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DANBY WISKE is an agricultural village about four miles north-west of Northallerton. Its name suggests that Danish invaders once settled there, and, in more recent times, East Coast Main Line passengers also alighted there.
The station at Danby Wiske was fairly busy – at its peak, at least ten trains a day called in, and there was a siding for farming goods trains to rest in.
Plus, on the track, there were unusual troughs where water-guzzling steam locomotives filled up in the most spectacular fashion.
Just before Christmas, searching for information, Memories published a picture of the station which was demolished soon after it closed in 1958. Today there’s just a bare patch on the east side of the mainline where it stood, although the stationmaster’s house still stands on the west side.
Responses to our request were many and various.
First of all, Roger Jennings sent in some details of the station.
The mainline opened in 1841, but it wasn’t until June 5, 1884, that the North Eastern Railway decided to build a station at Danby Wiske. Railway architect William Bell, who was building Darlington’s Bank Top station, knocked out a “half-hipped roof” design that he went on to use on several other small stations.
The station cost £361 6s 4d, and opened on December 1, 1884 – the Darlington & Stockton Times giving it a paragraph.
Says Roger: “The delay in opening is interesting, because between 1841 and 1884, the population of the village dropped from 546 to around 290.”
In 1887, five northbound and five southbound trains stopped there every day, plus two in each direction on Sundays.
The movement of farming goods was obviously an important part of the business case for Danby Wiske station, and Geoff Solomon in the village reports that there was talk of a major railway yard being developed off the siding.
But around the time the station was opened, a long, shallow water trough was added between the tracks on the line nearby.
Non-stop steam engines travelling from London to Edinburgh and Aberdeen needed to fill their tanks with a couple of thousand gallons of water every 50 to 100 miles.
Shallow troughs hundreds of yards long were placed between the rails and fed with water...