THE ‘WANSBECK PIPER’ A 1960s STEAM TOUR

On the afternoon of Sunday, October 2, 1966, an 11-coach train carrying over 600 passengers headed out of Newcastle Central Station hauled by two Ivatt 4MTs, Nos. 43000 and 43063, with the destination of the tiny Northumberland village of Woodburn.

This was the ‘Wansbeck Piper’ railtour – the final train to run over what remained of the Wansbeck Valley Railway, the last remnants of the incursion into Northumberland by Scotland’s North British Railway Company (NBR).

The beautiful county of Northumberland has in its past seen many skirmishes and battles between the English and their Scottish neighbours. Although peaceful for more than 200 years, a battle was to start again in the 1850s. This time however, it was between two rival railway companies – the North Eastern Railway (NER) based in York and the Edinburgh-based NBR. The Wansbeck Valley Railway was to find itself involved in the struggle between these two companies.

Origins

The NER had by acquisitions managed to obtain all the Anglo-Scottish traffic on the eastern side of the country in the form of the East Coast Main Line between Newcastle and Edinburgh via Berwick. The NBR was far from happy with this and was desperate to get access into Newcastle and looked at all possible routes. The Border Counties Line from Riccarton Junction to Hexham had opened in 1856 to serve the North Tyne Valley and in 1862 this was taken over by the NBR. This then gave the NBR a route from Edinburgh to Hexham via the Waverley route to Riccarton Junction and if it could acquire the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway, this would give the NBR a route into Newcastle. The NBR’s plans, however, were thwarted when the NER acquired the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway Company.

The NBR had also been focusing its attention on a proposal for a railway along the Wansbeck Valley from Reedsmouth, a junction on the Border Counties Line to Morpeth. If it could reach Morpeth and then acquire the independent and successful Blyth and Tyne Railway, this could then give it access into Newcastle.

Local inhabitants in the Wansbeck Valley had held a number of public meetings to obtain support and capital for the venture to construct a railway between Morpeth and Reedsmouth. The promoters called themselves the Wansbeck Valley Railway and included local land owner Sir Walter Trevelyan, owner