When did the last St Pancras* to Dewsbury train pass under this bridge?
It’s at the southern corner of Newmillerdam Country Park, as you follow the old railway out of the park, along the Chevet Branch Line nature reserve, heading south east towards Notton and Royston.
The first scheduled train on the line must have passed beneath it at about 6.30 a.m. on Thursday, 1 March, 1906.
Despite the crowd and officials greeting the train at Dewsbury Station, I get the impression that the Midland Railway was keen to emphasise the goods side of things rather than passenger traffic, preparing to deal with ‘all descriptions of merchandise, live stock and mineral traffic’ at their new stations at Crigglestone and ‘Middlestown-for-Horbury’, further up the Calder Valley to the west of Newmillerdam.
According to the website Lost Railways of West Yorkshire, the line closed on Monday 18 December 1950.
*Oh! Mr Porter
I’d originally suggested that Euston would be the starting point of the line to Dewsbury via Newmillerdam so thank you to John Farline on the Wakefield Historical Appreciation Site on Facebook, who put me right:
The Midland Railway ran north from St. Pancras, not Euston. Your date for the line’s closure is likely to be the date when the passenger service was withdrawn. The line continued with goods services through to 1968 when Criggleston and Middlestown (goods only) stations were closed. I certainly remember seeing goods trains going onto and coming off the branch line in the 1950s.”
I should have realised that the line must have started at St Pancras because that’s the route that goes via Sheffield Midland Station.
My grandad briefly worked as a porter, before going for a job with the then horse-drawn trams at the big tram company stables across the road. He’d worked with horses as a groom and he told me that, as a country lad, he found walking all day on the hard surfaces too demanding.
When we ran the Ossett Grammar School cross country in the 1960s (well, ran until out of sight of the school, then sauntered around exploring) I remember occasionally seeing coal trucks on the line from the bridge near Thornhill Hall farm.
‘DEWSBURY’ is one of the stations with its name carved into one of the cornerstones of this entrance lodge at Euston Station, now The Euston Tap, a ‘dedicated cider bar with cask ales and draught beers, in a Victorian gatehouse with beer garden.’
Euston was the headquarters of the London and North Western Railway, so their route to Dewsbury would be via Birmingham, changing at Crewe for Dewsbury, a route celebrated in the Marie Lloyd music hall song Oh! Mr Porter:
Oh! Mr Porter, what shall I do?
George and Thomas Le Brunn, 1892
I want to go to Birmingham
And they’ve taken me on to Crewe,
Take me back to London quickly as you can.
Oh Mr Porter, what a silly girl I am!”
Link
Lost Railways of West Yorkshire, Royston to Dewsbury Savile Town Goods, 1906 – 1950, Midland Railway