The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
The day was planned as the second stage of my exploration of the forgotten stations of the Middlesbrough to Scarborough railway, with another three station sites to visit. But, first, a visit to the Land of Iron museum in Skinningrove, located in the remains of Loftus ironstone mine. A quick visit. Or so I thought….
An elegant solution
I’d heard about the zig zag railway, hidden in a forgotten corner of Yorkshire, a unique engineering feat, fading into history. So what is a zig zag railway? As the name suggests, it’s a method by which a railway surmounts an obstacle by threading backwards and forwards to gain altitude. There are numerous zig zag railways throughout the world, one of the most famous being the Great Lithgow Zig Zag in the Blue Mountains of Australia. But there were only two zig zag railways in the UK, The Tweed Dock Railway in Northumberland and ours, which was more extensive, raising ironstone from sea level to Skinningrove Ironworks, 60 metres up on the cliff above.
Genesis of the Land of Iron
Cleveland Ironstone formed as silt deposits in a warm shallow sea during the Jurassic era, 180 million years ago. 150 million years later, the rock formation tilted south due to plate tectonics. This created dramatic escarpments – precipitous slopes where the strata of ironstone were exposed. The most northerly scarp contained the thickest outcrop of all, the Main Seam, 3.7 metres in height. This scarp formed Eston Hills, and ironmaster John Vaughan started the Cleveland Ironstone boom when he stumbled across the Main Seam here in 1850. But no, that’s a myth, perpetuated by people who don’t know their Teesside history. They’d started working the seam at Loftus mine two years previously, in 1848.
In a cavern, in a canyon, excavated for a mine
Towards the Yorkshire coast, the formations were traversed by the steep ravines of rivers such as Kilton Beck, leaving the ironstone exposed on the side of the valley. The iron could be accessed by a horizontal cut, known as a drift, instead of a deep mine. Loftus mine at Skinningrove was ideally located to access the main seam, and others too. Although Cleveland Ironstone is of low purity – 70% of it is shale – it contains oolites, millimetres in diameter, of iron compounds such siderite and chamosite. It’s highly prized because it melts perfectly in blast furnaces.
Land of Iron museum
The Loftus mine, having employed 957 men at its peak in 1910, closed in 1958, after giving up six million tons of ironstone, and has since been converted into the Land of Iron museum, containing displays about the history of the mine, including the testimony of the men who worked it, and the families who supported them.
By coincidence, I’d arrived just in time for a tour of the mine to be conducted by the friendly and knowledgeable Steve Hall.
Entering the mine
There were several entrances to the mine, with separate drifts for the miners, the horses, ventilation and finally the largest one, wide enough for two narrow gauge railway tracks, to extract the ironstone via tubs, each with a capacity of two tons. Unlike most coal mines, the seams were high and wide, and they were worked by shire horses, not pit ponies. A large stable was built at the entrance to the horse drift, and it is still there. The horses were well treated. There were several blacksmith’s shops, including one inside the mine itself, to shoe the horses and maintain the mining tools. Ventilation was by means of huge fans, powered initially by steam engines, but later by electric motors.
Fire in the hole!
Ironstone is too tough to be dug out manually. You need explosives for this job. Steve demonstrated the kit needed to do this – jumper drills, scrapers, black powder, squibs, and a zinc tin to hold the powder. Zinc doesn’t generate sparks. Light the squib, stand well back, then shout ‘Fire in the hole!’ to warn fellow-miners of an imminent blast. Don’t return to the squib if you’re not sure it has lit, that’s asking for trouble. Several tons of ironstone will have been removed from the face. Shovel it into wheelbarrows then take it to the nearest tub. Tubs were two-ton railway wagons, which were then wheeled to the exit, usually by teenage boys. It was one of the most dangerous jobs in the mine. Poisonous gases such as firedamp and blackdamp were always present. In many coal mines, canaries would be used to warn of the danger from gas, but in Loftus mine, rats were the preferred option. Technological advances eased the problem, first the Davy Lamp, then the Protector Lamp. After the mine tour, Steve volunteered, in his own time, to show me what happened to the ironstone after it left the mine, mainly via the Skinningrove Zig Zag Railway.
