Engine House

It’s essentially vacant land today bar a fence of sleepers lining the boundary, but this is the top of the famous Weatherhill Incline. Here stood the engine which wound up the wagons from Stanhope, and if you’ve been to the Railway Museum at York you’ll have absolutely seen it.

This was one of the most important features of the line, as it was the first mechanism to take limestone from the Stanhope Quarries over to Consett and beyond. Without this, there’s absolutely no chance anything could make it up Weatherhill because it is such a sheer climb. It was quite literally the key to unlock the potential of the Weardale limelands. Bear in mind, this was the second highest point on the railway in all of Great Britain.

It was constructed in the early 1830s alongside the rest of the railway. The stationary engine was made by Hawks & Co at Gateshead, and was capable of climbing to 50 horse power - a feat in the early days of steam.

Today there’s very little left, but for many the old engine house is within living memory as it stood alongside the newer engine house of 1918. The last legacy is the sleeper fence which once acted as a snow barrier for when it gets particular lethal up here.

Weatherhill Incline

Shortly after encountering the engine house, you can follow the old trackway which leads all the way down to Stanhope from a great height above the fells. This was where the limestone was hauled up on rails by a long rope which hooked onto the engine house from the 1830s. The luck for the line was struck on day one, when the rope snapped unexpectedly and the waggons ran down the hill. A man and a 9 year old boy were killed by the waggons and a few more were injured.

The line was technically double track, but intersected by a central rail with two separate ropes on each side - I presume this was an economic move with passing loops or otherwise, or to fit through the Crawleyside tunnel. The photographs below give you a good idea though, and are situated pretty much where I'm standing on the modern shots.

The line leads downwards for over a mile, with the harsh grades subject to the harshest weather conditions. I do not envy anyone who worked here, and in fact a fella walking from Waskerley to Stanhope for medicine actually died in a harsh snowy March of 1892. His body was stiff and frozen upon discovery and was supposedly drunk, so you can presume he got into extreme difficulty traversing the snow.

Luckily the weather was far better for me, allowing for a much calmer trundle down the gradient. Looking down at the ground, you can still see the shadows of the sleepers which occupied the gravelly area.