Wolsingham Goods Shed?

[Wear Valley Wanderer]

I'm attempting to recreate Wolsingham railway station circa 1950. According to what little information I've been able to glean it would appear there was a goods shed behind the platform where there were also sidings for the coal yard. The site is now the carpark for the Weardale Railway.

 

I've only found one photo that shows goods wagons in the area behind the station (Please see below), but I can't make out any goods shed. As this was a fairly modest station of the NER I would imagine the goods shed would have been built in the same yellow brick as the station itself, however I'm a bit foxed as to what to do regarding an approximation of the original. It seems from the OS survey that the shed was a 'through' type with the track entering one end end continuing out the other. 

 

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

 

Picture is from website Disused Stations of the Alan Brown collection. Reproduced here purely for information.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

[steelergraham]

Have you tried Durham County Councils records office? They have sorts stashed away.

 

Another place might be Darlington'S Head of Steam as they have a couple of NER collections. Last thought is the reference section at the NRM in York.

Edited February 25, 2021 by steelergraham

[The Black Hat]

Check the Ken Hoole Collection at Head of Steam museum Darlington but you will need to arrange this in advance. Another idea is google but am thinking you will have already tried that. One final suggestion is facebook as there is a South Durham disused railways group and putting a message there might get a result. 

Not sure if Wolsingham was built by NER. Might have been Stockton and Darlington and then when this passed to NER the latter extended further up the line. 

[Ian Smeeton]

This map from the NLS shows the goods shed was definitely there, whether it was still there at the date of your photo, I cannot tell, but it looks like there is the edge of some sort of building right at the right hand edge of the photo

 

Looks quite an odd shape, too.

 

Good luck with your searches

 

Regards

 

Ian

[Kevin Johnson]

Hi Mark I will be following this with great interest. My dad used to drive the sentinel locomotive attached to Wolsingham steel works and this line was connected to the Wolsingham main line.

[Wear Valley Wanderer]

I drive past the old steel works most days with my job. It's sad to see it all gone, but at least the facade and gun barrel building is still there being used by the Weardale Railway. By the looks of things the new owner is looking to bring the line back to life after numerous difficult starts. Not only that but they're looking at extending the line back to Crook where I live. Incredible to think that they spend all that money ripping out something only to spend a fortune putting it back. 

 

In regards to the goods shed, I had read that 'every one on the line was the same'. I'm not convinced by this. Considering the odd shape I have had a look at the surviving one at Eastgate and the one there looks quite standard in overall shape. There are surviving goods sheds at Winston and Lartington to give me an idea, although I will investigate the above sources for more info. Failing that I may just not have a goods shed as there's none in the photo's I have!

 

Please note that due to space limitations, not to mention being a complete beginner, my layout will not be absolutely accurate in terms of track layout, however I'll be having a damned good go at it. 

 

Thanks for all the advice. I finally had my first loco run yesterday after two years of planning and loft conversion work. Pleased as punch.  

[codek]

Some footage of the inside

 

 

[durham light infantry]

That's the old gun barrel shed.

[Rumblestripe]

Bill Fawcett's book North Eastern Railway Architecture: Volume 1 has some information on the  Wear Valley Railway (inc. Wolsingham). The architect was John Middleton of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, which at the time of construction was a separate entity from the NER. His comment on Goods provision for the line is this:

 

Quote

The Wear Valley directors were surprisingly dilatory over goods accommodation, only letting contracts on 14 July 1847, three weeks before opening. Goods stations were provided at Wolsingham and Frosterley and - to judge from the former - were quite small structures, gable end facing the line - in a style matching that of the stations. Both have long since disappeared. The total cost of the goods sheds and stations, including platforms, came to £4229.

That description doesn't seem to match the building shown on the old OS maps so it may have been replaced with a more standard NER type structure in later years?

 

I'm awaiting the delivery of my copy of volume three of this learned treatise but Wolsingham is not mentioned in Volume 2!

[Wear Valley Wanderer]

On 14/04/2021 at 10:28, durham light infantry said:

That's the old gun barrel shed.

There was a recent urban exploration of the inside of the old steel works Gun Barrel Shed on Youtube including a look inside these carriages. Looks a right mess inside. Such a shame, I hope that the new owner will be able to do something to preserve it. Interestingly they're talking about reopening the line to Crook too, but will it happen? Time will tell.

[Wear Valley Wanderer]

On 15/04/2021 at 11:24, Rumblestripe said:

Bill Fawcett's book North Eastern Railway Architecture: Volume 1 has some information on the  Wear Valley Railway (inc. Wolsingham). The architect was John Middleton of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, which at the time of construction was a separate entity from the NER. His comment on Goods provision for the line is this:

 

That description doesn't seem to match the building shown on the old OS maps so it may have been replaced with a more standard NER type structure in later years?

 

I'm awaiting the delivery of my copy of volume three of this learned treatise but Wolsingham is not mentioned in Volume 2!

