North Staffordshire Railway (Part 4)

For this presentation we welcomed Brian Sullivan to give the final presentation which included routes not previously covered in the previous presentations.. Immediately after leaving Stoke were the original running sheds and Loco Works of the NSR. There was a 1849 roundhouse and a later straight Road Shed. The Loco Works mainly did Loco Repairs and survived until 1927 when the railway had been absorbed into the LMS with the majority of work transferred to Crewe. The loco shed survived into the BR era with a substantial number of locos based there.

We then followed the loop line which ran parallel  to the main line which served a large number of sidings to an industrial area in addition to local passenger stations. The line was then followed  via Congleton to Macclesfield where for some time there were two stations due to relationship issues between the GCR and the LNWR.   Of particular interest was a short lived shuttle service between Macclesfield and Bollington which ran from 1921 with a petrol electric Railcar and from 1935 with a Sentinel Steam Railcar.

The loop line we followed was useful during the electrification of the direct line from Stoke from Congleton however it was subsequent closed and much of it has now become part of the Biddulph Valley for walkers and cyclists. Thanks to Brian for an interesting series of talks on the NSR which originally served the large number of local industries for freight and the local population.