This photograph shows the Tees yard shortly after it was built. It shows the wilderness road, which was the main road from Stockton to Middlesbrough in those days.
Courtesy of Gordon Armes.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
I remember when they started on it, all of the pipes, they were like an adventure playground, little did we know it was the end of a time we would cherish and remember in later life. The duck pond seemed to disappear, where you could catch taddys and newts.
Unbelievable, One street and a terrace, and a pub, surrounded by fields and allotments,and a little corner shop. And where you could buy a big bunch of flowers off Mr. Hall from his allotment for sixpence. ……… no TV therefore we made our own enjoyment, the women used to sit, talk and knit,in the warm summer evenings, turn the skips, look after the bonfire in case Harewood Arms lot set fire to it.
Everyone looked after everyone.
I am the sister of Julie Moore who lived at 5 Pioneer Street. I remember when we had to live upstairs because the house was knee deep in floodwater when the Old River burst it’s banks. The big lads paddled round the street in a boat and how we envied them. I remember men coming round the street and handing soup to the residents though the bedroom windows from the roof of a wagon. There was Bob Johnsons little shop at the end of Erimus Terrace and he stocked practically everything we ever needed, particularly, flimsy gas mantles. We had no electricity there yet and I remember when the first elctric lamp went up. It was outside my grandma,s (OMA,S) house on Erimus Terrace and she took us all up her stairs to show everyone how it lit up the room. We were all very excited at it.
Wheel turning lathes were also located at Gosforth DMU depot in Newcastle and Stratford depot in east London.
Whilst a relief driver at Gateshead depot I was sent as second fireman to take the A4 steam locomotive “Sir Nigel Gresley” from it’s home near Shiney Row on the Leamside Branch to Gosforth for wheel turning.
Back in the late 70’s my father worked at British Steel as a transport manager. Somehow he wangled a guided tour of Tees Yard for his train mad son (me!) I remember the day very well. I was given the full tour; boxes, retarders, TOPS. Block trains were just coming in then and mixed goods were a thing of the past. The yard and its sophisticated marshalling capability was a white elephant.
Thornaby depot was the place to be though. I would walk there on a Saturday with my mates and we would have the freedom of the yard. Usually one of the drivers would invite us into a cab and we’d get to drive a diesel loco up and down. The roundhouse was still there then and the main shed had a special wheel turning machine. I was lead to believe there was only one other in the country and it was believable as there were occasional locos from very far afield.
I was born down the Erimus,I lived in 5 Pioneer Street. Our family name was Barron. My grandfather, Thomas Tompson worked on the railway and used to tell me stories of the air raids as I was too young. My parents, Olive and Jesse and the rest of the family got moved to the littleboy estate where they both still live today.
Thornaby depot opened in 1958, it was a replacement for three other depots in Teesside. It replaced aging facilities at Newport, Middlesbrough & Stockton. It cost 1.5 million pounds. The main railwayline from Bowesfield junction to Middlesbrough had to be diverted around the site through the houses and hotel that stood in that area. Tees Yard was constructed to the North of the Depot yard. It was built in stages from 1960 until completion in 1963. When built it was the largest capacity hump shunting yard in Western Europe. It had the capacity to sort 7,500 wagons every 24hrs. The yard was basically two identical yards back to back facing opposite directions. The yards were built with Humps. (Hump shunting is the most efficient and safe form of mass shunting, wagons are split on arrival and are pushed over the crest of a hill and then sorted by computer into seperate sidings for onward delivery to customers. The wagons are slowed down by devices known as retarders which grip the wheels in a vice like grip and stop the wagons from running away uncontrollably). Tees Yard had two humps in the Down Yard, (near the river), and one hump in the up yard. After rationalisation of the railways by the infamous Dr Beeching and with factories closing down the traffic in Teesside dwindled so that by 1986 both humps had closed and flat shunting was introduced in the old Up yard. The old Down yard was closed and the track torn up for scrap. The Up yard remains in use to this day, with the current recession things are quiet in Tees Yard however it is still open and limited shunting still takes place.
I can remember the Vaux Ales Pub, within the then new Cleveland Centre, being called the “Erimus”. I often wondered about where this rather unusual name came from, now I know.
I remember the Erimus way back in 1942 I got married and my wife knew the Clarks family. They arranged for my wife and myself to live with Nan Petty and her Daughter Joan in No 11 Pioneer Street until we got a place of our own , as was mentioned in another comment the people there were a close well knit community, even though the war was on the Clarks, Pettys, Winns . and all the people who lived there made sure that there were plenty of good times in spite of the war,The Stockton race meetings opposite the houses were exciting times were there always parties and entertainment going on after the races,Bill Pedd the licencee of the pub always looked forward to the races for a full house as it was pretty quiet during the rest of the time.I was on fire watch outside the Pub the night the bombs fell in Mandale road, Queens Cinema ,Headwrightsons a really bad night,after the all clear Bill Pedd said come on in lads I think we all need a drink after that,Sadly I lost touch with them all after the houses were Knocked down, I Emigrated to Perth W Australia in 1986 But I will never forget the happy time I had in the Erimus with some very good people .
Another EVANS (Norman) my father was brought up at the Erimus, I remember every spring when the OLD RIVER that ran up at the end of the terrace used to flood with the high spring tides and all the houses were up to 2-3 feet deep in water, My granmother and granfather just used to say:”IT COULD BE WORSE” The people that lived there were a very close knit community.
Another family that lived in the Erimus were the Evans.Edie,Valerie & Ivor who are all live in Canada now.
My family and I used to live almost exactly on the spot of the photograph in Pioneer Street, Erimus. The Erimus used to be a very close community until the houses were demolished approximately in 1958 and the residents being rehoused in locations on Thornaby Green and near the Littleboy Park.
I once used to work with a bloke who was from Bristol but he was also a very “avid” Bristol City fan. During the course of his travels in the mid 1980″s he had visited every one of the then current Football League grounds. He had a “Rock Solid” way to locate the whereabouts of the towns Football club – just look for the floodlights and head in that general direction. He was very badly let down by this theory though when City were playing Boro as they headed for the floodlights and they ended up in a railway siding! I can sympathise with this as the skyline used to be strewn with floodlights overlooking the sidings at Tees Reception sidings. These days the place is much quieter and overgrown with plants and weeds but I can remember when this was a hive of activity all day long. This photo brings back a few of the memories I have of the old place.
Tees Yard: one of a network of large automated marshalling yards, Tyne Yard, Carlisle, Perth, Healy Mills etc, built under the 1955 Modernisation Plan to replace a host of inefficient smaller yards, many belonging to the pre- railway grouping companies of 1923. Sadly, they came some thirty years too late, built for “yesterday”s” railway, which was changing very quickly. With traffic steaming on to the roads most never approached their designed handling capacity. Had Dr Beeching arrived on the scene earlier it is likely that some would have been cancelled – as did happen on the Western Region – or at least dramatically scaled down in size.