The rise and fall of the railways.

Of all the great advances and important engineering breakthroughs of the Victorian period, many would say the greatest of all was the railways. It opened up the country, providing affordable travel for the first time, for all. By the end of the 19th century almost everywhere, even the remotest of places could be accessed by the railway network.

During the early 1840s, many plans were proposed to bring the railways to Harrogate, most of which were dismissed out of hand. The two villages of High and Low Harrogate were in the grip of the hoteliers and they would accept nothing that threatened the peace and tranquility they thought so appealing to their wealthy aristocratic spa visitors. The following motion was unanimously carried at a public meeting held at The Queen Hotel (now Cedar Court) in November 1844.

"FOR THE FUTURE PROSPERITY OF HIGH AND LOW HARROGATE, IT IS EXPEDIENT THAT NO RAILWAY SHOULD IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCES BE BROUGHT WITHIN THE IMMEDIATE PRECINCTS OF EITHER PLACE".

The truth of the matter was that they didn't want the noise, they didn't want the smoke and pollution, but most of all, they didn't want their wealthy visitors being offended and put off returning by the lower orders taking advantage of relatively cheap rail fares and coming to Harrogate, not to stay in the hotels, but to flood the place with day-trippers, having picnics on The Stray and drinking in the ale houses.

One plan did seem to carry some merit. To build a railway from Bolton Percy to terminate at a station to serve both Harrogate and Knaresborough at Starbeck, but this plan was soon dropped when it was realised that a line basically from nowhere to nowhere, even though Bolton Percy had main line connections, would not be very financially viable.  

Eventually businessmen in Leeds wanted to build a line from Leeds to join the east coast main line at Thirsk, and this line, passing through Starbeck, would be accepted. Strangely, once a line passing through Starbeck, only yards from Starbeck's refurbished mineral spa was accepted, the people of Harrogate gave their support to a line into Harrogate itself. The line would come from Church Fenton in the district of Selby and terminate at a station near the junction of Leeds Road, Otley Road, West Park, and York Place. It would be known as The Brunswick station and would be on what is now part of The Stray, in front of Trinity Methodist Church, just a couple of hundred yards from Tewit well.

After contracts were negotiated, and allocated, work began on the Leeds & Thirsk railway on 20th October 1845 taking three years and ten months to complete. Viaducts over the rivers Wharfe, Crimple and Nidd needed to be built along with the excavation of the Bramhope tunnel. These held up completion long enough for the Church Fenton to Harrogate line to be completed first. However the first section of the Leeds & Thirsk railway, from Ripon to Weeton, passing through Starbeck, opened on 13 September 1848, with the line opening in full on 10th July 1849. The Harrogate Hotel (later The Henry Peacock), opened on the same day as the railway station, giving Starbeck a third hotel after the Star,  in it's original form, and the Spa Inn, now the Prince of Wales.

As early as 1847 while the line was still under construction, concerns were raised about the likely hold ups caused by a level crossing at Starbeck. A bridge was requested, but was rejected due to animal welfare concerns over horses crossing a bridge and being startled by trains passing beneath them. It was supposed that horses would be much more comfortable standing at a whicker gate while trains passed by their noses. Meanwhile over 175 years, and no fewer than three failed by-pass schemes later, the matter remains unresolved.

A line from York via Knaresborough was due to open at the same time but due to shoddy workmanship, when close to completion, the Knaresborough viaduct collapsed on 11th March 1848. The falling stone blocked the river causing flooding, and the lime in the water killed thousands of fish.  Further hold ups occurred after the stone was reclaimed from the river bed and the workers found out that the contract to rebuild the viaduct had been awarded to another company. This news resulted in a riot during which the disgruntled workers threw the stone back into the river. The situation, was beyond control, was only finally settled by the outbreak of a particularly heavy thunderstorm. Following the rebuild of the viaduct the line from York opened on 18th August 1851. With much less fuss, a branch line to Pateley Bridge opened on May 1st 1862,  and a branch line from Knaresborough to Boroughbridge opened on 1st April 1875.

Starbeck was now well connected in every direction, while Harrogate boasted only a line from Church Fenton, which the hoteliers of Harrogate again soon found unsatisfactory. They worried that some of their wealthy visitors faced a mile long carriage journey after alighting at Starbeck, where there was both spa and hotel facilities, and some were even staying there! Complaints in the press included the accusation that THEIR visitors were forced to disembark at "Starbeck's sunken back yard of a station".  Strong words from a community who's own station was constructed of temporary wooden structures and former farm buildings, so embarrassing to the town, that no pictures of it exist. 

