The view is from the top of the grassy area next to Kingsport Close, taken around 1987. The Freightliner Terminal is in the distance and was attached to the Billingham Branch Line.
Photographs and details courtesy of Fred Starr.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Before the Freightliner Terminal was built if I had been wandering around the Lustrum Beck area I would use the single track Billingham Branch to walk from the railway bridge over the beck to the road bridge at Portrack Lane. I would then walk back up Portrack Lane, past the Malleable and the Industrial Estate and British Titian to get back home at Kingsport Close.
There was no real danger as one could hear a steam locomotive half a mile off. This all stopped when one day a diesel, which must have ben doing a trial run on the Billingham Branch almost ran me down. It was coming from the Norton direction, wasn’t pulling any trucks, and was coasting with its engine at very low revs
The track and the bridge at Portrack Lane has disappeared.
Thanks, Frank for confirming how cold were houses (and offices and factories) right up to the 1970s. So for most of the year, men would wear a pullover and jacket in the house or office, and if doing light manual work in a factory, long johns underneath overalls. Also life was far more physical and this helped people warm . Housework was harder, and there was a daily walk to the shops for either the housewife or the older children.
Actually, on the new Portrack estate, a major drawback was the long walk to a local shop. This now meant a 20 minute walk, rather than one of 5 minutes, as it used to be in the old style Portrack of streets of terraced houses.
Alan Lythe refers to the giant rats, which he thinks came from the Blackett’s Bricks Works. Possibly a more likely source was the huge chicken farm that was on the Portrack estate. There was also a string of corrugated sheds close by, some of which were used to keep pigs.
These houses were quite well designed, but they had certain shortcomings. The very large single glazed windows resulted in them being quite cold.
The biggest defect was that there was a method of heating air going into the large front bedroom. This was done by some sort of arrangement at the back of the fire in the front sitting room or in the chimney. Unfortunately the bricks cracked and this allowed the fumes from the coal fire to get into the bedroom. You could taste the smoke. As Frank Mee says, it was a different world.
I expect that these houses have been equipped with central heating, but I would also hope that the windows have been double glazed.
Those were the MacMillan houses built after the war, the hot air heating to the upstairs did work after a fashion pre-Central heating. All houses were cold at the time Fred, my bedroom at the front 5 Mill Lane Norton had a tall single pane window a long way from the warm rear downstairs it was a bit like going to the Arctic, several blankets and quilts plus thick pyjama’s did the trick. We had worse, long nights in the cold damp shelters when the Germans had dyspepsia and took it out on us. A stone hot water bottle or cinders in a bed pan would often be used to warm the bed first. If we complained we would be told it was healthy for our bodies, to much heat made you soft?
It certainly hardened me enough to live through a bitter cold winter at Brancepeth Camp, one coke stove to a hut of sixteen beds, one bucket of coke and it could not be lit until after the evening meal. I still at times smell the clothes drying along the rafters to be ready for next day’s parade. I also learnt how to snaffle extra coke from a guarded coke dump next to the guard room without getting caught.
I started work on those houses in 1954 as an apprentice joiner for Teesside builders, the rats on site were enormous they were from the old St Anne’s brickworks. I lost many a sandwich to them.
I remember working trains out the terminal, which at times got held up by the locals to break into the containers for the beer etc., instructions were given to North Shore signal box, that a clear road was to given before the train was allowed to depart, but objects were still put on the line to stop it. There were destinations on these trains for train local crews these being to Doncaster for relief for the train to go further south and the other to Darlington, two trips to the up sidings to connect with a Freightliner from Follingsby terminal to be taken south
Worked on a few trains as a Drivers Assistant in and out of the old Terminal. There were always a few trespassers on the route between North Shore Signal Box and the terminal but nothing a big blast on the horn wouldn’t cure. The great Brown Ale robbery made the Gazette after they placed a fridge in the 4ft. Hope you are keeping well Bill and might make a codgers reunion one day.