Export Tanfield

Tanfield features in this current German magazine
(lead courtesy of Dave Hewitt)

An everyday scene on the Tanfield Railway
(photo taken by Dave Hewitt)

Rob Fallon has kindly assisted those of us who need a translation complete with some unusual German phraseology :

1603 Huntingdon Beaumont had a wooden waggonway built in NE England, on which horses pulled wooden waggons with wooden wheels.   Coal was exported from the then expanding mining area.

1725 In the region south of Newcastle upon Tyne a costly "railway" - called a waggonway - was constructed.   Horses pulled wooden waggons along the wooden waggonway until 1837.   Then iron rails were laid.    After 1881 steam engines came into service.

131619 tonnes of coal were moved in 1894 along what was already the oldest railway in the world, for shipment from the NE coast.

450 kilometres must be travelled north from London to reach the Tanfield Railway of today.   It runs on a section of the original line of the 1725 waggonway.

1964  The East Tanfield colliery closed down.   Eleven years later the first heritage steam train ran on a relaid section of track.   At present the railway has 28 steam engines, 3 of which are available for operational service.   Detailed information on TR from the website www.tanfield-railway.co.uk 

46 metres long and 24 metres high; the Causey Arch is the oldest remaining railway bridge in the world.   It was first used in service in 1727.   It carried a branch off the original waggonway.   The bridge is located next to a stop on today's museum railway of the same name.