These photographs show the crossing on the North Shore branch line which used to be at the top of Garbutt Street. Courtesy of Gordon Armes. 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
These photographs show the crossing on the North Shore branch line which used to be at the top of Garbutt Street. Courtesy of Gordon Armes.
Does anybody have a photo of 19 Garbutt St.
Which church (now demolished) was opposite Garbutt St… I think the address was ‘Bone Street’? It is in the distance on very old photos of Norton Rd, but I haven’t seen one close up.. It must have had a large capacity as it appears to be large.
Note the Number 1 or 1A bus going across the level crossing. By the time this picture was taken the bus could not have gone up Garbutt Street to Norton Road, as the Bath Lane/Bailey Street area had been built over with apartment blocks.The Number 1 bus, an hourly service, went all the way down to the Tranporter Bridge. The 1A did not go as far and ran every 15 minutes in each hour. The Number 1 did the other quarter hour.
These gates had to be pushed open by hand. But there was some kind of mechanism running underneath the road that connected all four gates. The gate keeper/signalman “lived” in the small brick shed at one side of the picture.This had replaced the standard elevated type of signal box on the other side of the crossing, close to Clarence road. When the signal box was demolished,around 1958, the semaphore signal for controlling the loco traffic was also taken down. I am not sure how the traffic up to the main line, over the bridge at Tilery, was controlled after this.
The first picture is indeed looking towards the river. The small building on the right contains the levers that control the signals in the vicinity of the crossing.
Wonderful! The picture with the loco in the middle distance seems to be in the direction of the river.The building behind the loco, which is in the centre of the crossing, in the second picture, was a flour mill…one of the many companies served by the North Shore branch as David Gibbs has pointed out.Note that it was possible for pedestrians to slip round the end of the gates instead of waiting for them to open.
I remember this crossing, great photos. The last three local class Q6 locos working until the end of British Railways steam through Stockton on 17/8/1967 were 63344(above), 63387 and 63395(preserved). All were withdrawn by 9/9/1967. My favourite was 63387, because in almost nine months of 1967 it was the most active and regular Q6 performer through Stockton. The last time I saw 63344 in steam was at West Hartlepool on 19/7/1967.