Grosmont railway station

Infobox UK station
name = Grosmont
code = GMT


caption = Up platform Running in board at Grosmont
manager = Northern Rail
locale = Grosmont
borough = Scarborough
start = 1865 (present station)
platforms = 4
lowusage0405 = 19,601
lowusage0506 = 18,675
lowusage0607 = 18,264

Grosmont railway station serves the village of Grosmont in North Yorkshire, England. It is located on the Esk Valley Line which serves one platform and is operated by Northern Rail who provide the station's passenger services. The main part of the station (three platforms), which until 1965 served the Whitby - Malton line, is owned and operated by the preserved North Yorkshire Moors Railway who operate passenger services between Whitby and Pickering.

History

=W&P (1835 to 1845)=

A railway was brought to Grosmont by the Whitby and Pickering Railway and its engineer George Stephenson, it was a horse worked line and opened from Whitby as far as Grosmont (then known as 'Tunnel' from the tunnel required to pass from Grosmont towards Beckhole) in 1835.

The advent of the W&P brought development to 'Tunnel', the Tunnel Inn was built to cater for railway passengers, sometimes attributed to the W&P Rly. company, the inn was in fact built by one of the W&P's backers. It is still serving railway customers today. Between the inn and today's railway stands a building that is attributed to the W&P, today it houses NYMR volunteers on the upper floor and a small workshop at track level. The floor of the workshop shows signs of once having a rail connection, presumably via a wagon turntable on a line outside.

The W&P opened throughout in 1836 and brought new businesses to the Grosmont area.

Industrial History

Lime was brought from Pickering for burning in a row of lime kilns adjacent to the railway at Grosmiont; A stone company was founded to exploit the stone on Lease Rigg (south of the tunnel) which was brought down an incline to the W&P and dispatched to Whitby. The discovery of outcrops of iron ore during the building of the railway lead to a number of local iron mines, of varying success but ultimately the whole area under Grosmont station was mined, on the 'pillar and stall' method; the railway company (by then the NER) simply bought the ironstone under the station house and the river bridge and made preparation to deal with subsidence elsewhere. This ironstone (in the Avicula and Pectin seams) today belongs to the NYMR, having been bought as part of the railway property.

Other industries that followed at or near Grosmont included a large iron works with (eventually) three blast furnaces which stood on the north side of the railway, the area is now the National Park's car park, which is linked to the station by a footbridge across the Esk Valley Line; in amongst the trees there are still remains of the areas industrial past.

On the south-east side of the line Grosmont Brickworks was developed, now long disused, much of the brick kilns still survive but the tall chimney often featuring in BR period photos of Grosmont Station is now long gone.

South of Grosmont, near Esk Valley the railway cut through a Whinstone dyke, an igneous intrusion that crosses the whole country diagonally. Whinstone was prized for roadmaking and was both mined and quarried along this exposed section of the dyke, being dispatched by rail from Esk Valley and (after the Deviation line was opened in 1865) from Goathland. Esk Valley was also the site of another ironstone mine, the Esk Valley Iron Company built the row of cottages to be seen at right-angles to the deviation line just before Esk Valley viaduct, together with a managers house a little further away. Unfortunately they were not as successful with their mining and the company failed.

=Y&NM (1845 to 1854)=

The W&P was never a runaway success, the solution to its financial problems lay in a connection to the evolving national railway network, so when an opportunity arose to sell the company to George Hudson's Y&NMR, it was quickly taken up. So quickly that Hudson does not seem to have fully consulted the Y&NM's directors (according to the report of the Y&NM committee of investigation, held in The National Archives at Kew). The Y&NM were at the time building their line from York to Scarborough with a branch to Pickering. Additional parliamentary powers were obtained (by the W&P) to make various improvements to its alignment and to permit the introduction of steam power. The Y&NM converted the single track W&P into a fully double track steam powered railway, the first steam engine entered Whitby in July 1847.

The big change at Grosmont was the building, to the design of Y&NM architect G.T.Andrews of the station house, which together with what would have been short and low platforms, created Grosmont's first true station. Across the road from the station there was a new massive stone bridge over the Murk Esk and a new double track tunnel (alongside the original horse tunnel), both bridge and tunnel are attributed to John Cass Birkinshaw.

=NER (1854 to 1923)=

In 1854 the Y&NM was one of the three railway companies that came together to form the North Eastern Railway, the advent of the NER brought few changes to Grosmont station but 1865 was a year of major changes, when two new lines serving Grosmont opened. One was simply a deviation line on the route to Pickering, to avoid the cable worked incline at Beckhole, by then an anachronism on a passenger railway and a source of delay and accidents. The new line started at Deviation Junction (just south of the tunnel) and climbed at a steady gradient of 1 in 49 all the way to a new station at Goathland, on the edge of the village and initially called Goathland Mill. From Goathland station the new line continued at an easier gradient until it rejoined the original route a little short of the summit of the line.

The second line was the completion by the NER of a line originally started by the North Yorkshire and Cleveland Railway, down the Esk Valley from Castleton to Grosmont, thus finally making Grosmont into a junction. This line is now the surviving Network Rail line into Grosmont, now known as the Esk Valley Line.

The NER built a short terrace of cottages just south of the tunnel; these were demolished by the NYMR to allow extensions to its running shed and workshops.

In 1876 block working was introduced on the Whitby branch, bringing many new signal cabins, there had already been an early cabin erected at Deviation Junction when the deviation opened in 1865 and it is possible that a cabin was erected at the junction with the new line up the Esk Valley at the same time, this cabin was either replaced or extended to handle full block working in 1876, because of the limited space at the junction the cabin was built on a narrow base with a double overhang - a design that survived until its closure.

ervices

Northern Rail:- Mondays to Saturdays, there are four trains per day in each direction to Whitby and Middlesbrough. A Sunday service of five trains each way (including through trains to Darlington and Newcastle) operates between May and late September only.

North Yorks Moors:- services to Pickering (and Whitby) operate on various different timetables depending on the time of year. Please see the link below for more details.

References

*cite book |author=G.W.J.Potter, |title=A History of the Whitby and Pickering |publisher=SR Publishing |location= |year=1969 |pages= |isbn=85409-553-5 |oclc= |doi=
*cite book |author=Henry Belcher, |title=Illustrations of the scenery on the line of the Whitby and Pickering Railway in the north eastern part of Yorkshire |publisher=EP Publishing |location=East Ardsley, [Eng.] |year= |pages= |isbn=0 7158 1164 9 |oclc= |doi=
*North Eastern Railway, Its Rise and Development; by W.W.Tomlinson (David & Charles 1967 reprint of 1914 original)
* [http://www.archive.org/details/northeasternrail00tomlrich North Eastern Railway, Its Rise and Development; by W.W.Tomlinson 1914 original available here]

Image gallery

External links

*stn art lnk|GMT|YO225PX
* [http://www.nymr.co.uk/timetable Train times and information from the North Yorkshire Moors Railway]
* [http://www.grosmontstationgroup.org.uk/ Grosmont Station Group's website]
* Grosmont Station (listed building)
**IoE|327610
* Listed railway structures in or near Grosmont
**IoE|327606
**IoE|327608
**IoE|327611
**IoE|327612
**IoE|327613
**IoE|327614
**IoE|327615

*coord|54.436268|-0.724808|scale:5000_region:GB_source:wikimapia_type:railwaystation|display=title