Electrified Lines
The NER was one of the first main line rail companies in Britain to adopt electric traction, the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway opening its first electrified line between Liverpool and Southport one week earlier. The Tyneside scheme commenced public operation on 29 March 1904. The scheme was known as Tyneside Electrics and totalled about 30 miles:
- Newcastle Central via Wallsend, Whitley Bay, Gosforth and New Bridge Street (the Newcastle terminus of the former Blyth & Tyne Railway)
- Heaton to Benton or Backworth via the East Coast Main Line
- Riverside Branch from Byker to Percy Main
- Newcastle Quayside Branch
The latter was electrically operated from June 1905 and was a 3/4 mile freight-only line from Trafalgar Yard, Manors to Newcastle Quayside Yard.
Further extensions taking the electrification to South Shields were carried out in March 1938 by the London and North Eastern Railway
The lines were originally electrified at 600V DC using the 3rd rail system, although after 1934 the operating voltage was raised to 630V DC. On the Newcastle Quayside Branch overhead line of tramway type was used for upper and lower yards with 3rd rail in the interconnecting tunnels between the yards.
Read more about this topic: North Eastern Railway (UK)
Famous quotes containing the words electrified and/or lines:
“Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“There they lived on, those New England people, farmer lives, father and grandfather and great-grandfather, on and on without noise, keeping up tradition, and expecting, beside fair weather and abundant harvests, we did not learn what. They were contented to live, since it was so contrived for them, and where their lines had fallen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)