Shildon Electrics

Here's an interesting archive photograph. It shows one of the Bo-Bo's designed for the Shildon - Newport electricifcation which I think was energised around 1910 and petered out just before World War Two. The electrification covered parts of the original Stockton and Darlington Railway and Clarence Railway and brought coal down from the West Durham coalfield to the docks at Middlesbrough.

Like most coal-hauling routes it lasted just about as long as the pits it served but in the quarter century that it operated it brought a huge quantity of coal to the coast.

I'd not realised until I started to travel around more just how much the twelve locos ordered by the N.E.R. for this work were modelled on eastern USA prototypes - not surprising as their C.M.E. Wilson Worsdell made a trip to look at Altoona in 1905. They would make an interesting - and rather easy - model.

The train is passing Thornaby station and I have an interesting link with it - this is where my grandfather started working as a porter for the railway in 1912. On the outbreak of the 1914 War he had vivid recollections of helping to throw drunken naval reserves who had collapsed on that platform you can see on the left onto trains bound for Portsmouth.