Forge Valley Line
Forge Valley stationc. 1910
Overview
Owner	North Eastern Railway, London and North Eastern Railway, British Railways
Termini	Seamer Pickering
Stations	6
History
Opened	1 May 1882 (1882-05-01)
Opened	1882
Closed to passengers	1950
Closed to all traffic	1963
Closed	25 January 1953 (1953-01-25)
Technical
Line length	16 mi (26 km)
Number of tracks	1
Track gauge	4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm)

v t e Forge Valley Line
Legend
Scarborough & Whitby Railway Falsgrave Tunnel Scarborough Central Scarborough Londesborough Road Falsgrave Junction Washbeck Viaduct Seamer Yorkshire Coast Line Seamer Junction York to Scarborough Line A64 Irton Waterworks River Derwent Forge Valley A170 Wykeham A170 Sawdon Brompton Beck Snainton Crossover Ebberston Thornton Dale Rillington Mill Lane Junction Gilling and Pickering Line Pickering North Yorkshire Moors Railway

TheForge Valley Line was a 16-mile-long branch of theNorth Eastern Railway betweenSeamer andPickering, inNorth Yorkshire, England. The line was intended to linkScarborough withPickering. It opened in 1882 and closed in 1950, with the exception of a stretch from Pickering toThornton Dale which remained open for quarry traffic until 1963.

The line did not pass throughForge Valley, but thestation in the village ofWest Ayton was named after it to avoid confusion with another station —Great Ayton — already owned by the North Eastern Railway.

A railway running east–west across theVale of Pickering was first proposed in 1864. The intent was that this line would actually travel up the Forge Valley and connect with a line betweenWhitby and Scarborough atScalby. However, due to local land owners objecting and the fact that the railway between Whitby and Scarborough had not been built, the idea was scrapped.^[1]

The North Eastern Railway (NER) pressed ahead with their plans for a railway across the northern edge of the Vale of Pickering, but drove the eastern end to meet up with theYork–Scarborough line atSeamer. This route was opened on 1 May 1882.^[2] Earlier bills that had passed throughParliament had become known asForge Valley because of the route they would take up the valley rather than across it. The NER's line was always known as Forge Valley too, but this was also down to the station at Forge Valley serving the villages ofWest andEast Ayton; to avoid confusion with the station atGreat Ayton, on theNunthorpe-Battersby line, the name of Forge Valley was kept.^[3]

The line ran quite close to the Pickering to Scarborough Road (now theA170) and some of its stations were some distance from the villages that it claimed to serve. As a consequence, the rural bus service that started up in the 20th century took patronage away from the line and, despite using steam railcars and push-pull trains, the passenger numbers dropped.^[4]

The line closed to passengers completely in June 1950, with closure to all traffic between Thornton Dale and Seamer at the same time.^[5] Beyond that time, a small section extending for2+1⁄2 miles (4 km) from Pickering to Thornton Dale was kept open to serve quarries at Thornton Dale.^[6] This last section was removed in January 1963.^[7]

The line covered 16 miles (26 km), or 19 miles (31 km) if the last 3 miles (4.8 km) from Seamer to Scarborough are included; it was single-tracked throughout, with a passing loop atSnainton.^[7][8][9] It had no major engineering works or gradients of note, with only a few sections steeper than 1 in 100.^[10] Six stations were constructed on the line,Forge Valley,Wykeham,Sawdon,Snainton,Ebberston andThornton Dale.^[11]

Thornton Dale, Ebberston, Snainton and Sawdon have now been restored; there are also threecamping coaches at Ebberston.^[12]

Wykeham also survives and there are plans to restore the station itself. Whilst the other stations on the line are completely restored, Forge Valley is now currently in use byNorth Yorkshire County Council as a road and highways depot.^[13]

• Bairstow, Martin (2008).Railways Around Whitby Volume One. Farsley: Bairstow.ISBN 978-1-871944-34-1.
• Lidster, J. Robin (1986).The Forge Valley Line: A Railway Between Pickering And Scarborough. Hendon Publishing Co. Ltd.ISBN 0-86067-103-8.

• Further information on the Forge Valley Line

• Closed railway lines in Yorkshire and the Humber
• Rail transport in North Yorkshire
• Railway lines opened in 1882

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