page_title: Newcastle & Carlisle Railway
section_title: After 1923
hierarchical_section_title: Newcastle & Carlisle Railway / Amalgamation with the North Eastern Railway / After 1923
caption_attribution_description: English: Brampton (Cumberland) Station, with train. View SW, towards Carlisle; ex-NER Newcastle - Carlisle main line. A 'vintage' DMU is arriving (?passing) on a Carlisle - Newcastle service.
context_page_description: The Newcastle & Carlisle Railway was an English railway company formed in 1825 that built a line from Newcastle upon Tyne on Britain's east coast, to Carlisle, on the west coast. The railway began operating mineral trains in 1834 between Blaydon and Hexham, and passengers were carried for the first time the following year. The rest of the line opened in stages, completing a through route between Carlisle and Gateshead, south of the River Tyne in 1837. The directors repeatedly changed their intentions for the route at the eastern end of the line, but finally a line was opened from Scotswood to a Newcastle terminal in 1839. That line was extended twice, reaching Newcastle Central station in 1851.
  A branch line was built to reach lead mines around Alston, opening from Haltwhistle in 1852.
  For many years the line ran trains on the right-hand track on double line sections. In 1837 a station master on the line, Thomas Edmondson, introduced pre-printed numbered pasteboard tickets dated by a press, a huge advance on the former system of individual hand-written tickets; in time his system achieved near-universal adoption worldwide.
context_section_description: As a result of the Railways Act 1921, the North Eastern Railway became a constituent of the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) on 1 January 1923. Britain's railways were nationalised on 1 January 1948 and the former Newcastle and Carlisle Railway lines were placed under the control of British Railways.
  The passenger service on the Allendale branch had been withdrawn on 22 September 1930 and the line was closed in November 1950. The passenger service from Hexham to the north over the former Border Counties Railway was withdrawn in 1956, and several stations were closed in the 1950s. Diesel Multiple Units began to replace trains hauled by steam locomotives from 1955. In 1963 Dr Beeching published his report "The Reshaping of British Railways", which recommended closing the network's least used stations and lines. The Alston branch was already being considered for closure, and to this was added the local services from Newcastle to Hexham and Haltwhistle. In 1966 British Railways proposed that North Wylam station remain open and that September suspended services over the line south of the Tyne for engineering works, but this arrangement was withdrawn, and services resumed in May 1967. The following year British Railways closed the North Wylam line north of the Tyne, and passenger traffic was withdrawn on 11 March 1968. The branch line to Alston closed in 1976.
  The railway was diverted to avoid Farnley Scar Tunnel in 1962; the tunnel portals remain and both are listed monuments.
  In October 1982, the connection from Newcastle to the N&CR line was diverted to use the NER line through Dunston before rejoining the former N&CR Redheugh branch at Derwenthaugh crossing the King Edward VII Bridge. The Scotswood bridge and the line to it was closed to all traffic from 4 October that year.  Part of the northern side of the line towards Central remained in use to serve a cement terminal at Elswick until 1986.
caption: A diesel train at Brampton station in 1962
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