Out & About …

… on the North York Moors, or wherever I happen to be.

Paddy Waddell’s Railway

Paddy Waddell’s Railway was never built. A pipedream project beset with problems from the outset, politics and competition from other railway companies. The official name would have been The Cleveland Extension Mineral Railway and link the ironstone mines at Glaisdale with the North East Railway at Skelton. The embankment and cutting on the left were some of the few sections that were actually built in the 1870s but no track was ever laid. The main contractor for the line was John Waddell & Sons of Edinburgh, a respectable company, who were also involved with building the Scarborough and Whitby railways. Site supervision was under an Irish engineer named Gallaher who was referred locally as Mr. Waddell hence the route became known as Paddy Waddell’s Railway. After several false starts the project was rekindled in 1896 but nothing ever came of it and it was abandoned for good.


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3 responses to “Paddy Waddell’s Railway”

  1. […] I’ve written about Paddy Waddell’s Railway before, the railway that never was. A grand plan devised in the 1870s to link the ironstone mines at Glaisdale with the North East Railway at Skelton. Embankments were built and cuttings excavated and just one bridge was constructed here at Rake House near Lealholm just before the line was supposed to have bridged the River Esk. The damp cuttings of the bridge have been transformed into a wildlife pond. But no rails were ever laid. Rake House itself was a 17th-century inn where the Irish navvies would spend their evenings. It is now a private residence. Open Space Web-Map builder Code //declare marker variables var pos, size, offset, infoWindowAnchor, icon, content, popUpSize; function initmapbuilder() { //initiate the map var options = {resolutions: [2500, 1000, 500, 200, 100, 50, 25, 10, 5, 4, 2.5, 2, 1]}; osMap = new OpenSpace.Map('map', options); //configure map options (basicmap.js) setglobaloptions(); //set the center of the map and the zoom level osMap.setCenter(new OpenSpace.MapPoint(477826,506884),7); // add a marker pos = new OpenSpace.MapPoint(477769,506571); size = new OpenLayers.Size(33,45); offset = new OpenLayers.Pixel(-16,-36); infoWindowAnchor = new OpenLayers.Pixel(16,16); icon = new OpenSpace.Icon('https://openspace.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/osmapapi/img_versions/img_1.0.1/OS/images/markers/marker_red.png', size, offset, null, infoWindowAnchor); osMap.createMarker(pos, icon, null, null);} […]

  2. […] the casting but they’re too corroded to be readable. It is close (100m or so) to the line of the railway that was never built, so my best guess so far is that it’s some scrap left over from the building of the […]

  3. Barry Stonehouse avatar
    Barry Stonehouse

    I have never seen any thing about the start of the railway at Kilton in the fork to Kilton mine and Lingdale mine just up from bridge parapet leading of is a cutting unfinished

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