Considering that Wolsingham was used as the meeting place for NER directors, I'm surprised there isn't more on it. I've been having a rake around for more info but I'm coming up blank for the goods shed. 

[RichardT]

On 18/04/2021 at 21:57, Wear Valley Wanderer said:

I've been having a rake around for more info but I'm coming up blank for the goods shed. 

 

When I saw this thread I thought I might be able to help.  It's always good to hear of another Weardale railways enthusiast!  My medium-term plan is to build a 2mm model of the Wearhead terminus, as my late mother-in-law was born there in 1932 and used the branch regularly as a child to visit family in Darlington.  In pursuit of that I have been collecting old photos and old postcards of the whole line for many years.  Keep your eye out for old postcards.  They can often be very useful - but you have to be patient to build up your collection.

 

So, firstly: if you look at the OS map extract that Ian Smeeton posted above, you'll see that the goods shed is shown as a sort-of 'vertically-squashed H-shaped' building sited just behind the eastern end of the up platform, with the road through it terminating by the station house garden.  There's also a short siding terminating between the goods shed and the up running road.

 

Armed with this information go back to the 1965 photo you posted from the Disused Stations website. I think it's a reasonable assumption that the stop-block in the middle of the picture (at the end of the platform ramp) is the end of the short siding that lay between the goods shed and running line, and that the siding immediately to the right of that in the photo, with what looks like an ex-SR van on it nearest the camera, is what was the goods shed siding. 

 

I say "was" because you should be able to see the goods shed in this photo, but it obviously isn't there.  However, this does tally with the Bill Fawcett quote that Rumblestripe posted above, that the goods sheds at Frosterley and Wolsingham have "long since disappeared." 

 

Ian Smeeton suggested above that you could just see the edge of a building at the right hand side of the 1965 photo.  My guess is that isn't the goods shed, but is the edge of the weighbridge scale house.  You can see on the OS map that "WM" is marked just above the good shed next to a small square building in about the right position.

 

If you accept all the above assumptions and go back to the Disused Stations webpage for Wolsingham you will now see that the first photo below the text - the 1906 colourised postcard showing the up platform - is very useful to you. The white brick gable end at the end of the up platform with the window in the middle must be the end of the 'squashed H-shape' goods shed.  This also tallies with the Bill Fawcett description quoted by Rumblestripe that "Goods stations were provided at Wolsingham and Frosterley and - to judge from the former - were quite small structures, gable end facing the line [my emphasis] - in a style matching that of the stations.."

 

You can also just see in front of it the short dead end siding - at this date apparently without a stop-block of any kind.  So, the goods shed, built in 1847, was still there in c1906, but had been demolished by 1965.  In fact, from photos I have seen of Wolsingham and Frosterley in the 1950s, I think that the goods sheds had already gone by then.

 

So, you've got the ground plan, from the OS map, and you now have an idea what it looked like architecturally, but only one end.  The next piece of the jigsaw beckons. 

 

The Wear Valley Railway company originally reached only to Frosterley, terminating there in 1847 and being promptly leased to the Stockton & Darlington.  It wasn't extended to Stanhope until 1862.  The architecture of the 1862 station at Stanhope is quite different to that of the earlier part of the line, as are the stations further up the dale on the 1895 Wear Valley Extension, and so they aren't much use to you as a guide to the look of the Wolsingham goods shed. 

 

However, as Bill Fawcett implies, the 1847 goods stations at Wolsingham and Frosterley, were built at the same time, and in the style of the stations.  The station house at Frosterley is very similar to that at Wolsingham, but at right angles to the track, and missing the board room provided at Wolsingham for the WVR/S&DR directors. (I think it's very unlikely that the NER Board ever met there following the S&DR merger into the NER in 1863 but I'd love to be proved wrong.) 

 

I would therefore take an informed guess that the 1847 goods shed at Frosterley was virtually identical to the one at Wolsingham. 

 

I knew I had in my collection several old postcards of Frosterley station and, as luck would have it, three of them were taken in the right place to show the goods shed perched above the river.  I hope you'll agree that Frosterley looks like a pretty good match for Wolsingham, both to the partial view in the Wolsingham postcard, and also to the "squashed H-shape" evident in the OS map.  Should be enough there to make a decent model, with enough evidence to withstand any rivet-counter!

 

No.1, circa 1900, looking east

 

No.2, circa 1904, also looking east

 

No.3, circa 1939, helpfully looking west this time

 

I've enlarged and slightly enhanced the goods shed bit from each postcard:

 

From No.1

 

From No.2

 

From No.3

 

 

Hope that all helps.

Richard T

 

 

 

 

Edited April 20, 2021 by RichardT
Deleting duplicate image

[Wear Valley Wanderer]

Amazing amount of work you've done here, Richard. Thank you so much for your help on this. Looks like I'm going to have to get cracking! I only hope I can do it justice.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark