The first two images in this series show a train entering the old ’cuckoo railway’ at Bowesfield, with Yarm Road in the background. The third shows the same view a few years later after the rails were removed. Courtesy of Gordon Armes. 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
I remember this overhead electric powered line in my childhood as we had moved from Aysgarth Road on Grangefield Road to Oulston Road in early 1935. Our back garden backed on to the railway line. The electric powered system ceased later that year just as we moved in but I had often seen the electric locos during our wandering initially with my father to visit my grandparents at ‘Torquilstone’ further up Oxbridge Lane next door to the Webster family. Then when allowed to explore further from Aysgarth Road it was normal to cross Kidd’s Fields (site of Grangefield School later) to look at the trains from the bridge which was near the farmhouse and went on to the Grosvenor Road fields. Just for a few months it was easier still as the trains could be seen from the garden or a bedroom window. The line ran from Shildon (County Durham) to Newport (near Middlesbrough) and was initially over the 1825 Stockton to Darlington line, then via Simpasture Junction, the ex-Clarence railway through Carlton, Carlton Junction to Carlton South Junction, Bowesfield West Junction to Bowesfield Junction, through Thornaby and ending at Erimus yard Newport East. The line was electrified between 1 July 1915 and 1 January 1916, as a planned precursor to electrifying NER’s busy York to Newcastle main line. Due to the decline in the coal market it made it uneconomic to continue the renewals needed for continuing electric operation. The system was removed by the LNER between 7 January 1935 and 8 July 1935. We still had the pleasure of the steam trains and when a queue developed back from the Bowesfield signal box we chatted with driver and fireman. Sometimes it was a long wait for them and we served them with mugs of tea!
The line shown had claim to fame, this being the first to use overhead electrification system to power electric locomotives, at 15.000 volts, the system ran from Shildon to Newport yards at Middlesbrough. Even today evidence of this system can still be seen at Bowesfield signal box, a room for the switching gear was constructed at the western end of the box, which today is now used as the loo for the signalmen.
Peter Simpson – in the 60’s I worked at ICI with a Jean Middleton who lived in Witton Road and she had a son called Neil, surely your friend Tosher.
The name cuckoo railway was because it as the place we heard the first cuckoo of the year, it was called that as long as I remember and I was born in 1926.
It has just come to me, ‘Tosher’ lived in Witton Road not Grosvenor Road. I should have remembered as I delivered papers all around that area for Mr Speight who had the post office in The Avenue at Fairfield.
Mary, yes his name was Neil. He went to Fairfield Juniors then onto Fairfield Secondary Modern along with me and my twin brother Colin. All three of us left and became Instrument Technicians at ICI Billingham, I have not seen him for years as I left ICI in 1979 and went offshore.
I was given the reason for the ‘Cuckoo Railway’ title being that it was the sound made by the air horn warning on the electric locomotives when the line was DC electrified. This possibility has also been mentioned somewhere on the Picture Stockton site.
The footbridge that spanned the line between Grangefield Grammar School and Grosvenor Road playing fields was, I believe, moved from the old Norton station site a few years before the closure of the Cuckoo Railway. Prior to this the line was crossed via a crude sleeper crossing. This crossing was regularly visited by railway inspectors as it was a favorite place for flattening of pennies by us youngsters. There was a redundant brick farm bridge South of the crossing that led from Kidd’s farm to Grosvenor Road.
The two railway cottages that were near the bridge with the hand operated water pump, a lad called George White lived in one of these cottages. He went to Newtown School and then Grangefield Grammer School, he was a tall lad & will be about seventy years old now.
Yes Benny, it is known as the Cuckoo railway. I would think for obvious reasons. I once asked my mother the same question and she told me it was because of the presence of cuckoos.
Benny. I always understood that the line was known as the Cuckoo railway because the first cuckoo sounds of the year cam from the bushes on the embankment at Fairfield.
Thanks to various people about the old CO-OP club being Elmtree Social Club.
Peter – would ‘Tosher’ be Neil? If it is, I sat next to him in junior school, Fairfield Juniors.
Hello Mary just seen this did you really sit next to me you have a great memory hope your safe in these strange times Neil (tosher)
I am sure the Cuckoo Railway ran over the Fusick Bridge and into Norton Station. Am I correct in this statement, and can any one tell me why it was called the Cuckoo Railway?
