page_title: York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway
section_title: Great North of England Railway
hierarchical_section_title: York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway / East Coast Main Line / Great North of England Railway
caption_attribution_description: English: The Great North of England Railway "A" engine used in time trials in 1845. Image published in the Royal Commission's report in 1846 and reproduced in "The North Eastern Railway; its rise and development", 1915, Tomlinson, William Weaver, 1858-1916.
context_page_description: The York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway was an English railway company formed in 1847 by the amalgamation of the York and Newcastle Railway and the Newcastle and Berwick Railway. Both companies were part of the group of business interests controlled by George Hudson, the so-called Railway King. In collaboration with the York and North Midland Railway and other lines he controlled, he planned that the YN&BR would form the major part of a continuous railway between London and Edinburgh. At this stage the London terminal was Euston Square and the route was through Normanton. This was the genesis of the East Coast Main Line, but much remained to be done before the present-day route was formed, and the London terminus was altered to King's Cross.
  The YN&BR completed the plans of its predecessors, including building a central passenger station in Newcastle, the High Level Bridge across the River Tyne, and the viaduct across the River Tweed, that was later named the Royal Border Bridge. These were prodigious undertakings.
context_section_description: On 13 October 1835 the York & North Midland Railway (Y&NMR) was formed to connect York to London by building a line from York to a junction on the planned North Midland Railway at Normanton. Two weeks later the Great North of England Railway (GNER) was formed during a meeting of representatives of the York & North Midland and Stockton & Darlington Railway (S&DR). Joseph Pease of the S&DR had a plan for a line north from York to Newcastle that ran over 1 ¹⁄₂ miles (2.4 km) of the S&DR between Darlington and Croft-on-Tees. To allow both sections to open at around the same time, permission for the more difficult line through the hills from Darlington to Newcastle was to be sought in 1836 and a bill for the easier line south of Darlington to York presented the following year. Pease had specified a formation wide enough for four tracks, so that freight could be carried at 30 miles per hour (48 km/h) and passengers at 60 miles per hour (97 km/h), and George Stephenson had detailed plans by November.
  The Act for the 34 ¹⁄₂ miles (55.5 km) section from Newcastle to Darlington was given Royal Assent on 4 July 1836, but little work had been done by the time that the 43 miles (69 km) from Croft to York received permission on 12 July following year. In August a general meeting decided to start work on the southern section, but construction was delayed by poor labour relations with masons building the bridge over the River Tees at Croft, and after several bridges collapsed the engineer Thomas Storey was replaced by Robert Stephenson. At York a joint GNER and Y&NMR terminus was built in the city, trains entering through a pointed arch in the city wall. On 4 January 1841 the railway opened for coal traffic using S&DR locomotives, but by the time the railway opened to passengers on 30 March its own locomotives had arrived from R & W Hawthorn. From York, trains called at stations at
  Shipton, renamed Beningbrough in 1898
  Tollerton
  Alne
  Raskelf
  Sessay
  Thirsk
  Northallerton
  Cowton
  Croft, renamed Croft Spa in 1896
  before terminating at a temporary station at Bank Top, near Darlington.
  In 1845 the Royal Commission's speed trials ran speed trials between York and Darlington as part of its comparison between lines built with Great Western Railway's 7 feet (2.1 m) gauge track and the 4 feet 8 ¹⁄₂ inches (1.435 m) gauge track used by other British railways. A locomotive reached speeds of up to 60 miles per hour (97 km/h), and reached 43 ¹⁄₄ miles per hour (69.6 km/h) hauling 80 long tons (81 t). Trials with locomotives built for the wider gauge showed them to have better performance, but the Commission recommended that new lines should be built using the more common 4 ft ​8 ¹⁄₂ in gauge track.
caption: The locomotive used for the 1845 time trials between York and Darlington
exif: {}