The Hull, Barnsley and West Riding Junction Railway and Dock Company (HB&WRJR&DCo.) was opened on 20 July 1885. It had a total projected length of but never reached Barnsley, stopping a few miles short at Stairfoot. The name was changed to the Hull and Barnsley Railway (H&BR) in 1905. Its Alexandra Dock in Hull opened 16 July 1885.
The main line ran from Hull to Cudworth, with two other lines branching off at Wrangbrook Junction, the South Yorkshire Junction Railway to Denaby, and The Hull & South Yorkshire Extension Railway, an branch to Wath-upon-Dearne, opened 31 March 1902. The company also had joint running powers on the Hull and Barnsley and Great Central Joint Railway (Gowdall and Braithwell Railway).
Before the Grouping of 1923, the line was taken over by the North Eastern Railway (NER). Following incorporation into the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER), duplicated infrastructure was closed or reduced in function – notably Cannon Street station and the Springhead Locomotive Works.
Closure of the greater part of the main line itself came during the time of British Railways. As of 2011 the elevated line in Hull with some of the extensions and alterations added by the NER and LNER are still in use and referred to as the Hull Docks Branch and as the Engineer's Line Reference of HJS.
Background By the 19th century the coalfields of southern Yorkshire were producing large amounts of coal, the industrialised midland region was making manufactured goods, and the new industrial towns of the West Riding of Yorkshire and of Lancashire were producing cloth and other goods. Thus opportunities for trade, export and profit existed along the east coast of England as well as along the Humber and the tributary rivers feeding it.
Goole had risen from nothing as a port on the Ouse with the creation of the Knottingley to Goole Canal in 1826 by the Aire and Calder Canal Company; the port, built to generous specifications rapidly gained inward and outward trade – much to the chagrin of Hull, and spurred the development of the extension of the Leeds and Selby Railway to Hull which opened in 1840. Additionally the North Eastern Railway – which had a monopoly on rail transport to Hull – prevented other rail companies investing there, and so Goole gained its own railway by the Wakefield, Pontefract and Goole Railway (later part of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway) in 1848. A custom-built railway dock and the use of specialised coal barges and unloading facilities, as well as the backing of the Aire and Calder Canal company, made it a very viable competitor to Hull for trade.
Additionally, as a competitor to the port of Hull (and equally well placed for European trade), Grimsby began to grow after the 1840s when the Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway Company built a rail connection, and the Royal Dock was completed in 1852.
Hull had expanded rapidly during the 18th century with shipping tonnages increasing over ten times in that period, and numerous docks supplementing and connecting Old Dock (Queen's Dock) being built by the Dock company in the 19th: Humber Dock 1809, Junction Dock (Prince's Dock) 1829, by 1846 Railway Dock connected to the Hull and Selby Railway (later part of the NER), as well as Victoria Dock (1850), Albert Dock (1869) and St Andrews Dock (1883). Despite all this activity, the Dock company was criticised for lack of action – specifically with regard to construction of facilities that would make Hull a foremost coal-exporting port. Additionally, the NER – whose interests in the north-east of England were in competition with Hull, and which held a monopoly on rail transport to Hull – was viewed with mistrust, suspicion, dissatisfaction and even hate, so much that schemes for independent railways or a company other than the NER were proposed that would build a line to Hull, including a bridge over, and tunnels under, the Humber were being actively promoted by Hull merchants.
The situation became untenable when, in 1872, with the NER refusing or unable to transport shipments from the port, deliveries of fish were delayed, and there was a general traffic jam on the rails:The running powers granted by the NER to the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway to its goods depot at Kingston Street (1873) in Hull may have exacerbated the situation.
The plans finally found fruition in 1880 in the charge of Col. Gerald Smith (a Hull banker) and through the cooperation of the Hull Corporation (including the sale of land to the railway, and an investment of £100,000). As part of the Hull Corporation's involvement with the scheme came the power to veto any joint workings with other railway companies or selling or leasing of land, and despite the opposition of the NER (which had been instrumental in blocking previous plans), the parliamentary bill was passed with minor alterations as the (43 & 44 Vict. c. cxcix) on 26 August 1880. The Hull, Barnsley and West Riding Junction Railway and Dock Company (formed 1879) began work on the new line and associated deep-water dock which was completed by 1885.
The HB&WRJ Railway and Dock Company
In full, the Hull, Barnsley and West Riding Junction Railway and Dock Company.
Construction (1880–1885) For construction of the line Parliament authorised a share issue of £3,000,0000 and loans of £1,000,000. The engineer for the main line was William Shelford, whilst Stephen Best was responsible for the Hull section, and Benjamin Baker designed the Alexandra Dock. The contractors were Messrs. Lucas and Aird.
