page_title: Weardale Railway
section_title: Operations
hierarchical_section_title: Weardale Railway / Operations
caption_attribution_description: English: Last Train waiting to leave Wearhead for Bishop Auckland. View NW, towards buffer-stops; ex-NE terminus of line from Bishop Auckland, 27/6/53: the locomotive is ex-NE J21 No. 65078. Goods traffic continued up the valley as far as St John's Chapel until 2/1/61; a passenger service, Bishop Auckland - Stanhope was restored by the Weardale Railway from 23/5/10. See also 2047797 and NZ2029&#160;: The Last Train to Wearhead waits to leave Bishop Auckland Station.
context_page_description: The Weardale Railway is an independently owned British single-track branch line heritage railway between Bishop Auckland, Witton-le-Wear, Wolsingham, Frosterley and Stanhope. Weardale Railway began services on 23 May 2010, but decided to run special trains rather than a scheduled service for the 2013 season.
  The railway originally ran from Bishop Auckland to Wearhead in County Durham, North-East England, a distance of 25 miles, built in the nineteenth century to carry limestone from Eastgate-in-Weardale, and provide passenger services to Weardale. Passenger services ceased in 1953, leaving only freight services to Eastgate until 1992.
  After the quarry's owner Lafarge moved to road transport in 1993, the line was threatened with closure by British Rail, and it was taken over by a group of enthusiasts. The Weardale Railway currently runs for 18 miles between Bishop Auckland and the site of Eastgate-in-Weardale Station, making the line one of the longest preserved standard gauge heritage railways in Great Britain.
context_section_description: On 25 January 2010, Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate travelled on the Weardale line checking bridges, fences and crossings along the 18-mile stretch between Stanhope and Bishop Auckland.  Only a few minor works were needed to get the line ready for passenger use, and these were completed in time for a London King's Cross to Stanhope charter train to run. In February 2010, this became the first mainline passenger service to travel the line since the 1980s.  It was followed on 27 February by a railtour from Crewe to Stanhope, operated by Spitfire Railtours.
  Regular passenger services to Bishop Auckland started on 23 May 2010, but for the 2013 season a scheduled service was not offered, the railway instead offering themed operations, such as Dine and Ride and the Polar Express.
  Since 2014, the Railway Trust has operated passenger trains on selected weekdays and weekends for mostly tourist traffic using a class 122 "Bubble Car". Initially, this only ran between Wolsingham and Stanhope but, on 27 March 2016, this service was extended to Witton-le-Wear. In April 2018, the Weardale Railway CIC announced that works had commenced to lift a short section of track at Broken Banks (approximately ¹⁄₂ mile (800 m) west of Bishop Auckland) to enable the embankment to be repaired after subsidence had made the line unusable for passenger traffic. Once the works were completed it was intended to reinstate the tracks and extend the Stanhope to Witton-le-Wear passenger service back to Bishop Auckland West station. Since July 2018, two of the three daily return services between Stanhope and Witton-le-Wear now continue to Bishop Auckland West station.
  After receiving planning permission to load opencast coal, mined in the Crook area, alterations and arrangements were made to the Weardale Railway Depot at Wolsingham, to receive and transship the coal from road to rail.  The first loaded coal train left Wolsingham on 16 June 2011 bound for steel works in Scunthorpe.  Later, services were extended to include the power station at Ratcliffe On Soar, near Nottingham. This became a five-train-a-week operation that operated until 2 October 2013, and halted as a result of the financial collapse of UK Coal, following the spoil tip landslip that destroyed the connecting railway at Hatfield Colliery in February 2013, preventing coal shipments, and the underground fire at Daw Mill Colliery the following month which plunged UK Coal into financial crisis.
caption: Last train waiting to leave Wearhead station in 1953
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