Loftus History

Re your photograph of the Kilton viaduct in Wednesdays evening Gazette, I enclose a photograph which shows that the filling of the viaduct was by no means completed in 1908, as the derailment shown took place on Saturday May 29th 1909.
I was a junior clerk in Carlin How mineral office at the time and well remember the incident. The derailment was caused by a landslide between the north end of the viaduct and Skinningrove station. The chief reason for filling the viaduct in was not so much the wear of the pillars as the above mentioned land movement. Large cracks began to appear between the slabs forming the pillars and approach mainly to the north end.
L.Wood (ex stationmaster, Yarm)

Your short article suggested 1908 as the completion date of the embankment around the stone viaduct between Carlin How and Loftus.
This embankment was not commenced until late 1911 or early 1912 and was completed sometime around the end of 1913. On a bitterly cold Saturday afternoon in January 1911, I travelled from Sheffield to Loftus to take up a post as a draughtsman at the Skinningrove Iron Co. I was dark on arriving at Saltburn and catching a train along the coast, we travelled as far as Carlin How where everybody was directed to change to board a waiting North east motor char-a-banc, one with open transverse tiers of seats rising towards the back of the vehicle, on which we were carried across the valley to Loftus. This was owing to rail traffic across the valley having being stopped temporarily that day to enable repairs to be made to the viaduct. It was late in 1911 or early 1912 before the reinforced concrete culvert was built under the viaduct and then the task of building the embankment commenced, spoil being taken by tip wagons from the m mine adits in the valley, a temporary track being laid part of the way along the Carlin How side of the valley to reach the embankment during the early stages of tipping. I left the district for a long period in September 1913 and the embankment was then either just completed or in its final stages. My short journey between Saltburn and Carlin How that day was made doubly interesting as the carriage was full or Ironstone miners who were full of the fact that the young Squire Wharton had that day been “blooded” I had never been in the district before, but took an instinctive liking to my homely fellow travellers in the carriage, and that combined perhaps with the hot meal and the warmest of welcomes for the ladies of the house which I was to lodge, gave me a liking for Cleveland and its charm which has never left me.
Fred L Smith. Hob Hill Close, Saltburn.

The reason for the burying of Kilton Viaduct was the subsidence that resulted from Ironstone mining underneath the pillars. This became so bad that the line was closed in January 1911 and rail passengers carried between Loftus and Skinningrove in Motor char-a bancs. Approximately three-quarters of a million tons of spoil form the nearby mines were used to earth up the viaduct. Another railway bridge in the neighbourhood had also suffered considerably from the effects of subsidence. The railway line between Boosbeck and Brotton crosses the road from Lingdale to New Skelton by a single arch bridge. When this subsided a second bridge was built on top of it in order to maintain the railway at its correct level. The lower of the two brick arches has also had to be heavily reinforced with old rails.
P W B Semmens, 52 Belle Vue Grove, Middlesbrough.