Tracking Down 2: In Search of BR 1980s Passenger Turns
by Craig Oliphant and Colin Alexander
Left: Also on 25 June 1984, waiting pedestrians and their dogs observe with interest as another diverted HST, led by power car 43087 has stopped the traffic at Bedlington. This was in the heart of the southeast Northumberland coalfield, and the level crossing here was used almost exclusively by coal trains. Bedlington South signal box completes the picture. Bedlington lost its passenger service in 1964, but sixty years later, in December 2024, the route reopened to passengers as the Northumberland Line with regular services between Newcastle and Ashington, although Bedlington’s station is not due to reopen until 2025. The signal box is to be retained but demoted to a simple crossing box. The Clayton Arms is over the crossing but the pub in the right foreground, with the Fiat Strada (“handbuilt by robots”) outside, is long gone.
Right Top: It didn’t take long for the main line to reopen following the Morpeth derailment. The 14.35 Edinburgh to King’s Cross passes Benton signal box, a few miles north of Newcastle, on 26 June 1984. This was the first southbound passenger train following the mishap, less than two days later! Here, the North Tyne loop crossed the main line, with connecting curves in three quadrants. The curve in the foreground led to Benton station on the loop, part of the Tyne & Wear Metro since 1980. This curve continued to be used by BR freight trains to Rowntrees at Fawdon and ICI Callerton until 1987. Out of sight above the HST buffet car is the south to east curve, the only one to remain today, which is now used by Northumberland Line trains to Ashington.
Right Bottom: All change at Heaton Junction. Heaton, east of Newcastle, was the point at which the former Newcastle & Berwick Railway diverged from the Newcastle & North Shields Railway. By the time this photograph was taken on 26 June 1983, the latter was part of the Tyne & Wear Metro, whose Chillingham Road station is right of centre behind the concrete ramp. A new alignment took it through a tunnel into Byker. BR Sulzer Class 45/1 45132 is bringing the empty stock for 1O25, the 13.40 Newcastle to Poole train out of Heaton depot and heading for Newcastle Central. NEI Parsons’ turbine works is on the right, and the main line to Edinburgh curves off to the left.
Mersey mission. In a scene that is beautifully backlit by the low winter sun, the ‘board is off’, and the route indicator illuminated, as the crew of BR Sulzer Class 45/0 45076 prepares for departure from Newcastle Central’s platform 9, on 18 December 1982. The train is 1M75, the 13.22 to Liverpool Lime Street. Note the standpipe and water hose on the platform, essentials in those days of steam-heating boilers on diesel locomotives. An HST is coming off the King Edward VII Bridge as it arrives at platform 8 with a service from King’s Cross. Built in 1961, 45076 started life as D134 and was withdrawn in 1986.
Moments later, we are leaning out of the windows (a pleasure denied today’s enthusiast) behind 37219 as it passes through the derelict Gateshead East station. It is about to cross Robert Stephenson’s High Level Bridge into Newcastle Central. From 1849 to 1906, this carried all East Coast Main Line Anglo-Scottish traffic, which had to reverse at Newcastle. The lantern tower of St Nicholas’ Cathedral rises above the Castle Keep, to the right of which is the viaduct leading to Manors and the north. Since Gateshead East closed in 1981, the town is one of the largest in the country without a main line station, although it does possess an underground Metro interchange in a more central location.
Left: Today, the only station between Newcastle and Durham is Chester-le-Street, where the railway is carried high above the market place on a soaring brick-built viaduct. On 14 May 1984, Brush Class 47/0 47270 heads south with 1V50, the 20.00 Newcastle-Bristol mail, which until May 1982 also conveyed passenger vehicles. The train ran overnight via Worcester and Gloucester, and we travelled throughout on it behind 31222 in 1982. This was one of those anywhere-in-the-country special offer tickets. We did Bristol, Bath, Cardiff, Crewe, Nottingham, Grantham, then an Austin Princess taxi to Sleaford to catch a diverted overnight train back to Newcastle, all for £2.00!
