Cornhill Branch

     Cornhill Branch

Locale Northumberland
Successor North Eastern Railway
Track gauge 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm)
Legend
Up arrow  Kelso to Tweedmouth
Coldstream

Down arrow  Kelso to Tweedmouth
 Mindrum
 Kirknewton
 Akeld
 Wooler
 Ilderton
 Wooperton
 Hedgeley
 Glanton
 Whittingham
 Edlingham
Alnwick
Down arrow  Alnwick branch line

The Cornhill Branch was a 35.5 miles (57 km) single track branch railway line in Northumberland, England, that ran from Alnwick on the terminus of the three mile long Alnmouth to Alnwick line via ten intermediate stations to a junction on the Tweedmouth to Kelso Branch line at Cornhill-on-Tweed.

History

Authorised in 1882 the Cornhill Branch was built to link the farming communities of north Northumberland with the market town of Alnwick and link the North Eastern Railway's Kelso line to its Alnwick Branch. Construction was started by the North Eastern Railway in 1884, and the line opened to freight between Cornhill and Wooperton on 2 May 1887, and the whole line for both freight and passengers on 5 September of the same year. The line had difficulty attracting passengers as many of the stations were some distance from the communities they served. Increased bus competition in the 1920s led to passenger trains being withdrawn on 22 September 1930 although the service resumed briefly during the Second World War to serve RAF Milfield near Akeld.

After a severe storm in August 1948[1] washed away a bridge north of Ilderton station British Railways, who had recently taken over the line, decided that the volume of traffic along the line did not warrant replacing it. The line was thus split into two, Alnwick to Ilderton, and Coldstream to Wooler. This coupled with an infrequent service caused the line to go further into decline and the section from Alnwick to Ilderton closed on 2 March 1953 with the other section following suit on 29 March 1965.

Inglenook Sidings

Inglenook Sidings, created by Alan Wright (1928 - January 2005), is a well-known model railway train shunting puzzle. It consists of a specific track layout, a set of initial conditions, a defined goal, and rules which must be obeyed while performing the shunting operations.

The puzzle is based on Kilham Sidings, on the Alnwick-Cornhill branch of the North Eastern Railway (NER).

References

  1. ↑ Passengers No More by G.Daniels and L.Dench

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 12/1/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.