North Eastern Railway (United Kingdom)


The North Eastern Railway was an English railway company. It was incorporated in 1854 by the combination of several existing railway companies. Later, it was amalgamated with other railways to form the London and North Eastern Railway at the Grouping in 1923. Its main line survives to the present day as part of the East Coast Main Line between London and Edinburgh.

Introduction

Unlike many other pre-Grouping companies the NER had a relatively compact territory, in which it had a near monopoly. That district extended through Yorkshire, County Durham and Northumberland, with outposts in Westmorland and Cumberland. The only company penetrating its territory was the Hull & Barnsley, which it absorbed shortly before the main grouping. The NER's main line formed the middle link on the Anglo-Scottish "East Coast Main Line" between London and Edinburgh, joining the Great Northern Railway near Doncaster and the North British Railway at Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Although primarily a Northern English railway, the NER had a short length of line in Scotland, in Roxburghshire, with stations at Carham and Sprouston on the Tweedmouth-Kelso route, and was a joint owner of the Forth railway bridge and its approach lines. The NER was the only English railway to run trains regularly into Scotland, over the Berwick-Edinburgh main line as well as on the Tweedmouth-Kelso branch.
The total length of line owned was and the company's share capital was £82 million. The headquarters were at York and the works at Darlington, Gateshead, York and elsewhere.
Befitting the successor to the Stockton & Darlington Railway, the NER had a reputation for innovation. It was a pioneer in architectural and design matters and in electrification. In its final days it also began the collection that became the Railway Museum at York, now the National Railway Museum.
In 1913 the company achieved a total revenue of £11,315,130 with working expenses of £7,220,784.
During the First World War, The NER lost a total of 1,908 men. They also raised two 'Pals Battalions', the 17th Battalion and 32nd Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers. This was the first time that a battalion had been raised from one Company. The company also sent two tug boats, NER No.3. and Stranton The latter became HM Tug Char and was lost at sea on 16 January 1915 with the lost of all hands.

Constituent parts of the NER

Constituent companies of the NER are listed in chronological order under the year of amalgamation.
Their constituent companies are indented under the parent company with the year of amalgamation in parenthesis.
If a company changed its name, the earlier names and dates are listed after the later name.
The information for this section is largely drawn from Appendix E in Tomlinson.
1854
1857
1858
1859
1862
1863
1865
1866
1870
1872
1874
1876
1882
1883
1889
1893
1898
1900
1914
1922
1853
1857
1893
Having inherited the country's first ever great barrel-vault roofed station, Newcastle Central, from its constituent the York Newcastle & Berwick railway, the NER during the next half century built a finer set of grand principal stations than any other British railway company, with examples at Alnwick, Tynemouth, Gateshead East, Sunderland, Stockton, Middlesbrough, Darlington Bank Top, York and Hull Paragon; the rebuilding and enlargement of the last-named resulting in the last of the type in the country. The four largest, at Newcastle, Darlington, York and Hull survive in transport use. Alnwick is still extant but in non-transport use since 1991 as a second-hand book warehouse, the others having been demolished during the 1950s/60s state-owned railway era, two following Second World War bomb damage.
Other principal stations were located at Sunderland, Darlington and Hull. The station at Leeds was a joint undertaking with the London and North Western Railway.

Architects

The NER was the first railway company in the world to appoint a full-time salaried architect to work with its chief engineer in constructing railway facilities. Some of the men appointed were based in, or active in, Darlington.
Professional design was carried through to small fixtures and fittings, such as platform seating, for which the NER adopted distinctive 'coiled snake' bench-ends. Cast-iron footbridges were also produced to a distinctive design. The NER's legacy continued to influence the systematic approach to design adopted by the grouped LNER.

Senior staff

Chairmen

A director of the NER from 1864, and deputy chairman from 1895 until his death in 1904, was ironmaster and industrial chemist Sir Lowthian Bell. His son Sir Hugh Bell was also a director; he had a private platform on the line between Middlesbrough and Redcar at the bottom of the garden of his house Red Barns. Gertrude Bell's biographer, Georgina Howell, recounts a story about the Bells and the NER:
Among the other famous directors of the NER were George Leeman ; Henry Pease ; Sir Joseph Whitwell Pease, Bart. ; John Dent Dent ; Matthew White Ridley, 1st Viscount Ridley ; Sir Edward Grey, Bart ; George Gibb ; and Henry Tennant.

Electrified lines

The NER was one of the first main line rail companies in Britain to adopt electric traction, the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway having opened its first electrified line between Liverpool and Southport one week earlier.

Tyneside

The Tyneside scheme commenced public operation on 29 March 1904. The scheme was known as Tyneside Electrics and totalled about 30 miles:
The latter was electrically operated from June 1905 and was a 3/4 mile freight-only line from Trafalgar Yard, Manors to Newcastle Quayside Yard.
Further extensions taking the electrification to South Shields were carried out in March 1938 by the London and North Eastern Railway
The lines were originally electrified at 600 V DC using the 3rd rail system, although after 1934 the operating voltage was raised to 630 V DC. On the Newcastle Quayside Branch overhead line of tramway type was used for upper and lower yards with 3rd rail in the interconnecting tunnels between the yards.

Newport-Shildon

The Newport-Shildon line was electrified on the 1,500 V DC overhead system between 1914 and 1916 and the locomotives which later became British Rail Class EF1 were used on this section.

Traffic

The NER carried a larger tonnage of mineral and coal traffic than any other principal railway.
The NER was a partner in the East Coast Joint Stock operation from 1860.

Accidents and incidents

The company owned the following docks:
The NER also owned coal-shipping staithes at Blyth and Dunston-on-Tyne. Its steamboats ran between Hull and Antwerp and other places on the Continent.

Locomotives

A comprehensive list of NER locomotives: Locomotives of the North Eastern Railway.

Coaching stock

The NER originally operated with short four and six wheeled coaches with a fixed wheelbase. From these were developed the standard six-wheeled, low elliptical roofed coaches which were built in their thousands around the 1880s. One variety alone, the diagram 15, five compartment, full 3rd class, numbered around a thousand. The NER started building bogie stock for general service use in 1894, clerestories for general use with a variation built for use on the tightly curved line from Malton to Whitby. There were also a series of low ark roofed bogie coaches for use on the coast line north of Scarborough.
Coach manufacture moved to high arched roof vehicles but with substantially the same body design in the early 1900s.
The NER had limited need for vestibuled coaches but from 1900 built a series of vestibuled, corridor coaches with British Standard gangways, for their longer distance services. The company introduced clerestory corridor dining trains on services between London and Edinburgh. The initial trial was run between York and Newcastle in 1 hour 30 minutes on 30 July 1900. The new train consisted of eight coaches and was long, and had seating for 50 first-class and 211 third-class passengers. At the same time they built similar coaches for the East Coast Joint Stock and the Great Northern and North Eastern Joint Stock.
All NER coach building was concentrated at their York Carriage Works, which went on to be the main LNER carriage works after grouping.
With the introduction of the standard 6-wheeled coaches NER carriage livery was standardised as 'deep crimson', lined with cream edged on both sides with a thin vermillion line. For a time the cream was replaced with gold leaf. Lettering and numbering; was in strongly serifed characters, blocked and shaded to give a 3D effect.
The NER's bogie coach building programme was such that, almost unique amongst pre-grouping railways, they had sufficient bogie coaches to cover normal service trains; six wheel coaches were reserved for strengthening and excursion trains.