with Network Rail, gave us a concise and detailed account of this route, which closed in 1962 but still lives on in our memories as a classic rail route. A glance at a map of Northern England leads to the question of why anyone should want to build a railway across this most inhospitable moorland at the highest point in the Pennines. Enter the canny North Eastern Railway Company. Sitting on the best coking coal for iron and steel making in the Durham coalfields, it spotted the opportunity to convey it to the Barrow and Workington areas of Cumberland, at the time the biggest producers of iron and steel using the Bessemer Process. Rather than use its own more northerly route from Newcastle to Carlisle or routes further south, designed by Locke, it chose to build a more direct route despite the engineering challenges that this posed. The route ran west from Bishop Auckland to connections at Tebay and Penrith on the LNWR, and thence on to the Cumberland coastal towns.

The line is best known for the Belah Viaduct, the iron trestle bridge designed by Thomas Bouch of Tay Bridge fame; challenging gradients over the moors at Stainmore and the 1955 BTF film “Snow Drift at Bleath Gill”. Other well known railway haunts are Kirby Stephen East and West, Smardale Gill Viaduct and Warcop.

Despite the winter weather, and frequent blockages by snow, the line prospered, thanks to the constant demand for iron and steel. The line saw heavy seasonal traffic for holiday makers from the northeast seeking the delights of Blackpool and other Lancashire resorts. Owing to axle loadings, particularly over Belah, trains invariably were double headed by NER 0-6-0s and, later, the lighter BR Standards.

Despite the success of the line it was clear in the 1950s that times were changing; the Cumbrian steel plants that had not been modernized were becoming obsolescent, and changes in holiday destinations was reducing passenger traffic. By 1960 it was clear that closure was on the cards, which finally came in 1962 - before publication of the Beeching Report.

Despite Stainmore being well known in the railway interest world, little has been written on it. Chris, whose family come from the area, has put that to rights with his book "The Railway Over the Stainmore Pass", and this formed the basis of his talk.

Richard Deacon

Chairman/Secretary