Right: In the early 1980s, one of our regular outings was on 1V93, the 09.50 Edinburgh to Plymouth, which was usually Deltic-hauled as far as York. The ‘normals’ on the platform look thrilled as white-cabbed 55007 Pinza arrives at platform 1, Durham in this rear three-quarter shot, taken 29 March 1981. From York the train would usually proceed behind a Class 47/4, but occasionally a newly-overhauled Class 50 would appear, being returned from Doncaster works to the Western Region.
Left Top: Seen earlier in the book at Newcastle on the afternoon return from Merseyside, 40024 Lucania was photographed at York with 1M73, the 11.18 Newcastle Central to Liverpool Lime Street on 29 December 1981. Steam is issuing from below the coaching stock but its passengers will be grateful the boiler is working on this freezing winter’s day. 40024 was one of 25 Class 40s, out of a class of 200, to be named after ocean liners, as they were originally allocated to Euston-Liverpool boat trains. Their stylish nameplates were removed during the 1970s but in their latter years, the names were restored in paint.
Left Bottom: Holy logistics! On 31 May 1982, York was visited by Pope John Paul II, who held a mass at the racecourse. BR operated multiple extra trains to the city from several directions that day to convey crowds of the faithful. Of course, enthusiasts like to apply nicknames to almost everything and these additional services went down in railway folklore as the ‘Popex’ trains. The young man seated on the barrow adds Brush Class 31 31268 to his already full notebook, after its arrival with 1G23, the 09.09 Durham to York. On the same day this locomotive also visited Huddersfield & Middlesbrough.
Right: Railway enthusiasts turned out in large numbers at York that day to witness the Popex trains, and afterwards, there were long queues of returning passengers outside the station. Those worshipping diesel traction saw unusual motive power on 1N31, the 09.42 departure from Poole, consisting of airconditioned stock. Class 40 40012 Aureol, with its former name painted on, worked the Newcastle portion from Sheffield. The remaining portion went to Leeds, and this was probably hauled by the more usual Class 45/1 or 47/4, either of which, unlike the 40, would be able to operate the air-conditioning on the Mk.2D stock. 40012 is now preserved on the East Lancashire Railway, with proper nameplates.
My school friends had no idea what I got up to on Saturdays and during the holidays. Craig, on the other hand, was fortunate to be part of a peer group at his school which appreciated railways and locomotives. Our shared outlet was platforms 9 & 10 at Newcastle Central station, where we hung out with our railway mates. We are still friends now, and for old times’ sake we still do railway stuff together, when we can. Little did we realise, at the age of fifteen, that 45 years later Craig’s photography and my words would be combined in print.
At that innocent pre-O Level (GCSE in today’s language) age, the school holidays were spent travelling thousands of miles in a week. This was thanks to British Rail’s amazing Northumbrian Ranger ticket, which lasted seven days and cost only £2.60!
I lived right next to Tynemouth station. On Saturdays and school holidays I would be on the first DMU to Newcastle Central, at about 5.40am. My mates would join me on the same train en route.
We would arrive in time to see the arrivals of some of the overnight sleeper trains from King’s Cross, which were invariably Deltic-hauled. With Ranger tickets in pockets we would board the 07.05 Edinburgh train if it was a Deltic or a Class 40, as far as Berwick; or the 07.00 departure for Bristol, which got us to York in time for the 05.50 King’s Cross to Aberdeen, a near-guaranteed Deltic turn. Thus each day was spent hurtling up and down the main line or spontaneously jumping on a diversion to Carlisle. All that our parents knew was that we were somewhere within an 80 mile radius of home and that we would be back in the evening; tired, grimy and hungry, but very pleased with ourselves.
Following on from our previous volume illustrating 1980s BR freight workings in the northeast, we stay in the same region and era but take a look at the more glamorous world of passenger trains. In this volume we attempt to rekindle happy memories of teenage independence, discovery and camaraderie, as we travel around Northumbrian Ranger territory. £13.50
