Commencement of work began on Church Row, Stockton c1934 and arrangements were made to begin work at the other end of the scheme in early 1935 so that proper entry could be made to the Railway land. This photograph may possibly reflect this…
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
I lived in Buxton Street from my birth in 1940 until the mid 1950’s. It ran parallel to the bottom end of Garbutt Street, at the end of the street was the wall dividing us from the railway. Trying to figure out if where that would be in this photograph.
This is the crossing at which Garbutt Street entered Portrack Lane. Garbutt Street has now disappeared. The signal box, which was on the south side of the level crossing was quite an imposing structure, as it covered a four line track once the lines had opened out after the crossing. The crossing gates were opened using a wheel up in the signal box.
The system was changed round about 1960, when bxo was demolished, and I think, a new set of gates were installed which were pushed open by the signlaman who lived in a small brick hut on the north west side of the crossing.
During the late 1940s and early fifities used to watch, with my Grandfather, the shunting going on which stopped about 25 yards north of the bridge. The points used, when shunting, were all manually controlled. We used to watch from the low stone wall just on the right hand nothern side of the bridge.
Thank’s for that. I have posted pictures on this site of the crossing and remember it well but even though I used to go over this crossing on my way to my nannas in Portrack in the mid fifties I can’t remember the signal box I don’t know why, was it operated by British Railways staff because I was in North Shore in 1960 as book lad and can’t remember any connection in the way of block bells or phones?
Which signalbox is it in the background?
The signal box was indeed Portrack Crossing. The houses on the top right were in Clarence Row and the building far top left, a flour mill (now a used car dealers) in Baltic row. The workmen in the forefront are constructing the railbridge over the underpass of the new Church Road to Portrack Lane, road extention. I was born in Portrack Lane in 1934 the year this work started,so it was fairly new when I started to use it into town as a schoolboy.