TRAGEDY, TRESPASS AND TRIVIA ON THE TANFIELD BRANCH, NORTH EASTERN RAILWAY

The Tanfield Railway, running passenger trains as a preserved railway on the trackbed of the Tanfield Waggonway (as well as using the 1854 Marley Hill engine shed and yard of the Pontop & Jarrow Railway) since 1977, has a justifiable claim to be the oldest railway in the world. The history of the original Tanfield Waggonway using horse-drawn wagons on wooden rails has been extremely well documented elsewhere, and the impressive scale of the development on the line in the eighteenth century has been well preserved. The wooden rails lasted until 1837 when the line was taken over by the Brandling Railway, which took three years to relay the line with iron rails from Dunston to Tanfield Moor and introduced a series of stationary steam engine-worked inclines and self-acting inclines, still with some horse-worked sections, to move the coal down to the Tyne in greater volumes. Numerous improvements that can still be seen happened over the following few years – in July 1840 the Brandling Junction Railway issued a tender for the building of a bridge over the line near Fugar Bar, and a bridge over the Houghwell Burn at East Tanfield shows the maker’s mark of 1849 on the iron girder.

A report of the reopening of the Harelaw waggonway to reach the Derwent Iron Company at Consett in the early 1840s, which had previously linked Tanfield Moor colliery to the Stanhope & Tyne at Annfield Plain, mentions how some of the inclined planes on the Tanfield branch used wire rope supplied by Newall & Co. which “acquired a high character for durability”. One of the ropes had been in use for two years with no signs of wear, compared with the previous type of rope made of hemp which cost the same when new but would have worn out in a third of the time. The Harelaw waggonway had been closed a few years previously when the Tanfield Moor Colliery switched to move its coals down the Tanfield waggonway again after its takeover by the Brandling. It is not known how long the Harelaw waggonway stayed open but its usefulness to the Derwent Iron Company was not likely to have lasted long after the North Eastern Railway built the branch to Consett in 1867, coming off the Newcastle & Carlisle line at Blaydon and giving better access to and from the north.

As is common with colliery lines, improvements in this era saw the introduction of a passenger service in 1842, originally on Saturdays only. Following the takeover of the Brandling by George Hudson and his bringing of it into his Newcastle & Darlington Railway, on and from 1st September 1844 the timetable along the branch was for trains leaving Tanfield Moor at half past eight in the morning on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays to the new station at Gateshead Greenesfield, returning at half past hree in the afternoon on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with trains returning on ‘Pay Saturdays’ at half past three and half past four in the afternoon, or half past four only on other Saturdays. Inclined planes never proved suitable for passenger