The disused track bed of the North Shore Railway Branch, Stockton from just east of Church Road Bridge. The line was opened c1860 and closed c1980, it was used extensively by Blairs Marine Engine Works. 1984 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
As a young railwayman I worked into this coal depot, adjacent to the now closed North Shore signalbox. At that time – the early 80s – the Norton Road bridge was I believe still present, but certainly the track had been truncated before it, leaving just a short headshunt which I believe was the original access into (what was) Stockton Shed, latterly the Hills site.
Can i highly recommend the book Shildon – Newport in Retrospect by KC Appleby pub’d by RCTS (got mine at Darl North Rd Museum £13.95), which covers in lots of detail the development of the Clarence Railway, which covers much of the area between Newport (Tees)and Stilington / Ferryhill, including the first electric UK freight line in 1913.
I remember passing under this bridge as a youngster in the mid 70’s. Something about it and the buildings around fascinated me then. Perhaps it was the dereliction and the need to see just one more train pass. I seem to recall the presence of rusty 16T coal wagons.
A few hundred yards of the branch remained in use until the early eighties, serving a small coal depot immediately to the west of Norton Road bridge.
The book British Railways Wagons-Their Loads and Loadings by Brian Grant and Bill Taylor, Silverlink Publishing (ISBN 1 85794 205 1)of 2003, contains many copyright photos of heavy engineering products on trucks clearly taken at numerous Teesside works, including shots of Malleable Works pipes taken on the North Shore branch. Photos taken at Ashmores and Head Wrightson are notably impressive. The last loco I saw working the North Shore branch was a solitary EE 350hp 0-6-0 diesel shunter crossing the small Head Wrightson made bridge over the footpath next to Norton Road in the early 1970s. I saw empty bogie bolster trucks stabled on the branch before this date. I would have put closure before 1980, even by the early seventies the line looked fairly neglected.
The North Shore branch opened in 1830 (not 1860 as stated) as the Stockton Branch of the Clarence Railway. The Clarence has the distinction of being “the first railway ever to be built with the clear purpose of competing with one already at work” (the Stockton and Darlington)- see “The Victorian Railway” by Jack Simmonds.
In the 1940-50s you could not travel along any road from Stockton High Street without going over or under a railway. But the Mr Beeching came along!