Whitby and Pickering Railway

The Whitby and Pickering Railway was built as the culmination of attempts to halt the gradual decline of the port of Whitby on the east coast of the United Kingdom. The basic industries of Whitby, whaling and shipbuilding, had been in decline for years and it was felt that opening up better links with the interior of the country would help to regenerate both town and port.

Until the turnpike to Pickering was opened in 1759, Whitby was better connected to the rest of the country by sea than it was by land; even then the difficult climb over the high moors was still an obstacle. Stage Coach services did not start until 1795 and Mail Coaches (thrice weekly) until 1823.

File:W&P dir pass face.JPG

The face of a W&P Ivory directors pass

The W&P horse tunnel at Grosmont

History - horse drawn railway

As early as 1795 a canal from Whitby to Pickering was proposed, this would have followed much the same course as the later W&P.

With the success of the Stockton and Darlington Railway (which had a number of Whitby backers) attention switched to the possibility of a railway from Whitby to either Stockton or Pickering, many pamphlets being issued for or against the various proposal; copies of some of them can be found in the library of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society . Finally in 1832 it was decided to ask George Stephenson to report on the rival routes. Stephenson's report was in favour of a horse worked railway to Pickering and his conclusion was accepted at a meeting held in Whitby on 14 September 1832. A committee was formed to start things moving and the Whitby and Pickering Railway bill received the royal assent, from William IV, on 6 May 1833.

The directors of the W&P Company mainly came from Whitby or the immediate area and represented a fair cross section of the business community, including bankers, solicitors, shipbuilders and ship owners. The shareholders came from a wider area, some from as far away as London but those from the immediate area predominated.

There was always an intention to link the W&P to York and beyond; a meeting held in York in September 1834 to further the proposed railway from York to Leeds was attended by a W&P delegation accompanied by their Engineer, George Stephenson, to lobby for a link to Pickering. This meeting may have been the occasion of the first meeting of those two great railway giants George Stephenson and George Hudson and borne fruit in many other directions, even though the York to Leeds line did not appear for some years.

The Whitby and Pickering Railway (W&P), was one of the first railways in Yorkshire, when it opening throughout in 1836 as a single track horse worked railway.
The railway's Engineer (George Stephenson) solved the problem of ascending from the valley of the Murk Esk at Beckhole to the high moors at Goathland by means of a 1500 yard long rope worked incline at an average gradient of 1 in 15. He crossed Fen Bog, near the summit of the line, using the same method (hurdles and fascines) that he had previously used to cross Chat Moss on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
The track consisted of wrought iron fish-bellied rails in 15ft lengths with five 'bellies' to each length. Cast Iron chair supported the rail between each 'belly', special double chairs supported the joints between lengths of rail. The chairs were fastened to locally quarried stone blocks using iron pins. A length of original track is displayed at Pickering Station.

The W&P obtained materials by tender and suppliers were from many parts of the country; the rails, chairs and pins (which were in short supply at the time, partly due to heavy demand) were obtained from a number of well-known suppliers including:

• Bradley & Foster's Stourbridge Ironworks.
• the Capponfield Ironworks near Birmingham.
• the Nantyglo Ironworks, Monmouthshire.
• the Bedlington Ironworks in Northumberland.

These supplies largely traveled by water. The surviving W&P minute books (in the National Archives) show that those from the midlands traveled by narrow boat to Gainsborough, where they were transshipped to coasters for forwarding to Whitby, others traveled by boat to Malton (on the Derwent Navigation) and were then forwarded to Pickering by ox-cart.

Although the W&P had been promoted for its goods carrying capabilities (including coal, stone, timber and limestone), it was intended to carry passengers from the start and three coaches were obtained (the first, at least, from Beeston & Melling of Manchester) which were basically Stage coaches adopted for use on a railway, in addition a number of cheaper open ‘market coaches’ were obtained, probably locally. The first class coaches were named Premier, Transit and Lady Hilda.

The W&P was never a particularly well off company and the directors were anxious to start carrying passengers and goods at the earliest opportunity. So on Monday 8 June 1835 the line between Whitby and the Tunnel Inn (now Grosmont) was opened, and the Companies First Class Coach 'Premier' left Whitby at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, returning about 8 o'clock. They subsequently ran two return journeys per day (except on Sundays).

In early July 1835, for Ruswarp Fair the company provided a special coach that ran sixteen trips during the day (presumably from Whitby), this proved very popular some passengers travelling repeatedly because of the novelty.