The old CO-OP club is on Bishopton Road West going towards Fairfield on the right-hand side before the humpback railway bridge, now it is called the Elmtree Social Club. It used to be a popular place in the early sixties for the local young scene dancing to local pop groups, plenty of your ex-pupils frequented the place, Ken.
The old CO-OP social club is now the Elmtree social club on Bishopton Road West. The Railway runs past the Club. The road overlooks a fine looking bowls ground.
The old co-op club was, and in fact still is, although it is now called the Elm Tree club, situated on Bishopton Road West, between Elm Tree Avenue and the humped railway bridge over the Castle Eden Walkway.
The CO-OP club was situated next to the railway line at the Bishopton Road West railway bridge. The club is still there but under another name. There were two railway cottages on the other side of the bridge, I will always remember the hand operated water pump which was in their front yard. This is about a mile North of where the old Ashmores sports grounds were. I can remember the pedestrian footbridge being erected which took the foot path from Grosvenor Road to Graingefield Grammer School as we walked that path every week to my Grandparents in Windermere Road.
Having grown up in a house (Oulston Road) backing on to the Cuckoo railway, until marrying & leaving home in August 1957 I am curious as to where & the old CO-OP club was. Whereabouts exactly was this?
Grosvenor Road I knew well, both because of friends there & also because of spending many a Saturday morning watching or refereeing schools’ football matches there on the playing fields. The other nearby fields were the Ashmores’ sports ground & on the other side of Oxbridge Lane and the railway the Queen Victoria High School fields.
As the tracks of the Cuckoo railway were being lifted, my brother Colin, myself and a friend ‘Tosher Middleton’ who lived in Grovenor Road managed to get a ride on the foot plate of a class 37 loco from the track lifting crew. We got on the foot plate at the old bridge at Bishopton Road West. The driver took us all the way to the junction at Yarm road. We then walked back up the track past the ‘Brickie’ through Hartburn and back home. This would be totally non PC these days.
This was the end of an era for us, we had grown up playing in the fields along the railway at the top of Grovenor Road. We had watched steam trains pulling coal truck past the old CO-OP club and then the occasional ‘Clayton’ diesel engines.
Spot on Ed – as you correctly point out the third photo is also taken from the same train just prior to it going over the skew bridge on Hartburn Lane (that crossed the road near the West End Bowling club) – the shot is looking back at the trackbed of the short lived curve between Bowesfield West and Stockton Cut Junctions – the curve was only open as a through route from Feb 1901 until Jan 1902 but after closure remained in use to serve the ‘brickie’ sidings from the Hartburn end until closure in, I believe, 1948. The factory in the background is the Eaglescliffe Foundry, subject of some recent comments on this site.
As the photographs appear to be taken from the steam hauled train I wonder whether this was maybe 2nd May, 1964 and the Railway Correspondence & Travel Society ‘North Eastern Tour’. This went from Newcastle – Durham – Darlington – York – Scarborough – Whitby – Middlesbrough – Castle Eden branch and so back to Newcastle. On the final Middlesbrough – Newcastle section the train was headed by North Eastern Railway Q7 locomotive 63460. The loco, now preserved, had been withdrawn from traffic for some time, but was reinstated on a couple of occasions for special runs, this being one of them. The load was, I believe, five coaches.
Passenger trains were rare on the Cuckoo railway. Sometimes they were summer time excursion trains to & from the pit villages of South Durham to Redcar. Occasionally they were diverted trains when engineering work was being done on the normal route.
All part of our life at the end of our garden & backing on to the Cuckoo near the Oxbridge Lane bridge.
The first picture is a steam hauled passenger express crossing Bowesfield Junction, the second picture taken a few seconds later shows the locomotive about to go under Yarm Road.
In those days this road was the A19 the third picture however could have been taken a few seconds later from the other side of the train, as it shows Head Wrightsons Iron Foundry which was between the A19 and the main Stockton-Northallerton railway line. In this picture you can see the surface of the pond known locally as the ‘brickie’. The train engine as this picure was taken, if it was taken from the train would have just crossed Hartburn Bridge. I was never lucky enough to see a steam hauled passenger train on this route, many freight trains but never a passenger one.