Potteries Loop Line

v t e Potteries Loop Line
Legend
West Coast Main Line to Congleton Mow Cop and Scholar Green Crewe–Derby line to Crewe Kidsgrove Central Kidsgrove Liverpool Road Closed 1964 Market Street Halt Closed 1950 Kidsgrove (Harecastle North) Tunnel 130 yd 119 m Kidsgrove (Harecastle South) Tunnel 1766 yd 1615 m Goldenhill Tunnel Newchapel and Goldenhill Closed 1964 Pitts Hill Closed 1964 Tunstall Closed 1964 Pinnox branch Burslem Closed 1964 Cobridge Closed 1964 Longport Cobridge Tunnel Waterloo Road Closed 1943 Hanley Closed 1964 Etruria junction Etruria Closed 2005 Cliffe Vale Halt Closed 1865 Newcastle Junction closed line to Newcastle-under-Lyme Stoke-on-Trent West Coast Main Line to Stone

The Potteries Loop Line was a

• 
  Stoke Station 1965
• 
  Burslem Station 1962

The line was authorised and constructed as follows:

• Etruria - Shelton: authorised for construction on 2 July 1847, opening for goods in 1850 and passengers in January 1862.
• Shelton - Hanley: authorised for construction on 13 August 1859, opening to goods on 20 December 1861 and passengers on 13 July 1864.

North Staffordshire Railway (Potteries Loop Line) Act 1865
Act of Parliament
28 & 29 Vict. c. cccxxxix

The entire section to the NSR main line at Kidsgrove was authorised on 5 July 1865 opening as follows:

• Hanley - Burslem: opened to passengers and goods on 1 November 1873.
• Burslem - Tunstall: opened to passengers and goods on 1 December 1873.
• Tunstall - Goldenhill: opened to passengers and goods on 1 October 1874.
• Goldenhill - Kidsgrove: opened to passengers and goods on 15 November 1875.

With the towns that the line served being located on hilltops, the geography of the route was renowned for its severe gradients and sharp curves, especially around Tunstall, Burslem and Hanley.^[2]

Leaving the main line at Etruria Junction, the line turned almost back on itself to proceed eastwards and passed through part of the

The Loop's heyday was the early part of the 20th century. In 1910 there were almost 40 trains a day using the route, operated mainly by trains composed of close-coupled four wheel coaches.[2]

By 1910, Hanley had become the largest of the Six Towns, but the line only served the areas where a fraction of Hanley's workforce lived. From the 1920s the line began to fall victim to road competition. A traffic survey carried out in the middle of 1956 showed that one mid-morning train carried just four passengers, three of whom were railwaymen travelling for free.^[3] Services were cut back later that year and by 1961 there were just five passenger trains daily from Stoke-on-Trent to Hanley and Tunstall, none of which ran outside the peak hours.^[2]

As far as goods traffic was concerned, much of it had been transferred to road as the 1950s dawned.^[2]

The

Freight workings continued for some years afterwards. In 1967 trains were frequently diverted onto the Loop Line between Longport and Kidsgrove via the Pinnox branch during the electrification of the West Coast Main Line, the upgrading of which involved construction of a new line avoiding the Harecastle tunnel.^[4]

The section from Etruria to Waterloo Road remained open for

On 24 September 1972 British Rail ran a special passenger service on the line as an experiment to see whether a revival of passenger services on what remained of the line was commercially viable.[5]

The northern part of the route remained open until 1976 to transport