With the opening of the whole line on 26 May 1836 the W&P operated a regular passenger service, which connected at Pickering with the stagecoach to York and thus the rest of the developing railway network. This connection was of practical use; there is a recorded instance of a ship from the Baltic docking at Whitby and its captain finding orders awaiting him to proceed to Liverpool. He took the W&P coach to Pickering connecting to York where he boarded a train for Manchester (connecting by coach over the incomplete part of the Leeds and Manchester Railway) and completed his journey to Liverpool by train – the whole journey only took hours, whereas it could have taken many days only a few years earlier.

The introduction of steam power

With the absorption of the W&P into the York and North Midland Railway in 1845 and thus into George Hudson's growing empire, the railway was rebuilt as a double track steam worked railway and connected to the Y&NM's York to Scarborough line then being built at Rillington junction. Through rail journeys became possible from Whitby to the industrial districts of the West Riding, Hull, Manchester, Liverpool and to the capital, London, amongst many other destinations. In the opposite direction Whitby became accessible for day-trippers and holidaymakers. To encourage this traffic George Hudson formed a company to develop the West cliff area of Whitby, building roads and some hotels before work stopped at Hudson's downfall in 1849. With a connected national rail network the Royal Mail soon started using the railways to carry the mails. The first train from York to Whitby each morning was the mail train, a train that continued running for the best part of one hundred and twenty years.

The York and North Midland Railway was one of the three railways that formed the North Eastern Railway in 1854.

In 1923 the North Eastern Railway was absorbed into the London and North Eastern Railway as part of the grouping of the railways following the First World War.

In 1948 all the major railway companies in Great Britain were nationalised forming British Railways.

Closure and rebirth

The line from Rillington Junction to Whitby was slated to close in the infamous Beeching Report along with all of Whitby's railway links. In the event the Esk Valley Line was reprieved, so saving six miles of the original W&P between Whitby and Grosmont

In 1967 the North Yorkshire Moors Railway Preservation Society was formed with the aim of preserving the line between Grosmont and Pickering and re-opening it as a Heritage Steam Railway.
The NYMRPS became a charitable trust, the North York Moors Historical Railway Trust Ltd. and succeeded in re-opening the line as the North Yorkshire Moors Railway in 1973. Thus the route of the W&P survived, if under two different ownerships.

In 2007 the NYMR succeeded in obtaining the necessary powers and agreements to operate steam trains over the Network Rail line from Grosmont to Whitby (and as far as Battersby), being the first UK heritage railway to do so; so steam trains are once again running between Whitby and Pickering.

Historical publications about the Whitby and Pickering Railway

The Whitby and Pickering Railway was the subject of what must have been one of the earliest railway guide books:

Illustrations of the Scenery on the line of the Whitby and Pickering Railway

was published in London by Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman in 1836, the year the line opened throughout. Henry Belcher, a local solicitor and director of the W&P, wrote it, with engravings by George Dodgson . In 1976 this long out of print book was reprinted by EP Publishing Ltd. in conjunction with the NYMRPS. The North Yorkshire Moors Railway archives hold two original copies, once the property of W&P directors.

A History of the Whitby and Pickering Railway

was published as long ago as 1906. The author G.W.J. Potter had written an article on this subject for publication in the ‘Railway Magazine’ with much assistance in gathering information from the North Eastern Railway and its officials. Publication of the article was aimed at attracting extra passenger traffic to the Whitby branch during the quieter autumn period of 1899. In light of the amount of information obtained Potter was persuaded to expand on the article in the form of a book. This book too was reprinted, in 1969 by S.R. Publishers Ltd.

Other sources

The North Eastern Railway Muniments are now in the National Archives at Kew; they contain (amongst much else) the surviving minute books of the Whitby and Pickering Railway, The York and North Midland Railway and the North Eastern Railway itself.
The North Yorkshire Moors Railway Archives hold a little W&P material and much more from the NER, LNER & BR periods; access is currently only by appointment .
Another useful source is the newspaper archives of North Yorkshire Libraries, local libraries at Pickering and Whitby may still hold the actual newspapers; they are definitely help on microfilm at headquarters. The various York libraries and the Hull City library also hold old newspapers. Particularly useful are the Yorkshire Gazette and the York Courant.

Location Map

• 
  Map of Whitby - Pickering line and surrounding routes

References

Whitby and Pickering Railway Company, General Committee Minute Book, Whitby and Pickering Railway Company (The Nation Archives Ref. RAIL 742/3), 1833 to 1845 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)

North York Moors Historical Railway Trust Ltd (2007). "North Yorkshire Moors Railway Conservation Management Plan". 1. NYMHRT. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

W.W.Tomlinson, (1967 (reprint)). North Eastern Railway Its Rise and Development. Newton Abbot, [Eng.]: David & Charles (Publishing) Ltd. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: year (link)

External links

• North Yorkshire Moors Railway
• North Eastern Railway Association