Wylam Train

A Memory of Newburn.

August 2012. Its a small place Newcastle how about this for a coincidence. I was out on a walk between Wylam and Newburn and as I passed the Tidal Stone (which I mention in my stories) I met this man walking his dog, we chatted and I asked him if he knew about the stone, he said he always thought of it as a boundary mark. I then told him I had wrote a few stories about the old times around this area and he said you must be Jimmy Burrows, I've read your stories and in fact my relations are in one of them. Mrs Vietch who ran Thomsons house shop and her daughter Ann who was in my class in school, he also mentioned another relation who he hadn't seen for years and lived Teesside way, well the same girl wrote to me saying she was a relative of the Vietches so I got them in touch with each other. He then told me he was a volunteer Fireman on the north York's railway and he lived and slept trains. He then said "did you know there was a rail crossing over the river bed up here, he had read about it in a book he had at home, I couldn't get my head around this and had to check it out, so off I went to the library and with the help of one of the staff I came across a book showing a picture of the wagons travelling over the river and the story goes like this. Between 1898 and 1912 the Tyne Improvement Commissioners (TIC) realigned and strengthened the river banks from Ryton Willows to Newburn Sands. (Eh! Newburn Sands what's this, I will tell you later). A branch railway was built on the north bank of the river from the NER triangular junction west of Heddon station to Tidal Stone (The tidal limit). Sidings were laid as required on both sides of the river and across the river! Here in this photo shows a set of four side-tipping wagons been hauled across the river to the Ryton side where a locomotive, probably a Manning Wardle, is waiting on the rails set on the shingle bed. The lines were laid so that the wagons carrying slag were used to strengthen the river bank on the Ryton side, this was 30th May 1911. I then got a huge book of maps out if the archives around this period and sure enough there was Newburn sands, which was quite an area of sand beach west of Newburn. In 1723 there was a race course over these sands when a four guinea race took place, as I looked at the map sure enough there was the Island opposite the willows where the ferry boatman Archie Scott had his house that was swept away by a flood which I told you about in an earlier story.
There were two pits in Wylam to the west of the village one called Engine Pit and other called Haugh Pit, this was the reason for the Wylam Waggoway. There was also on the map a pub around about the east side of the Wylam car park just below Falcon Terrace called the Stephenson's Arms I would imagine for obvious reasons.