Selby to Goole Line
The Selby–Goole line was a standard gauge branch line connecting Selby and Goole, built in 1910 by the North Eastern Railway. The line closed in the 1960s as part of the Beeching cuts.
A line connecting Goole to the rail network via Selby (Brayton) was put before parliament in 1845 ("Brayton and Goole Railway"), proposed by George Hudson and the York and North Midland Railway (Y&NMR); the line was rejected and another rival scheme, the Wakefield, Pontefract and Goole Railway (later part of the L&YR) was accepted by parliament in the same year, becoming Goole's first rail link.
At the time of the branch's construction Goole was served by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR), Selby by the North Eastern Railway, and Drax by the Hull and Barnsley Railway. However a bottleneck at the two-track Selby swing bridge on the already busy East Coast Main Line from London to Scotland meant that freight trains were often delayed, the building of the line was therefore desirable since it offered another path to the port of Hull via Goole for the coal and other freight that was exported via the port at that time.
Construction of the railway began in 1907, with Baldry & Yerburgh chosen as contractors, and A.C. Mitchell and W.J. Cudworth acting as the NER's engineers. The line was built as a doubled tracked railway, with much of it being built on embankments.
Freight traffic did not meet expectations and the line was reduced to single track after 1923. The line was closed in 1964.
The line can be considered to begin at Thorpe Gates Junction Signal box; where the new line branches off to the right from the line of the former Leeds and Selby Railway when approaching from the west towards Selby, it then crossed over the former East Coast Main Line by an overhead bridge. A branch from Selby then met the line from the north; somewhere east of Brayton.
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