Cleveland Railway (England)

Cleveland Railway (England)

The Cleveland Railway was a railway line in north-east England running from Normanby Jetty on the River Tees, near Middlesbrough, via Normanby and then via Guisborough through the Eston Hills, to Loftus in East Cleveland. It carried minerals from numerous iron ore mines along its route to the River Tees for shipment to Tyneside and elsewhere. The line was jointly proposed by the West Hartlepool Harbour and Railway (WHH&R), who provided half its capital, together with various landowners. The WHH&R lay on the north bank of the Tees, to which it had a cross-river connection via a jetty at Normanby.

The Cleveland Railway was built as a freight railway and provided no passenger services during its brief existence as an independently owned railway. It was built in a number of stages, bypassing the centre of Guisborough, and opened in November 1861. Its construction was repeatedly held up by disputes with its main rival, the Stockton and Darlington Railway, which attempted unsuccessfully to use all means at its disposal to maintain its rail monopoly south of the Tees. However, the Cleveland Railway remained independent only until 1865, when the company and its rivals were bought out by the North Eastern Railway (NER). The new management linked the line with an existing coastal railway via Saltburn, running north of the Eston Hills, and closed the line west of Guisborough in 1873 after only twelve years of service, though part of the line continued in service until 1966 as a freight route for a brickworks and carried passengers to Eston between 1902 and 1929. The NER constructed four passenger stations at the eastern end of the line in the 1870s. These were closed between 1958–1964 along with the section of the line from Guisborough to Brotton, but the easternmost part of the line is still in use today as a mineral railway.