The new railway in use 1857-1858
After the 30 March 1857 opening of the East Maitland to Hexham part of the Great Northern Railway, the trains began to steam their way between the two locations and on to Newcastle’s Honeysuckle Railway Station. The published train timetable along with newspaper reports indicate the uses - and the challenges encountered - in the first few months.
Goods
The timetable details distances, departure and arrival times, the rates for carting different types of goods, the cost of tickets for passengers, and restrictions on luggage and other items. The detailed lists under each of the four classes of goods (each class relating to a different rate) provides an indication of the wide variety of goods that were expected to be transported by rail.
Timetable for trains running between Newcastle (Honeysuckle Station ) and East Maitland.
(Maitland Mercury, 28 March 1857).
Further indications of the goods transported by rail comes from an article in the Maitland Mercury on 21 May 1857 that observes: ‘A considerable quantity of fresh meat has been taken into Newcastle by rail.’ It also notes that a meat-van was presently under construction and a horse box was being made, which was expected to receive considerable use. A number of live sheep had been transported by rail and mine owners were looking to the railway to haul their coal wagons to the port at a negotiated rate per ton. Conversely, fresh fish from Newcastle were arriving daily in East Maitland on the train.
Floods
On 10 September 1857 the Mercury reported on the recent successive floods ‘breaking up’ the railway line between Newcastle and Hexham, with repairs likely to take four to six weeks. Roads and bridges were similarly affected and the river channel considerably altered. The paper observed:
Thus the railway, the ordinary roads, and the river, are all alike injured by the one cause, the excessive floods.
Communications between the two population centres was interrupted for some weeks. Full rail services were restored on 21 September.
Smoking
Smoking in railway carriages was an issue for some travellers. A person who called himself Viator wrote in a letter to the editor of the Mercury published on 14 November 1857:
Allow me to appeal to you, as guardians of public propriety, against a breach of "good manners" becoming now very prevalent. During the last month I have travelled several times on the railway, to and from Newcastle; and on each occasion, after the delivery of the tickets at Hexham, smoking has been commenced in the train. This is, I believe, contrary to the by-laws of the railway, and liable to a fine; but it is most certainly contrary to the rules which ought to regulate gentlemanly behaviour, especially in the presence of ladies. 1 trust that this notice of the evil, through you, will be sufficient to check the practice of which I complain, and that it will not be necessary to appeal to the Railway Commissioners for the enforcement of the law.
Observance of the Sabbath
The railway was also in the sights of a group called the Maitland Lord’s Day Observance Society. Its first annual public meeting in December 1857 in the Free Presbyterian Church, West Maitland, attracted about 300 people. The meeting particularly singled out butchers, bakers and publicans as perpetrators of the evil of Sabbath desecration. Attention also turned attention to the railway:
The permission of railway traffic on the Sabbath, your committee felt to be a public sin and serious evil, and they thought it right to express their views on this subject, hoping that at least some good might result.
The Society appealed to the Government, but nothing came of it, as it was considered a public service and in any case it was a means of transport to convey parishioners to Church.
Extensions to the railway
From early on the railway was to extend either side of the current end of the line: to go west and north from East Maitland, and to extend into Newcastle from the Honeysuckle Railway Station.
By November 1857, William Wright was carrying out the extension of the railway from Honeysuckle to Watt Street, Newcastle, and plans for the passenger station were on display. The goods line was to extend to the deep water wharf (Queens Wharf) at the port.
The Mercury announced the completion of the railway extension to Newcastle on 18 March 1858, and noted that trains would start using the new terminus the next day. The following day, Waratah Railway Station was opened for service.
Newcastle Railway Station, 1890.
This building, constructed in the late 1870s, replaced the original Newcastle Railway Station.
The other extension to the railway line built at this time was the link between East and West Maitland. The building of this stretch of the railway is the focus of Part 5 of my account of the building of the Great Northern Railway.
