Aerial photograph of Barnard Castle
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Teesdale's oldest engine driver
Mar 18, 2008
UNTIL a few years ago, the Teesdale Mercury had far fewer pages than it has now, so if you look back at some of the old editions you don't often find much in the way of biographical details about local individuals.
A hundred years ago for instance, the Mercury was made up of many short pieces - longer items were few and far between. One such that caught my eye was the life story of Thomas Reay Richardson who lived in King Street in Barnard Castle in the early years of the last century. His career was one that would make any overgrown schoolboy who grew up between the Wars - or even as late as the 1950s - turn green with envy. For Thomas Richardson drove steam trains on the Stainmore line for 38 years! When he retired, he was described in the paper as the oldest engine driver in the service.
Mr Richardson was born in 1838 and while really just a boy he went to work at the Adelaide Colliery, right on the edge of the Durham coalfield, not far from the Shildon tunnel. At one time, 500 men - or rather men and boys - worked at that pit. They dug for coal that was destined to be shipped from Middlesbrough via the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Because of this the colliery needed its own railway tracks and its own steam locomotives. Thomas Richardson soon found himself out of the pit and working instead as a fireman on one of Pease and Company's colliery locomotives. With a few years experience behind him, he graduated to the more elevated status of engine driver.
It seems that steam engines loomed large in this particular branch of the Richardson family. Thomas's older brother had previously been a fireman on ‘The Number One Engine'. This was of course ‘Locomotion No. 1', one of the earliest and most famous steam locomotives in the world - still to be seen at the North Road Railway Museum in Darlington. And if you visit Beamish Museum you can see a splendid full-scale working replica of this historic engine.
Thomas's elder brother didn't remain a fireman but progressed to being an engine driver. He was present at the opening of the Barnard Castle branch line in 1854 as well as at that of the Barnard Castle to Tebay line seven years later. The elder Richardson then continued on his upward rise in the North Eastern Railway and eventually appears to have reached the rank of manager. So it was that in 1867 he was able to offer his younger brother Thomas, then aged 29, the prized job of engine driver on the Stockton and Darlington section of the North Eastern Railway.
Almost from the start of his long career Thomas Richardson drove a train on the railway line over Stainmore. This line wasn't always part of the North Eastern Railway. Railway history is most confusing because it is full of take-overs and mergers. The South Durham and Lancashire Union Railway had completed the Stainmore line in 1861.
However, in the same year the Company was taken over by the Stockton and Darlington Railway Company. Then in 1862 the S & DR Company was in its turn merged with the North Eastern Railway, which still later became the London & North Eastern Railway - convoluted isn't it? People don't really like change and many years after these mergers the Stainmore Line was still being called the South Durham & Lancashire Union line. And although Mr. Richardson was an NER man, he would most likely have described himself as a driver on the South Durham and Lancashire Union.
Some of you may have seen a mighty express locomotive in a railway museum, resplendent in the apple green livery of the LNER. However the train Thomas Richardson drove wasn't quite the same as these LNER trains. For one thing, the old NER used a paler green livery before it became the LNER. Railway enthusiasts evidently call it ‘Darlington Green' as opposed to the LNER's ‘Doncaster Green'. Another difference was the size - locomotives on the Stainmore line were much smaller than those heading for places such as King's Cross. This was due to the weight restrictions on some of the viaducts on the route, such as the one at Deepdale.
Working on one of the highest lines in the country must have had its good and bad sides. On the one hand, the driver could enjoy some magnificent scenery and views - on the other hand there was always the risk of getting stuck in the snow during the winter.
Mr Richardson recalled being snowed up on many occasions, including an all night stay near Barras station, when the passengers had to spend the night in the stationmaster's office. Incidentally, if like me you always thought that the word ‘railroad' was the American version of the good old British ‘railway', think on. According to the Mercury, Driver Richardson would have talked about the Stainmore ‘Road' rather than the ‘Railway'.
Thomas Richardson was sixty-seven years of age when he retired in 1905. No other driver could break his service record, for the LNER regulations were changed to bar anyone over sixty-five from driving locomotives.
A few years later, he and his wife celebrated a different kind of longevity when they celebrated their golden wedding at the Victoria Hall in Barney. That was not a common occurrence in those days, but was perhaps fitting for a man who had driven trains over more than a million miles during his lifetime.
First published in the Mercury, March 5, 2008