The challenge of gravity
For the first few years the ironstone was exported from a wooden jetty on Cattersty Sands, about 500 metres north of the line. But, in 1871 came the game-changer, when the North Eastern Railway (NER) built the Loftus to Whitby line, later to become part of the Middlesbrough to Scarborough line, through the nearby village of Carlin How. The NER agreed to connect their new line to Loftus mine, but the problem was that the mine was at sea level, 60 metres below the main line, in a narrow river valley. The engineers solved the problem by building the Skinningrove Zig Zag Railway, where trains gained altitude by moving backward and forwards via reversing points known as headshunts. There were initially two headshunts, but a third was added later. The railway operated at gradients of up to 1:26, close to the maximum at which adhesion railways can operate. Any steeper and they’d have had to use haulage cables and stationary steam engines, a complicated and expensive operation. The ironstone trains had a locomotive at each end to provide extra tractive effort and to negotiate the headshunts. Some longer trains needed a third loco in the centre. This is known as ‘treble-banking’ and is very rare in the UK.
Skinningrove ironworks
Skinningrove ironworks opened in 1874. You wouldn’t usually site an ironworks on a cliff top, but flat land is at a premium in Cleveland (it’s literally ‘Cliff-Land’). The ironworks were connected to Loftus Mine via the zig zag railway, but this required a third headshunt west of Carlin How station, which had been renamed Skinningrove by then.
In search of a forgotten railway
Steve Hall took me on a tour of Skinningrove village to show me the remaining artefacts of the forgotten railway. The line headed north of Loftus Mine, along what is now a road to the east of Skinningrove Beck, almost as far as the North Sea, to the first headshunt. The remains of the route can be seen in this photo, on the right hand side.
The headshunt is where the white building is now. After the reversal, the line now headed from right to left in front of us, gaining height, and crossing the beck on a skew bridge, the abutment of which can be seen below the large tree in this photo.
From the other side of the beck you can see the water running beneath the line in a culvert. The river bed is discoloured with iron ochre. We continued south, and came across a drain where water was surging from below, due to recent rises in the water table.
This drain is part of a vast network needed to keep the Loftus Mine dry. Steve said that this drain was a matter for concern, and that he would have to report it. We walked up into the woods in search of the railway, visible to Steve’s expert eye, but it can only just be made out in this photo.
Steve gave me directions on how to follow the course of the Zig Zag railway, up to where it merged with the Middlesbrough to Scarborough railway line. We shook hands and I went on my way.
Whitecliffe Mine
I continued towards the A174 road. The Zig Zag railway terminated here, at Whitecliffe Mine, before it headed north to Loftus Mine. The site is now an animal sanctuary. The mine had a troubled history due to flooding, and it didn’t last long. Just west of here, the Zig Zag railway, having travelled north from Whitecliffe Mine almost to the coast, then reversing southwards, bridged the A174 again on its way to the Middlesbrough to Scarborough railway. Only the abutments of this bridge remain.
Just further along the A174, the main line, which is still open to freight, crosses the road on this dramatic bridge.
Whitecliff Woods
Whitecliffe Mine was situated in the Whitecliff Woods. They were more casual about spelling in the nineteenth century. As you walk south towards Kilton Embankment, the route of the Zig Zag railway runs parallel to the west, but is hidden in the woods. Kilton Embankment began life as a viaduct, but due to subsidence caused by the ironstone mines it began to fail.
The main line had to be closed for two years from 1911 to 1913 while the viaduct was backfilled with spoil, mainly shale, from the mines and converted into an embankment. The viaduct still remains inside the embankment. The Zig Zag railway crossed beneath the viaduct, then headed east, continuing to gain height as it made its way to the main line. During the time that the viaduct was being converted into an embankment, the Zig Zag railway was diverted so that it now converged with the main line from the north.
Ancient forest
We reach the point where Kilton Beck flows under the embankment in a culvert.
Whitecliff Beck flows in from the east to form a confluence,
and this now becomes Skinningrove Beck. Whitecliff Wood is a beautiful, ancient forest, with evidence of lime trees having been pollarded for five centuries.
A steep flight of steps leads up the embankment to a footbridge over the Middlesbrough to Scarborough railway.
West of the footbridge, the Kilton Embankment can be seen curving to the right.
Just east of the footbridge, the Zig Zag railway merged on to the main line
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