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THE RAILWAYANDSTOCKTON-ON-THE-FOREST |
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Introduction
Stockton-on-the-Forest (Warthill) station was situated on the direct rail link between the important railway centre of York and the major port of Hull. This line bisected the Yorkshire Wolds for precisely one hundred years and seven months.
Backed by the Railway King, George Hudson, and his York and North Midland Railway, the first section of the route between York and Market Weighton opened in 1847. Yet even though Hudson and everyone else knew this branch was useless without being part of a through route to Hull, it was to take another 20 years of hard slog against stubborn landowners and difficult Wolds terrain before the final link between Market Weighton and Beverley was eventually completed.
A century later these 20 years of battling against the odds, and all the work that went before them, were wiped out by a single stroke of a transport minister's pen.
The York to Beverley line has been overshadowed by historians, concentrating more on its partner line, the Selby to Driffield, and it has often been said that the York to Beverley line led a singularly uneventful existence, but deeper investigation reveals this to be far from true. Born as the result of Hudson's attempts to block the advance of the Manchester and Leeds Railway towards Hull and involving intense wheeling and dealing, it eventually played a major part in Hudson's fall from grace.
In later years the line saw an exceptional variety of motive power for a railway of its kind, while in the 1920's and 30's it was used as a test bed for new and experimental forms of traction, like the unique Kitson-Still steam diesel locomotive. The railways' ruthless annihilation of local waterways which went on right up to nationalisation makes its own fascinating story, while the line's closure by Dr. Beeching, despite a modernisation plan that would have made it profitable, is probably unique among the many closure cases of the 1960's. The York-Beverley line, as well as playing a vital role in the economic and social life of the community, was a useful through route to the north.