An A3 steam locomotive Night Hawk no. 60078 hauling a train into Stockton Railway Station past Stocktons signal box. 1950/60sLocomotive No. 60078 an A3 4-6-2 hauling a train into Stockton Railway Station past Stockton signal box. Locomotive name @Night Hawk@ 1950/60sCarriages behing steam locomotive No. 60078 A3 Night Hawk approaching Stockton Railway Station c 1950/60sAn A3 class steam locomotive No.60078 hauling a train past Stockton signal box from the north, towards Stockton Railway Station. 1950/60sA train approaching Stockton Railway Station from the North. c 1950/60sA train approaching Stockton Railway Station passing Stockton Station signal box, hauled by an A3 No. 60078 steam locomotive. c 1950/60s 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Memories John are honed by events, as a young lad travelling away from home to some distant place of which you knew nothing would hit all the right memory buttons as it did with me. Today I need to write down my shopping list then forget to take it with me, the lady over the road rang to ask if I knew my car boot lid was open, I had taken the shopping out intending to put the bags straight back in the boot in case I forgot and forgot to do that. I can to this day see every step of those journeys to London, the run to Kings Cross, the underground to the Oval station and the tram up Brixton hill to Newpark Road nearly into Streatham, it was a very good part of London at that time. My Sister and I had already had one experience of suddenly being taken to a place and left with strangers during the evacuation. Thousands of kids were dressed in their best taken to stations and put on trains to be landed in strange places then sorted like parcels to go off to bed in strange houses and rooms. We were lucky in Mother and Father took us to Deighton introduced us to Aunt Rose as we were told to address her and then they left with me running almost back to Appleton Wiske feeling totally betrayed. Aunt Rose a lovely person of whom I have very pleasant memories came after me but I took some mollifying. If we had Councillors in those days they would have been well over worked but we did as we do and just got on with things. Kids did travel alone back then and nothing was thought of it, were we more resilient or was it just another adventure in the excitement (well it was to us kids) of wartime? Being a Scout and an Army Cadet helped, we got used to weekends and weeks away from home camping, it did make us much more resilient on our own away from mothers apron strings. I am sure that we learnt to be independent which came good in later years we stood rock solid in the down times and enjoyed the good times as they should be enjoyed. If you do not expect everything to be done for you it does not matter when it is not. My grandchildren often ask about those times, I show them photo’s and tell them the stories of the family no longer here hoping they will pass on those stories and some I have written down for them, so we live on.
Frank P Mee, you have restored some of my faith in my own memory. As a ten year old, I used to get the 8.45 from Stockton to King’s Cross to go to school in Bushey in Hertfordshire ON MY OWN! When I tell friends that at ten years old I used to cross London alone, with a suitcase, and ending up on an underground/overground train to Bushey and Oxhey, I can hardly believe it myself.
It was the Masonic School where you went when your Freemason dad died. I’m not a freemason. My dad was. Is there anybody else out there who went to Bushey? It would be a criminal offence now, I suppose, to send a ten year old on such a journey alone. I did it. It was no big deal then, and I didn’t wear a helmet, but then trains tended to be on time, tickets weren’t cheaper if you booked three years in advance and also took in a show at the Palladium.
And about those A3’s, who remembers Trigo, Gainsborough, Shotover etc.
Five hours Darlington to London? you do not know how lucky you were. My first trip to London after being ill in hospital, mother sent me to my Aunt in Brixton to recuperate.