The line was one of the earlier built with the aid of steam navvies. The spoil excavated by men and machines from tunnels and cuttings was used to build embankments elsewhere Around 8,000 navvies, including both Scots and Irish as well as English, were employed in the constructions, the largest concentration of which was to be found at Riplingham (near to the Drewton tunnel). The average wage was 15 shillings for a 58-hour week.
The Weedley Tunnel was not originally planned; the track was to skirt the hill to the south. However unstable ground meant that the line tunnelled through the hill instead.Building the Hull and Barnsley Railway, 1985, p. 24 The South Kirkby tunnel passed through Magnesian Limestone to reach the lower beds of sandstone, and clay. Excavation of tunnels and cuttings included the practice of tunnelling into the rock, placing charges, then moving up the contractors wagons and detonating the charges so that the blasted rock would fall into the wagons.Building the Hull and Barnsley Railway, 1985, p. 20
One of the notable features of the line was the number of bridges it required, a result of the elevated nature of the Hull section where it crossed roads, waterways, and the line of the NER. Additionally, being built after the Railway Mania of the 1840s it had to cross numerous already existent lines in southern Yorkshire. Over one hundred bridges were required, with over 20 within the urban area of Hull alone.C. T. Goode in Railways of Hull quotes a figure of 35 within the town boundary (undated), whilst G.D. Parkes (The Hull and Barnsley Railway) notes nine substantial underline bridges ... in the first four miles. A survey using Ordnance Survey maps of the period shows that there were more than 20 within the urbanised area. Later developments in Hull led to the construction or alteration of further bridges.
The majority (eighty eight) of the bridges were of plate girder construction with usually three plate sides (one central) supporting cross-beams on which the track was supported. For longer spans a girder "N" truss design was usedA close variation or example of the Pratt truss These larger bridges incorporate rollers on one end to allow for the thermal expansion of the bridge. For other long spans, and for the two swing bridges on the line (Ouse and Hull bridges), open girder truss of approximately parabolic shape (open truss bowstring) were used. Both swing bridges were manufactured by Messrs. Handyside of Derby.
In addition to wrought iron bridges, brick arches were also used, both for crossing small dykes and country lanes, as well as the abutments to bridges and in place of embankments on short sections between bridges.
At Beverley Road, Willerby & Kirk Ella, North Cave and Wallingfen were two-storey buildings with the upper storey accessing the embanked track. Stations were built in the English Queen Anne revival style – with decorative external brick courses between floors and brick lintels; minor embellishments on other brick structures such as bridge buttresses roughly echoed the same style.
In July 1884 work stopped for five months, through a failure to raise funds through a share issue to pay the workers. Parliament allowed the additional debts to be taken for the work to continue, by completion the total share issue was £6,000,000 and the loans £3,500,000. At this point the line was almost complete but the subsequent cost cutting meant that the planned grand terminus close to the centre of Hull was never built.
Description of the Line and assets
Hull to Springhead
Much of the assets of the Hull Barnsley and West Riding Junction Railway and Dock Company lay in Hull.The term 'junction' in the company's name means that it was a line that connected at a railway junction, rather than reaching a destination such as a major city; this junction (or junctions) lay at the Barnsley end of the line, meaning that there was relatively little infrastructure at that end. The line terminated in Hull at three main points: Alexandra Dock; for import and export of goods by sea, Cannon Street station (a goods station and also the passenger terminus), and Neptune Street goods station, the main goods terminus.
The HB&WRJR&DCo's main asset was Alexandra Dock. At the time of its construction it was the largest in Britain at and was expanded by in 1889. The entrance lock was long at wide. Two graving docks, one long and wide, the other a little bigger were also built at the north-east corner of the dock. Its primary purpose was the export of coal; in the opposite direction pit props, as well as cut wood were transported. Distances on the line (mileposts) were measured from Alexandra Dock, and the up direction was from Hull to Barnsley. From here the track rose, joining the embankment, and crossed Hedon Road,Hedon Road, now a section of the A1033 beginning its curved route round Hull by numerous bridges, crossing roads, drains, and the North Eastern Railway's own track, the first major crossing after Hedon Road being the NER's Hull to Withernsea Line. Next was a minor goods yard situated at Burleigh Street, then the Foredyke Stream (a drainage canal) and the NER's Hull to Hornsea Line were crossed close together. The line then crossed the River Hull at the Hull Bridge, and then branches (from the down direction) serving Sculcoates goods yard (southward) and the British Gas Light Company's gas works (northward). Westward from Sculcoates goods yard a spur ran backwards to serve Hull Corporation's own electricity power plant (opened 1895). After Sculcoates junction and the Beverley and Barmston Drain came Beverley Road junction where the line from Cannon Street station coming from the south-east joined the westward-travelling main line.