The day Darlington’s ‘white elephant’ station quietly opened its doors

“The Central station, Newcastle, may be a more magnificent pile (who can say otherwise?), but Newcastle claims to be the northern metropolis.

“York station may be more extensive, so it ought to be for a number of railway systems converge at that point.

“Hull station, with its huge hotel, may present a far more imposing appearance, but then that great outlet of the Yorkshire and Lancashire manufacturers contributes nearly one-third of the entire revenue of the North Eastern Railway.”

On the platform at Bank Top station shortly after it was completed (Image: Darlington Centre for Local Studies)

For all the weekly newspaper’s enthusiasm for the station, Bank Top was regarded as a small, drab building, and within 30 years was completely rebuilt.

Demand was growing for passengers to be able to access Teesside from the main line station – it was previously only possible from the Stockton & Darlington’s North Road station and so when, in the 1880s, a loop line was planed connecting Bank Top to Middlesbrough and Stockton, it was clear passenger numbers were going to increase.

Much to the despair of some directors of the NER, who didn’t think more money should be lavished so soon on Darlington, the company asked its new chief architect, William Bell, to plan a new station.

A fabulous picture from John Askwith of Bank Top station under construction, by a couple of men and their dog (Image: John Askwith)

Mr Bell, from York, had joined the NER architect’s department aged 14 and spent his entire 57 year career in it. He was largely responsible for stations at Hull, Newcastle, Leeds and Scarborough, and while working on Bank Top, he also built Sunderland and Thornaby stations.

Bell’s work was overseen by the NER’s chief engineer, TE Harrison, who was at that stage a big fan of “island stations” – which is why Bank Top is such a weird, back-to-front sort of a station with a fabulously grand entrance that no one uses as everyone sneaks in the side, tradesmen’s entrance.

Island stations have all their offices and waiting rooms on a central island with the up and down railways tracks flowing on either side of them.

The plans increased the size of the station by two-thirds, and 20 houses and three pubs in Station Street, plus Bank Top school, were bought and demolished to accommodate it.

The clay and topsoil excavated for its foundations and for the new cutting in Parkgate, so bridges could take the tracks, was deposited on the fields to the south of Victoria Road – the streets between Bedford Street and Clifton Road were later built on top of this clay. Waverley Terrace, named after the Edinburgh station, was the first and Victoria Embankment soon followed.

Work began in 1885, and was delayed three months by the winter of 1885 and a further two months by the winter of 1886.

An amazing picture from the archive of the North Eastern Railway Association showing Bank Top under construction in about 1886. That dog, by the way, appears to be sitting on the roof of the low building in the foreground (Image: NERA)

It was to have three arched train sheds. The western two are 62ft wide while the eastern one is 66ft wide because it follows the footprint of the 1861 station, including incorporating part of its eastern wall. Mr Bell helpfully put “oculi” – rounded openings – into his extended walls for ventilation but they also show which stretches of wall are later.

The grand Victoria Road clocktower and portico of Bank Top station (Image: Chris Lloyd)

Mr Bell also designed a grand main entrance at the top of Victoria Road. It had an elegant 80ft clocktower, in the French Renaissance style, and a tall and broad portico. Cabs entered the portico through one elegant arch, dropped off their passengers in the dry, and then exited by another elegant arch.

Inside the portico of the station’s grand Victoria Road entrance which not many people now use (Image: The Northern Echo)

Access, though, was not so easy for the passengers who now had to get across the north-bound tracks to reach the booking office and waiting rooms in the centre of the island.

Two tunnels were dug beneath the tracks for foot passengers and two shafts were sunk for hydraulic lifts for those who couldn’t manage the stairs.

“But,” says Bill Fawcett, the absolute expert in North Eastern Railway architecture, “an extraordinary piece of petty meanness intervened and, having built shafts for them, the directors left out the lifts, arguing that these would entail the full-time services of a porter.”

In fact, they would have had to employ at least two lift operatives to ensure the lifts were working 24/7.

And then they decided that no one would be use the main entrance because it was too inconvenient.

Henry Tennant, the station general manager, predicted that most people would drive up the goods ramp from Parkgate straight onto the platforms’ island because they would regard it as preferable to “see your luggage taken to the train than use the subway or lift at the west entrance and lose sight of your luggage which might go astray”.

The goods entrance to Bank Top station has now become the main entrance. This picture taken by John Boyes in about 1964. What is that strange shaped lorry facing him? Picture: JW Armstrong Trust (Image: JW Armstrong Trust)

So the southern subway at the Victoria Road entrance was dug but never opened to the public. It was, for a while at least, used as a service tunnel – but it, and the lift shafts, must still be there somewhere.