I got on the train at Darlington, a carriage full of soldiers lifted me into a corner seat and looked after me for the next "nine" hours then saw me onto the underground to Brixton. That was in 1945 and the sight of the ruins of bombed out streets rows of houses was horrific to me. The war had just ended when I went down and I explored London by bus tram and underground even up and down the River, I knew more about London a fortnight later than my cousins who lived there. It was nine hours back but things had improved in 1947 when I went to Bordon Garrison in Hampshire, it only took eight hours to London three hours to Bentley in Hampshire then an hour on the Bordon Bullet, a single track railway into the Garrison. Coming on leave we hit Kings Cross late and the train north was packed solid. A big Scots lad said “I am not waiting three hours for the next, follow me”. We walked down the platform and waited, as the train whistled to move he dashed in opened a door and dragged out three very startled RAF lads, we scrambled in as the train moved off. Luckily for us the RAF lads still on the train were outnumbered by the Army so we did not get our comeuppance. That journey to Darlington was one to remember, it was stop and start, waiting in sidings and sometime in the night we were in Harrowgate standing, how did we get there I ask. The whole run took over twelve hours, we were all shattered plus tied up in knots as the toilets were impossible to get to and usually had three or four men or women in there. A journey from hell comes to mind. The memorable one was Darlington to Dover first class then across the continent to Austria by sleeper first class and back two weeks later, now that was a journey made in heaven.
If Frank Bowron re-reads my posts on this subject carefully, I think that he will find descriptions of the steam era -not " rosy, painted pictures", as he charges me with. Because I describe them it does not necessarily mean that I was impressed by them. I was too closely involved with the post-war steam era on BR, with all of its problems, to view it through rose tinted spectacles. Many of these problems, as he goes on to admit, have not gone away. Such is progress.
Anon paints a rosy picture of 1960s travel on the steam hauled trains, but it was a dreadful experience for those of us who regularly plied the King’s Cross trip on our government travel warrants – six round trips a year as an RAF apprentice. Standing packed like sardines in the corridors of the filthy trains for five hours all the way to or from King’s Cross was a horror that no-one should be obliged to suffer. Still, on my last rail journey down from Darlington to London I paid £80 for the privilege of joining the group sitting on our suitcases outside the toilets for three hours, so perhaps nothing has really changed…
Loved every minute of travelling on my warrant from Kings Cross 1959 the bar was brilliant at the end of the coach separate from the traveling public
The NYMR has added to it’s Camping Coach(es) and one can now be hired at Levisham as well as Goathland. Grosmont Station House can also be hired out…
Being really picky, the trainspotters books were by Ian Allan. W.P.Allen was a trades union official who was honoured in 1948 by having the first Peppercorn A1 (60114) named after him.
On the subject on Camping Coaches, when I was 10 years old my family stayed in the Robin Hoods Bay station Camping Coach in 1963. The single line was still open from Scarborough to Whitby then of course. DMU where only passing trains no steam. Great days. I also recently hired the camping coach at Goathland on the NYMR line. Brought back good memeories.
Bob Harbron: mentions Camping Coaches parked at stations on the railway line between Whitby and Scarborough. Camping Coaches were redundant railway carriages converted into holiday living quarters and were introduced in 1933. By 1935 the “Big Four” railway companies had some 200 coaches at 160 locations. Quiet rural stations in scenic areas were favourite locations and at one time Robin Hoods Bay had four coaches. Scalby station near Scarborough closed to passenger traffic in 1953, but certain summer Saturday trains stopped until the 1960s to cater for occupants of the coaches at Scalby. Of course the idea was that people arrived by train and perhaps gave a small boost to the local economy by buying milk ,bread etc during their stay. Typical prices for hire in the 1930s might be about £3.00 per week. The present owners of Cloughton station near Scarborough placed a Camping Coach on the site in 2004, which is available for hire to holiday makers, a nice continuation of tradition, even if no trains have run there for over forty years.
Anon – Thanks for reminding me of the late Saturday morning starts to Scarborough. The reason being if you were going B & B in the Town (We used to stay in Valley-Road), the landlady had her previous guests “Out by 11am”. If you arrived before that time you had to leave your cases in the hall and make yourself scarce with a walk along the front or have fish and chips on a bench or local Cafe (“The Lifeboat was our favourite) till about 1-00pm, giving time for the owner to tidy up. Those were the days when our children travelled in a “Silver-Cross” pram, put into the guards van, the children with us. It was a blessing if we had bad weather while in Scarborough, we managed to cram three under cover on one occassion when we were in Peasholm-Park, to watch “The Sea-Battle”. I don”t think to-days “buggys” would have stood the strain !!
