Early Tanfield Passenger Trains

An advert for passenger trains operating over our East Tanfield to Sunniside section

Passenger trains on the recently modernised branch were rope-worked on Causey East & West Inclines & Lobley Hill, with horse-haulage on level sections between.   Trains may have been steam loco hauled (hence the advertised modern image) over the short section of the Newcastle & Carlisle Railway between Redheugh Junction & Redheugh station (on Gateshead quayside) for a ferry or walk across the bridge to Newcastle.

(Race week was the week around the summer solstice, when light evenings facilitated horse racing & revelry on the Town Moor.   The Hoppings took over the time & place when horse  racing moved to Gosforth Park in 1881.) 

From Redheugh, the BJR Tanfield Branch reached deep water port facilities at South Shields & Monkwearmouth by first ascending a 1:22 incline to Greenesfield station (the site of Gateshead locomotive works & shed) before connecting to the rest of the BJR at little further east, near Oakwellgate station.

1844 (?) Timetable from TR Facebook's Timeline album which shows the BJR was running passenger trains on three routes, including a branch to Jarrow

(Pay Saturdays refers to when pitmen were paid on Friday or Saturday in alternate weeks, which seems to cease in the 1930s.)

The railways in our area focussed on moving profitable mineral traffic.   Passenger trains would have interfered with such traffic on the branch & that coming down the N&CR.   There were few passenger trains on the Tanfield Branch, the working of which ceased around 1844, to be restarted from East Tanfield to Sunniside by our railway in 1992.

An advert for the new BJR Low Station at South Shields

The BJR developed the profitable passenger traffic on the South Shields & Monkwearmouth routes to Gateshead, with connections to Durham & the south.   However, around 1839 due to contractor collapse & consequently increased costs on these passenger routes, the BJR tried to abandon the undertaking to modernize the Tanfield Branch.    The Marquis of Bute, owner of Tanfield Lea Colliery, forced the BJR to modernize & pay legal fees & damages for delay.   Trying passenger traffic to Tanfield may have been an attempt to recoup some expense.   The BJR routes passed through George Hudson's empire to the NER by 1854.