Billingham Station Goods Yard with Davis Bridge in the background.
Photograph and details courtesy of Ivan Harrington.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Billingham Station Goods Yard with Davis Bridge in the background.
Photograph and details courtesy of Ivan Harrington.
Picture Stockton Archive 
This view shows the entrance to the goods yard, rather than the whole yard. At this time the main user of the yard was the London Brick company, and I suspect the rail wagons contain or may have contained bricks. It is quite a long train, and probably would have needed splitting to fit into the constricted yard. The other main user was a coal merchant, and access to the coal drops was via an incline, which is not visible in the photograph, being further to the right. The line leading to the incline started behind the brake van.
By 1964, I think coal activity in the yard was much reduced, although I am not sure about coke. The smokeless zone acts had reduced domestic coal usage, but coke was still used. In all the years train spotting at Billingham station I never saw the siding to the left used. It probably joined on to the refuge siding west of the Davis bridge, used by coal trains to access the Port Clarence branch, from the Hartlepool direction, running round their trains. This activity has been mentioned a number of times before. In the days of railcars before the 2nd world war, I think there was a regular service from Billingham to Port Clarence, and this short siding may have been used for railcar storage. Perhaps someone will have information on that.
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I was a train spotter in the late 1950s and seem to remember there was very little activity in the goods yard, only the coal deliveries.- the Co-op, I believe. Later, I found out that the Billingham goods traffic had been taken over by Stockton, with the possible exception of newspapers and small parcels which arrived on the passenger services. Deliveries to Billingham were by road.
There are some photographs of the refuge siding occupied, including a standby diesel for a royal train and a motorised track crew vehicle that had road registration plates. Without a regular goods service, I assume that the sidings were used on an as required basis.
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