We've recently been featuring some of the 'lost' railway stations of Tyneside - the likes of Low Fell on the outskirts of Gateshead, and Scotswood in Newcastle's West End.
There's certainly something evocative about these vanished locations - recalling an age when the railway was king and these stops on the line would be used on a daily basis by countless thousands travelling to and from work and going about their daily business.
Our photograph recalls another lost station - Lemington in the West of Newcastle. It comes courtesy of the Armstrong Railway Photographic Trust which, as its name suggests, curates and archives old photographs of North East railways and rail infrastructure - as well as buses, collieries, shipping, and other miscellaneous subjects.
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There are around 500,000 images currently in the collection of the Trust which was started by a group of enthusiasts following the death of North East railway aficionado, Jack Armstrong. Trustee David Dunn has kindly shared many photographs with ChronicleLive in recent years.
In an age when the railway was expanding rapidly around the country, Lemington station opened in July 1875 on the Scotswood, Newburn and Wylam Railway. When fully up and running, the stations on the so-called North Wylam Loop were North Wylam, Heddon on the Wall, Newburn, Lemington, Scotswood, Elswick and Newcastle.
Sidings close to busy Lemington station served nearby heavy industry - such as collieries at Montagu and Blucher, Carr's brickyard and a Copperas factory. As was the frequent case at other railway stations across the land, the early decades of the last century at Lemington were marked by a gradual decline in passenger numbers due to competition from rival forms of transport, firstly trams, then buses. In 1911, there were 78,000 bookings at the station; by 1951, that annual figure had fallen to 13,000.
In September 1958, after 83 years serving the local community, Lemington railway station closed to passengers, before finally closing to freight in July 1964, with passenger services totally halting on the loop in March 1968. Today much of the former North Wylam Loop takes the form of the popular footpath and cycle route, the Tyne Riverside Country Park.
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