The South Shields, Marsden & Whitburn Colliery Railway, by William J. Hatcher
Book published by The Oakwood Press in 2002, 128 pages. Paperback (N6183)
Brand New Book
From the introduction: The South Shields, Marsden & Whitburn Colliery Railway (SSMWCR), this grand rather over-explanatory title was bestowed upon a section of track just two miles from end to end. The SSMWCR was originally built as a mineral branch serving a coal mine on the North-East coast, and this it did successfully for almost a century. Indeed here is where the story could have ended, for at face value this was no different from the hundreds of other branches which served in this industrial corner of the country.
Scratch beneath the surface however and it soon becomes apparent that there was much more to the SSMWCR than the humble coal truck. The railway had its own passenger service which (although not unique for a colliery branch line) nonetheless boasted well-equipped termini and block signalling. Passenger trarins (which ran at a loss for much of their existence) were capable of taking the public back in time, leaving Westoe Colliery at one end of the branch, with its 20th century electric railway, and travelling down to Whitburn Colliery at the other end, firmly set in the 19th century with steam the staple power.
Then there was the rolling stock. This bewildering menagerie was raked in from all corners of the land, mostly via the second-hand market and spent a twilight existence on the branch line long after similar main line stock had been dragged to the scrapyards. The locomotives (and there were 40 of them) represented a full cross-section of early mineral designs from tiny Manning, Wardle industrial tank engines up to the hefty ex-North Eastern Railway (NER) C class tender engines which were so indigenous to County Durham.
| Condition | New |