Railway wagons and carriages are rather an unusual Feature of the Season as this former railway infrastructure has been re-used and are therefore out of their original context.
Railway wagon, close to theroadside, Upper Wensleydale
Railway wagons and carriages have sometimes been re-used when they were replaced by more up-to-date rolling stock. In the Yorkshire Dales it is probable that most railway wagons seen today came into agricultural use during the 1960s following the closure of many branch lines prompted by Doctor Richard Beeching’s 1963 report, ‘The Reshaping of British Railways’.
A major use of the Wensleydale Railway and other lines around the fringes of the Yorkshire Dales had been for transporting livestock. The Redmire to Hawes section of the Wensleydale Railway closed to goods and freight traffic in 1964, although passenger services had been withdrawn some five years earlier. Farmers would have quickly seen the opportunity to use redundant wagons as small farm buildings in the same way that redundant shipping containers are now an almost universal form of low cost storage.
Most railway wagons were of high quality hardwood timber construction, sometimes with a metal frame. They normally had central sliding side doors - some also had end doors. The wagons were relatively easy to remove from their underframes and many were small and light enough to be manoeuvred into often quite remote locations.
It is probable that most wagons ended up on farms close to former railway lines, but we don’t know this for certain. The longest section of disused line in the National Park is in Wensleydale, where the North East Railway ran to Hawes and continued on to join with the former Midland Railway on the Settle–Carlisle line. On the western fringe of the National Park, the North Western Railway line ran through Clapham and Ingleton to Sedbergh, while the Yorkshire Dales Railway (also Midland) originally ran to Threshfield. Further north, the Tebay branch ran from Tebay to Barnard Castle.
For the last 50 years the reused railway stock has been a characteristic feature of the farming landscape but it is gradually disappearing as the ravages of time and lack of maintenance take their toll. Elsewhere in the country railway carriages were converted into domestic accommodation while others were adapted for use as shelters or changing rooms in playing fields. We are keen to learn if there are any examples of such use in the Yorkshire Dales.