Just to give Bank Top a further vice-versa feel, shortly after it was opened, a horse-drop was built on Park Lane, near the portico. Cattle and sheep were also unloaded here, convenient for the market, so the Victoria Road entrance quickly started to look as if it were the goods entrance.

A further embarrassment was that soon after Sir ED Walker, “the WH Smith of the North”, had started the clock in the tower, it stopped and needed repairs. Once going, residents in the new streets complained that its chiming kept them awake at night, and so it was silenced forever.

One councillor condemned the station as a “gross extravagance” and a “white elephant”, while the chairman of the railway, John Dent Dent, said the company had “built a much larger station…than there was any occasion for”.

Bank Top station shortly after it opened on July 1, 1887. Picture: North Eastern Railway Association (Image: NERA)

Bank Top station shortly after it opened on July 1, 1887. Picture: North Eastern Railway Association (Image: NERA)

Perhaps because of this, the station slipped into service on July 1, 1887. The Northern Echo reported the following day: “The new station at Bank Top, Darlington, was yesterday opened for traffic without any formal ceremony.”

This was the day that NER’s summer timetable came into operation, so the station had to be operational, ready or not. The first train to leave it was the 5.30am to Middlesbrough and Saltburn, pulled by engine number 1099 and driven by James Allen. It was, of course, 22 minutes late because of a delay with the mail.

Dinsdale station was opened at the same time as Bank Top as new loop line connected Bank Top with Teesside (Image: The Northern Echo)

The first train into it was the 5.40am from Middlesbrough, which was also the first train to use the station on the new loop line at Dinsdale, where a smattering of people on a new bridge gave it a cheer as it went over celebratory fog signals (mini-explosives strapped to the tracks).

Bank Top obviously wasn’t quite ready for the big day, but The Northern Echo was impressed by what it saw.

“Even yet the finishing touches are to be given,” it said, “but the building is sufficiently near completion to show that it is among the largest and most notable of its kind in the country.

The refreshment rooms at Bank Top on the London-bound platform (Image: Chris Lloyd)

“The first class waiting room is amongst the handsomest – perhaps the handsomest – of the kind in England. It is large, lofty, and light, and the roof is richly panelled with elaborate and artistic mouldings. In the centre of the ceiling is a large coloured glass light. The walls have a dado, about 3ft 6ins high, of panelled and polished teak. The buffet is a handsome piece of furniture of the same wood, with plate glass backs, with a counter in front of polished granite standing on teak panelling.”

Bank Top station in the days of steam (Image: The Northern Echo)

There was even, overlooking platforms two and three, a room dedicated to footwarmers. Until the 1920s, trains were unheated and a long journey on a cold winter’s day could be very challenging. From the 1850s, the railway issued passengers with footwarmers – initially brass or metal tins filled with boiling water but then metal tubes were devised with chemicals inside that, if shaken vigorously, would set off a reaction and heat up.

A busy summer’s day at Bank Top station in 1962 (Image: The Northern Echo)

The failings of railway footwarmers – they either leaked everywhere, quickly went cold, or melted the soles of shoes – were a source of jokes throughout the Victorian railway age, and it was often said that a footwarmer which made everything in the carriage wet would “break the ice” and get the strangers talking.

The Silver Jubilee service departs from the south end of a snowy Bank Top in late 1936. Picture: JW Armstrong Trust (Image: JW Armstrong Trust)

In those early days, Bank Top handled 148 trains every 24 hours, including most of the passenger traffic which had been handled at North Road.  “The North Road station loses all its importance, and so far as a chief station is concerned, it passes out of existence, and will be carried on only as a roadside or calling statin for trains passing to and from the west only,” said the North Star newspaper.

A porter at work on Bank Top station in the 1960s (Image: The Northern Echo)

Bank Top also consigned the station at Fighting Cocks to the history books, as the new loop line bypassed it and instead went through Dinsdale.

Bank Top had cost £100,000 to build. The purchase of its land had cost another £30,000 and the construction of the loop line and Dinsdale station had cost a further £80,000, making it a £24.5m project in today’s values.

Waving a train off at Bank Top station. Picture: Rodney Wildsmith (Image: Rodney Wildsmith)

Despite the chaos on opening day, despite all the criticisms over its extravagance, and despite all the eccentricities over its entrances, the layout of the island station has remained largely unchanged since 1887 – which makes the £150m enlargement of 2026 such an enormous moment in its 140-year history.