Ushaw Moor Memories

1 - I think that I heard this lady on Radio Newcastle some time ago when the Big Blue Bus Programme was broadcast from Esh Winning. This ladies memories are the most comprehensive I have read or heard about the Deeness Valley railway line. I have many memories of the line but they are memories collected when I was a boy and they are not in the same vein as this correspondent. This line was torn up a lot of years ago and will disappear from memory unless people add their own memories to this website. The number of photos in the Railway Gallery are to me fascinating. They recall vivid memories of my childhood at Ushaw Moor. We would WALK from Ushaw Moor to Relley Bridge to trainspot. The steam locomotives held a special magic for me. The only way people travelled around the country and the world in those days was with the Armed Forces which in due time we all joined. London, Birmigham, Glasgow were all names which conjured up farawy places. One Pullman that went through every day was the Fred Olsen Line which travelled from London - Bergen in Norway, the passengers detrained at North Shields and caught the Ferry to Norway. To us kids this was unobtainable but it was nice to imagine where Norway was and what it was like. I spent many happy hours at the Relley Mill Junction. It was a very busy junction and the track layout in that small area was quite complex. Everything travelled by rail then. The nightly Royal Mail train, which has recently been made redundant, coal, steel products, troop trains, cattle, fish, milk, newspapers, petrol, oil, and of course passengers. Freight rolling stock carried the name of the product it was carrying, the Coal Owners names were displayed on the sides of the coal trucks, numerous items of rolling stock carried its owners name and it difficult to read these names as the train sped by. Then of course at the end of a very long day was the WALK back to Ushaw Moor. It was possilbe in those days, before the world was filled with bsckground noise, to lie in bed on summer nights when the windows were open and hear trains passing through the Relley Mill Junction. (Comment this)

2 - I can recall, when I was about fourteen years old, cycling with a mate to view magnificent railway trains at a spot that could not have been that far from Ushaw Moor. We saw the likes of the Flying Scotsman whistle by.We looked down from a high spot. Having read this article I suppose it must have been Relley Bridge.I note Paul's facination for railway trains and of course he is not alone with that. I wanted to find a picture of a train that was in snowy conditions, for putting up in our little summer house in the garden, but my wife does not share my enthusiasm! (Comment this)