Freight and semaphores on the North-East coast

Loss of semaphore signalling on the soon-to-be-reopened Northumberland Line and at Billingham/Norton-on-Tees has left previous few outposts of mechanical signalling in North-East England, with the last few being along the Tyne Valley line, at Winning on the line to North Blyth, Shildon and at Nunthorpe on the Esk Valley Line.

One other location that I had long wished to visit and photograph is Crag Hall near Saltburn, where a rather unattractive North Eastern Railway box dating from 1878 controls a freight-only route from Saltburn West Junction to Boulby Potash Mine on the long-closed coastal railway route to Whitby.

Crag Hall stands roughly mid-way along this scenic 12-mile long line and is a junction for the nearby Skinningrove steel works, which also produces rail traffic, though rather less regular than the flow of Freightliner Class 66-powered services to and from the Boulby mine.

There are a total of seven semaphores controlled by the 30-lever Crag Hall frame. In the up (westbound) direction these are an outer home (CH1), home (CH3) and starter (CH4) while in the eastbound direction there is an outer home (CH27), a bracket housing CH23 for the steelworks branch and CH26 for the Boulby route, and starter CH25 at the end of a passing loop on the Boulby line.

2024 marks a significant historical landmark for the Boulby route, as it is 50 years since opening of the mine in 1974 and re-opening of four miles of the former Whitby line as far as Boulby, as well as Crag Hall Signal Box, on 1 April 1974. That was 14 years after closure of the truncated Whitby line between Middlesbrough and the town of Loftus, just east of Crag Hall, in May 1960.

Spending a couple of nights in Middlesbrough to hopefully see and photograph some freight action at Crag Hall, my journey there involved an hour-long ride on the Arriva X4 (Middlesbrough-Whitby) bus from Middlesbrough Bus Station to a village called Carlin How, from where I had read that there was a path leading towards the railway just west of the signal box.

That X4 bus journey is rather impressive and gives you some marvellous views of the coast at Redcar and then at Saltburn-by-the-Sea, where there is a challenging zig-zag descent down to beach level at the Ship Inn before the road heads inland and later passes the remarkably well-preserved former station at Brotton.

Once at Carlin How there is a farm track leading down to a crossing of the railway line just west of the signal box, but the scope for good train and semaphore shots is limited to up home signal 3 close to the signal box as both arms of the bracket housing signals CH23/CH26 are obscured by sighting boards.

But for a fine panoramic view of trains approaching the signal box from Saltburn West I found a great vantage point standing on the pavement just west of the nearby Crag Hall roundabout, where with a zoom lens there is a good shot of trains passing down outer home signal CH27 and then a side view as they approach the junction bracket.

Faced with a morning (25 June 2024) when very little seemed to be running, I decided to walk along the Cleveland Way coastal path back to the Ship Inn at Saltburn. This is a magnificent walk over the cliffs, with a scenic stretch close to the railway at the northern section of its horseshoe-shaped route around Warsett Hill.

Having seen that all the “runs as required” services were not operating it was slightly annoying to spot a Freightliner 66593 working light engine to Boulby while on this walk, and even more annoying to later get a distant sighting of it piloting a classmate on the heavily-delayed 6F32 from Boulby to Middlesbrough.

But after a welcome pint at the Ship Inn I took an X4 bus back to Crag Hall where, from a vantage point on a footpath alongside Gripps Farm, I was rewarded by the sight of 66051 in the attractive Maritime light blue livery arriving with 6N40 from Tees N.Y. to Skinningrove and passing 66553 departing with a heavily-delayed 6F24 from Boulby to Middlesbrough.

Rounding off my second day on Teesside, and waiting for a delayed X4 bus at Crag Hall roundabout, I was able to see 66593 once again as it headed back to Boulby from Middlesbrough with yet another heavily-delayed working (6F33), which was running 95 minutes late.