The result of this commotion was that on 1st August 1862 a new central station opened in Harrogate with a loop line connecting their Church Fenton line to the Leeds & Thirsk line just north of Starbeck station that even crossed the until now sacrosanct Stray, and another to join the same line east of Pannal. The benefits to Harrogate  were manyfold, including giving the Harrogate station the same connections to the north through Thirsk, the east through York, the west and affluent south through Leeds, that Starbeck enjoyed. For Starbeck, it had little or no positive effect and vastly reduced the station's passenger trade. But Starbeck was never just about passenger traffic. It benefitted from a central position with good connections, and by 1858 the Starbeck railway facilities boasted a large marshalling yard complete with engine shed, goods, coal, and livestock facilities. The livestock facilities alone were busy enough to keep two abattoirs in business.

Soon the railway facilities drew in other industries. A steam corn mill at the end of Stonefall Avenue, later an ice factory, a malt works, a jam and preserve factory, a mineral water bottling plant, and two quarries with brick and tile works, and a third a little further away beside Wetherby Road and numerous small businesses sprang up taking advantage of what the railway had to offer and the drastic rise in population.

The railways were directly responsible for the rise in population from 800 in 1889 to 4000 in 1904. By 1882 Starbeck was dealing with 35 passenger and 85 goods trains every day. The gates must have been closed more often than open. In 1908 the North Eastern Railway Company employed 500 men at Starbeck.

In 1889 the station was extended onto both sides of the tracks and a roof was added, and the platforms were raised. In 1903 the subway was excavated to replace a footbridge that was installed following the tragedy that befell miss Florence Hudson, who was hit by a train and killed while crossing the line to visit the post office, which was then situated on the down (Harrogate bound) platform of the station on 25th November 1882.

The railways have always been a dangerous place and accidents, many fatal, have always been commonplace at Starbeck. Years before Florence Hudson, a workhouse inmate was killed crossing the line in 1857. On September 1st 1890, a young girl was killed falling from a train at Starbeck, after two men returning from an outing to Scarborough, failed to close the door properly when alighting at Knaresborough.  There were no fatalities when on Sunday 29th January 1893 when a Darlington bound goods train ran through buffers and came to a halt some nine feet inside the signal box, destroying the mechanism. The signalman escaping injury by jumping out of the opposite window. It is a  credit to the ingenuity of the day that the locomotive was back on the rails within two hours, and by Monday morning all trains were running as normal. On Thursday 2nd August 1906, a railway fireman named Richard Norris was crossing the line on his way to work when he was hit by a Hull bound excursion train. He died instantly, his body badly mutilated. On 29th June 1907 Charles Ellis, a goods porter, was injured when a beer barrel, property of T & R Theakstone of Masham, exploded in his face causing facial and hand injuries. A thirty one year old pilot guard called Herbert Rivers was knocked down by a "dolly signal" and a passing train crushed his legs on 28th November 1907. He was rushed to Harrogate Infirmary (now St Peter's school) where both his legs were amputated, he died later that day.

Miraculously nobody was injured in the early evening of 3rd March 1972 when a runaway train from Harrogate goods yard crashed through the gates at Starbeck before eventually slowing down enough to be stopped near Cattal. The present barriers replaced the wooden gates at Starbeck and Belmont crossings in 1974.

Flourishing for over a hundred years, things started to go wrong for Starbeck's railway industry during the early 1950s  The first thing to go was the Pateley Bridge branch line which closed to passengers on 31st March 1951 (finally closing completely 31st October 1964). Also in 1951, it was discovered that the internal arches of the Crimple Low viaduct had decayed to become unsafe beyond financially viable repair and the line from Starbeck to Pannal closed to passenger traffic on 12th September. The last goods train crossed the viaduct on 7th October 1951.

The closure of the Pannal line affected both goods and marshalling business including work for the locomotive shed. On 13 September 1959 the marshalling yard and loco/engine shed closed down for good. The shed was knocked down in 1962 after the roof was removed to be installed at Holbeck, Leeds, and the west wall was blown down during heavy gales. 

In March 1967 passenger services were withdrawn from the Starbeck to Ripon line, and the last goods train on the line passed from Starbeck to Northallerton on 9th October 1969. With the introduction of conductor/guards, all staff were withdrawn from Starbeck station on 15th June 1969. With the exception of Octavius Atkinson's sidings and the air ministry fuel depot on Bogs Lane, all goods facilities were withdrawn from Starbeck on 5th October 1970. By the end of 1985 Atkinson's sidings and the air ministry fuel depot had gone also.

Having fallen into disrepair due to neglect the station, goods sheds, and coal depot were demolished during the winter of 1978-79. It was over. Today both the north and south yards have been redeveloped and only the long length of the station platforms remain to remind us of what once happened here.