North Road railway shops in Darlington are nearly forgotten

For a century, the North Road workshops in Darlington were the town’s biggest employer. The shops built and maintained a major portion of the nation’s railway fleet, including through two world wars, and they created a way of life for thousands and generations of railwaymen and their families.

Making diesel engines in the erecting shop in early 1962

When their closure was first mooted in the early 1960s, pictures show practically the whole town turned out to protest, marching on High Row, waving angry placards.

A huge protest against the closure of the shops and the Beeching Axe on September 3, 1942

It did no good. The shops opened on January 1, 1863 closed on April 1, 1966. Just like in Durham when a pit shut, a way of life – in those railwaymen’s terraces – closed down with it.

Men leaving North Road Shops, Darlington, on September 19, 1962, following the announcement that the railway works were to close.

And, numerically, it wasn’t just the 4,000 jobs that were lost but the skills that went with them: millwrights, coppersmiths, brassmoulders, joiners, patternmakers.

The site stood derelict until 1980 when Morrisons supermarket was built on it, clearing away the workshops so that only a few out-buildings on Whessoe Road at the rear survived – curiously, one of the last was the unroofed urinal that survived with a tree growing out of it until recently.

An Edwardian postcard showing the North Road railway workshops in Darlington. Morrisons supermarket is now on this spot, although the clock is in the same position, only hanging from a different wall

Fortunately, the clock which since 1894 had hung over the workmen’s entrance to the shops was saved. It still hangs in the same bit of air but is now suspended from the wall of the supermarket.

Sadie Lynch, the 92-year-old widow of a North Road shops worker, unveils the plaque which now hangs beneath the landmark clock on the Morrisons wall, with Niccy Hallifax, Chris Lloyd, Lola McEvoy and Shaun Campbell, who were on the green plaque advisory

A quiet few moments outside the North Road shops – it must be mid-shift

North Road Locomotive Works in Darlington circa 1900

A postcard view of about 1910 inside the erecting shop at North Road works

Bo-Bo No 13, a pioneering electric engine, being built in the North Road works in Darlington just before the First World War

Girls in the Darlington shell shop at the North Road works during the First World War. Picture courtesy of Darlington Centre for Local Studies

Five trolleybuses make their way down North Road, Darlington, near where Morrisons is today

The Air Raid Precautions wardens at the North Road shops in the Second World War

Workers spill out of shops and businesses in North Road on Thursday, January 21, 1960

Tackling the blaze in a timber yard in the former North Road railway shops in 1973

Green plaque unveilings in Darlington. 5.12.2025 Photograph: Stuart Boulton/The Northern Echo

Green plaque unveilings in Darlington. 5.12.2025 Photograph: Stuart Boulton/The Northern Echo

One of Memories’ favourite projects of 2025 was helping Darlington MP Lola McEvoy create a green plaque scheme to mark some of the town’s most historic places. As Memories 761 told, the first three were unveiled in early December and we have another three railway-related ones in the pipeline.

One of the first went on the supermarket wall, beneath the recently restored clock, to mark this forgotten site on which so many people depended. It seems appropriate, therefore, to add some pictures of this way of life to the story of the green plaque.

And if you’ve got any family tales from the North Road shops, we’d love to hear them. Please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk