Wynyard railway station (England)

Wynyard railway station was a railway station on the Castle Eden branch of the North Eastern Railway (NER) from 1880 to 1931. It was located immediately to the south of the bridge carrying the Hartlepool to Sedgefield road (now part of the A689) and served little more than a few scattered hamlets, including Embleton and Swainston. Despite its name, the station was poorly situated for Wynyard Park which was better served by the neighbouring station at Thorpe Thewles.^[1]

History

The NER gained parliamentary powers to construct a line from Bowesfield Junction (where it joined the route of

Passenger traffic on the line was always light, the line having been built primarily to allow freight to bypass the congested lines through Stockton and Hartlepool. Wynyard station's remote location served a sparsely populated area and in 1911 there were just 4,064 tickets issued at Wynyard station (this compares with 13,133 issued at Carlton station in the same year) however station was relatively well used for transporting agricultural produce with 922 tons of hay and clover and 199 wagons of livestock loaded at the station in 1913. Despite the poor patronage, there were four stopping passenger trains over the line per day in each direction in 1910^[1] and the number increased to five each way by the 1930s.^[2]

There was an incident shortly before the

After the war, the northbound track was, on several occasions, used to store surplus wagons, making the line only passable to southbound trains. Wynyard station was eventually closed completely on 2 April 1951 though the line was still used by mineral traffic until 6 July 1966.[1]

After the line was closed and the tracks lifted, it was purchased by the two local authorities whose areas it passed through, meaning that the line through Wynyard came under the control of Durham County Council who converted it into the Castle Eden Walkway cycle path^[1] (now part of the Wynyard Woodland Park).^[3]

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