The Brampton Railway was a mineral railway built in 1798 to bring coal from workings on Tindale Fell to staiths at Brampton. It was a development of short sections of earlier wooden railways.
When the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway was opened in 1836, the Brampton Railway was diverted to make a junction with that line. The section from the junction to Brampton was later transferred to the North Eastern Railway, carrying passengers and goods, but it closed in 1923.
The remainder became dedicated to serving collieries and other mineral workings, and was successively extended in the remote hills south of Brampton. It flourished when the collieries did well, but after nationalisation of the pits in 1947 steep decline set in and the line closed in 1953.
The line has been known by a number of names during its existence, including the Tindale Fell Railway, the Midgeholme Railway, the Hartleyburn & Brampton Railway, and simply the Brampton Railway.
Earliest times
The East Cumberland coalfield was one of the earliest in Britain to be worked, probably from Roman times. In the seventeenth century and subsequently the Earls of Carlisle developed the workings, and it appears that by 1775 wooden railways were in use on Tindale Fell for short-distance movement of small wagons.
explains:
A railway of 5½ miles in length was made in 1775, from the Earl of Carlisle's colliery at Tindale Fell to Brampton. It was the scene of an early experiment with wrought iron rails, in about the year 1808. It was originally laid with cast iron fish-bellied rails. Moore says that boring for coal on Tindale Fell... was in progress in 1628. In 1769 the Earl of Carlisle was carrying on Tarnhouse or Tindale Fell colliery, beside the Talkin and Midgeholme collieries. The railway along which the coals were conveyed by horses in chaldron waggons, did not take the same route exactly, nor was it so long as the existing [i.e. later] railway, which begins at Brampton, and terminates at Lambley station on the Alston branch of the NER.
Lee disagrees with this account:
Mr. Dendy Marshall ... quotes no authority for the assertion, and the present writer’s researches tend strongly to indicate that the line through to Brampton was built more than two decades later. There were probably wooden wagonways at Tindale Fell colliery as early as 1775, but it seems clear that the through line to Brampton was built by the Earl of Carlisle about 1798.
A through line to Brampton was constructed in 1798, reaching the staithes there, and the first wagon of coal was brought down from Tindale Fell colliery in April 1799. The waggonway, five and a half miles in length, was constructed in timber, and the wagons were hauled singly by horses.
Thompson wrote (in 1900): "I doubt if anyone now living can say accurately when this tram road was made; it is marked on old maps as far back I believe as 1774, and was probably in existence long before that.
The timber track was soon replaced by cast iron fish-bellied rails on stone block sleepers, and in 1808 the track was again relaid, about two-thirds of the extent with rolled wrought iron rails and the remainder with cast iron. The line was famous for its early introduction of the new material. "[Wrought iron in edge rails] was first used by itself, without a wooden rail below it, in a humble way at Tindale Fell near Brampton in 1808 and at Walbottle about the same time."
The earliest wrought iron rails had been prone to lamination, but an exchange of newspaper correspondence on the subject produced a robust statement from John Birkinshaw, of the Bedlington Iron Works. Quoting a letter from James Thompson ("the Colliery Agent of the Earl of Carlisle") he says that "apprehensions of lamination and exfoliation are entirely groundless. Thompson's letter of 7 December 1824 is reproduced, saying:
... having under my care a Rail-way, whereon several Miles both of Cast and Wrought Iron Rails are used, I have sent you herewith a Piece of the latter, which has been laid sixteen Years, and certainly has no Appearance of Lamination... The whole of the Wrought Iron, which has been used from 12 to 16 years, appears to be very little worse. The Cast Iron is certainly much worse, and subject to considerable Breakage, although the Rails are about double the Weight of the Malleable Iron Rails.