A once-busy station that reached the end of the line
ONCE a hive of activity and busy with passenger and goods trains, this Tyneside railway station was approaching the end of its working life when our photograph was taken.
This was Walker (originally Low Walker) in Newcastle’s East End in a down-at-heel state in April 1973, a few months before its closure to passengers.
Freight trains, which served nearby shipyards and factories, had stopped calling there in 1967.
The station and the railway line it operated on are today long gone.
Walker had been one of the busiest stops on the old Riverside Branch.
The six-and-a-half-mile suburban route dated back to 1879, a time when the shipyards and factories of the Tyne were developing rapidly.
Opened by North Eastern Railway along the northern bank of the river, the line’s seven stops between Byker and Willington Quay served the expanding industries and communities there.
The line was actually a loop added to the main Newcastle-Coast route, which itself had opened in 1839.
The Riverside Branch – as it was known by British Rail and by enthusiasts – deviated from the suburban line that ran from Newcastle to the coast via Wallsend.
It left the main line just after it crossed the Ouseburn Viaduct at Byker and followed the course of the Tyne, mainly serving shipyard workers.
It rejoined the main line at Percy Main. The stations on the loop were Byker, St Peter’s, St Anthony’s, Walker, Carville, Point Pleasant and Willington Quay.
Described as “for the most part, tunnels, bridges, cuttings, retainingwalls, and embankments,” the building of the Riverside Line was a major engineering challenge and had been eight years in its planning and construction before it opened on May 1, 1879.
Originally a steam service, the trains on the line were electrified in 1904, becoming diesel in 1967.
Running a regular hourly service for decades as shipbuilding boomed on the Tyne, things began to slacken off on the line in the post-war years, mirroring the slow-down in the industry.
The Beeching Report of 1963 recommended the Riverside Line should close, only for it to be reprieved a year later.
Come the early 1970s, however, there were again calls for its closure.
The line cost around £100,000 a year to run but made only £15,000.
Meanwhile, a road had been built linking some of the locations that would be affected and more people were by now travelling by bus.
On April 17, 1973, it was decided the line would finally be axed.
The last passenger trains would run on July 23 that year, with the final goods trains five years later.