On summer Saturdays in 1961 a train originating at Newcastle left Stockton at 11.44 am for Bridlington and Filey. I imagine any Butlin”s staff on the trains helped with bookings or queries, as of course Butlins had their own station at Filey Holiday Camp.There was also a service from West Hartlepool to Blackpool via Ilkley, at 10.35 am. Both of these trains had corresponding return workings. In those days some of the Scarborough and Filey trains ran via Gilling and Malton, after leaving the East Coast Main Line at Pilmoor south of Thirsk, thus avoiding York. There was also an overnight Fridays only service to Bournemouth leaving Stockton at 11.00 pm and a service to Ipswich leaving Stockton at 9.51 am on Saturdays. With the growth in car ownership, package holidays abroad and the economic rationalisation of the railways under Dr. Beeching many of these services were to cease in the early 1960s. They can scarcely have been profitable for the railways. Many hundreds of carriages used for holiday peak traffic in the 1950s and early 1960s might well lie idle most of the year to be brought out for perhaps half a dozen weekends in July and August. The coastal route to Whitby via Sandsend closed in 1958, though a stub survives to Cleveland Potash at Boulby. and the Whitby -Scarborough line closed in 1965. A few years ago I spent the night in the former stationmaster”s house at Cloughton, which is now a restaurant and B & B.
Scarborough was very popular destination from Stockton, but there was one train special this was The Butlin-Flyer” destination Butlins Filey. We never travelled on it, but remember “Red-Coats” as well as rail-staff aboard, where did this Special start and were Butlins staff on board from the start. Re Scarborough – One of the most scenic routes we travelled on was the Coastal through Robin-Hoods Bay, Kettleness, Claughton etc, with the carriages appearing to cling the the cliff-face and over high metal viaducts with streams and rivers far below. Every one of these stations appeared to have one or two “Camping-Coaches”, in the siding behind the station. I believe one is still in “on hire” on The North-Yorks Railway at Pickering. Anybody use them in their heyday?
As kids we would stand on the footbridge,occasionally catching a sulphurous whiff from the nearby gasworks and listen to the sound of the signal telegraph bells and the crashing of the heavy signal and points levers in Primrose Hill signal box; on colder days envying the signalman his cosy fire. The photograph of 60078 on a southbound express dates between 2/1959 – 12/61 and, taking 1960 as an example, it was possible to travel direct daily from Stockton to King”s Cross, East Anglia and Liverpool and to arrive by direct train from King”s Cross, Liverpool, and Bristol, together with other services to Leeds and York and the regular service to Newcastle. The morning train to King”s Cross took just under five hours, with possibly the best known – though less often seen- service being the night- sleeper to King”s Cross which left just before mid-night.Summer weekends would also see packed extra trains to popular holiday resorts like, Scarborough Yarmouth or the West Country. One interesting regular Sunday evening working was a relief train from Newcastle to Bristol via Stockton. Part of the reason for running this service was to cater for service personnel returning to camp in the Midlands and South West in the days of National Service.
Like Ged Hutchinson I spent many hours,perhaps too many,collecting train numbers. I spent most time on the footbridge where Stamp and Hutchinson Streets met. But the best place for maximum thrills was the footpath that ran behind Stamp Street. There you where only five or six feet from locos as they left the station. I and many schoolmates got the name of the milk train south before dashing to school. If it was a “streaker” as we called the streamliners such as Mallard we were in seventh heaven for a while.
This photo was taken from the footbridge that crossed the huge marshalling yard which was a hive of activity when I was young. As a kid I spent hours train-spotting on this bridge along with many other kids. We hoped that we would spot a “named” locomotive similar to the one in the photo and underline its name in our W.P.Allen trainspotter`s book. Does anybody remember them? Mine was so black from the train-smoke that I hoped for a new one every year on my birthday.
The signalbox in the picture was called Primrose Hill; the signalbox at the other end of the station was called Bishopton Lane. Both were closed in 1973.
The industrial complex behind the train was part of the Gas Works