Brandling Junction Railway

The Brandling Junction Railway was an early railway in County Durham, England. It took over the Tanfield Waggonway of 1725 that was built to bring coal from Tanfield to staiths on the River Tyne at Dunston. The Brandling Junction Railway itself opened in stages from 1839, running from Gateshead to Wearmouth and South Shields. Wearmouth was regarded at the time as the "Sunderland" terminal.

The Tanfield Waggonway was modernised and connected to the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway near Redheugh, and onward transit to the main line of the Brandling Junction Railway was by a rope-worked incline from Redheugh to a Gateshead station. The Brandling Junction Railway modernised the Tanfield Waggonway route, although it remained a difficult route, with numerous rope-worked inclines.

The Brandling Junction Railway was conceived as a mainly mineral railway, but passenger traffic was surprisingly buoyant. From 1841 until 1850 main line passenger trains from London to Gateshead ran over part of the line (from Brockley Whins) and after that date from Pelaw to Gateshead, until 1868.

Most of the network closed in the middle years of the twentieth century, although the route from Gateshead to Monkwearmouth is still in use; a heritage railway operates on a section of the former Tanfield Waggonway.

In the seventeenth century coal was being mined in the ground south of the River Tyne, south west of Gateshead. Transport of the mineral to market generally involved getting it overland to a waterway. The overland portion of the journey, by pack horse or cart, was slow and expensive. As the easy seams were worked out, the site of mining moved south, further from the Tyne, and the land transport problem worsened. About 1671 a waggonway was built to Dunston from the Ravensworth estate, a few miles south of Dunston. The Dunston waggonway later fell into disuse.

The Tanfield Waggonway originated in a waggonway laid across Tanfield Moor, about seven miles south west of Gateshead. It was opened in 1712 by Sir John Clavering and Thomas Brumell from collieries they owned at Lintz and Buck's Nook, and George Pitt of Strathfieldsaye was encouraged to develop what became the great Tanfield coalfield, using the waggonway.

At this period there were few public roads in the area and coal owners requiring to get their product to a waterway had to arrange a wayleave with owners of intermediate land. This was an agreement to pay a fee, usually per unit of mineral transported. The further the coalpit was from the waterway, the more had to be paid to secure wayleaves. Tomlinson records that the landowners made "themselves masters of the wayleaves and great part of the collieries, and thereby got near £3,000 per annum for one colliery (three-fifths more than ever the owners received to their own use)."

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