andyjoneszz

Definitely not flat, as you say, Mol. Google street view shows a slight slope up on the driveway from the road, and a maybe 4' high retaining wall to what's now a car park where the Coal Depôt lettering is. On the far side of that there's a similar height of grassy embankment up to the trackbed. But where the sidings end there's just a steepish grassy slope down to the road under the bridge, and no sign of any access for carts ever having been there. There'd have been space to put the more southerly siding up on a ramp, with drops with cart access from below and to the side as the NER did in Co. Durham here and there, but no sign of anything like that on the map, and no apparent evidence on the ground nowadays of such a thing ever having been there. :-( Am thoroughly mystified! :-D

At a rough guess, the Durham coal would all come to Whitby in NER hoppers, and the Yorkshire stuff mostly in PO wagons, with perhaps some in railway-owned minerals depending on the colliery. As for the S&W coast line and its coal deliveries, the old 1:2500 maps don't seem to show coal drops as such -- Robin Hoods Bay has a Coal Depôt, sure enough, but the 1910 & 1926 maps show a couple of plain sidings, at a slightly lower level than the running line, with no indication of a structure that might be drops. This is perplexing, as steel hoppers keep showing up in photos of pick-up goods from the 1950s & 60s! So clearly I'm missing something somewhere. :-D Anyone know of any evidence of coal drops anywhere on the line? I know someone mentioned some at RHB further up the thread, so I'd be delighted to be put straight.

A bit late in the day, but merci, Bécasse! :-)

That is a conundrum! :-o More straightforwardly, Scalby, the first station north from Scarborough on the former coast line to Whitby, closed to passengers in 1953 and then played host to camping coaches from 1954‒64. (The stationmaster's house became a 'camping cottage' as well.) The other stations on the line retained a passenger service until 1965, though, and holidaymakers could request stops at Scalby from the guard or by hand signal to the driver, to use the train the middle of their stay as well as at either end.