The railway

Last updated: 23 March 2006

Plashetts station stood on the Border Counties Railway, the line that once linked Hexham with Riccarton Junction and so with the Waverley. The station opened with the remainder of that line in 1862. It was a single platform, with sidings for the colliery and a tall water tower that showed above the trees. Passenger services ended in 1956. The line closed in 1958. For a generation it had been the way the coal went out and the way the world came in.

The story of the line is told in the mining gallery, with a photograph of the tower and a copy of a working timetable. The running-in board is kept under the eaves of the old station building, now Commission storage. The name photographs clearly. The platform face may still be read from the old yard. The station site itself is no longer laid out for visitors; the formation has gone back to woodland and to the later uses of the valley. The parish walk does not follow the railway and does not follow the waggonway, though both can be read in the ground by those who like to look.

Those approaching by public transport should read Getting Here: by rail. The nearest stations now are Hexham and, for some services, Haltwhistle. There is no Sunday bus in winter from Bellingham. Parts of the old formation in the valley now lie toward the water, which is a chapter of its own and is administered separately.