South Durham and Lancashire Union Railway cutting

Image: © Andy Waddington Taken: 26 May 2020

It must have been dramatic to blast out of this dark cutting filled with the smoke from the steam engine ahead, onto what was, when built, England's highest railway viaduct, 60 metres above the River Belah. At 317m long, this had a reputation for splendid views of sunsets down the valley. The line, linking the Stockton & Darlington railway to the West Coast main line at Tebay, was built with limited capital and took in steep gradients to try to minimise the civil engineering work in terms of cuttings and bridges. Much of the line makes surprisingly little impact on the ground today as a result - though partly that can be attributed to reuse of the line of the railway by the A66. But some valley crossing was unavoidable, and there are dramatic traces still to reward the walker in the Kirkby Stephen area. Either side of the Belah viaduct are cuttings aiming to reduce the height and length of bridge that had to be built, but this was still one of the most impressive bits of railway in England up to its eventual closure in 1962. The cast iron structures were removed for scrap with unseemly haste in 1963, leaving anyone emerging from this cutting today on the brink of a lemming-tempting drop into space where once there was a huge feat of engineering. For those who like pipe-dreams, there are folk with ambitions to reinstate the line who have estimated the cost of replacing the bridge at £25,000,000 - nearly a thousand times the cost of the original structure. A worthwhile economy-restarting infrastructure scheme for post coronavirus perhaps? The cutting would no doubt be much cheaper to restore!

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