Blackhill railway station served the village of Blackhill,

County Durham County Durham ( ), officially simply Durham,UK General Acts 1997 c. 23Lieutenancies Act 1997 Schedule 1(3). From legislation.gov.uk, retrieved 6 April 2022. is a ceremonial county in North East England.North East Assembly �About North East E ...

, England from 1867 to 1955 on the Derwent Valley Line.

History

The station opened on 2 December 1867 by the North Eastern Railway. It was situated west of the end of St. Aldans Street. The site of the station was large, serving as the terminus of three different routes - the Derwent Valley line from , the Stanhope and Tyne Railway and the

Lanchester Valley Railway The Lanchester Valley Railway was an English railway line that was developed by the North Eastern Railway to run between to . Extending along the valley of the River Browney, it opened on 1 September 1862. Closed under the Beeching Axe, it ha ...

from ; it also had a large goods yard. It opened as Benfieldside, then renamed Consett on 1 November 1882, renamed Consett & Blackhill on 1 May 1885 and finally renamed Blackhill on 1 May 1896. The station was closed to passengers on 23 May 1955 with the end of services from Newcastle via . Services from Durham via had ceased back in 1939, whilst the Derwent Valley line from Scotswood followed suit in February 1954. Goods traffic over the Derwent Valley line ended in November 1963 and the line through the station was abandoned; the track was lifted a year later. The former coal yard sidings immediately to the south though remained in use until 1984 by trains accessing the

Consett Steel Works The Consett Iron Company Ltd was an industrial business based in the Consett area of County Durham in the United Kingdom. The company owned coal mines and limestone quarries, and manufactured iron and steel. It was registered on 4 April 1864 a ...

complex. The station has been demolished and the trackbed is now a walking and cycle path known as the ''Derwent Walk''. This path, stretching from Consett to

Swalwell Swalwell is a village in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England, in the United Kingdom. History On 27 August 1640, an encampment of soldiers was gathered in the fields north of Whickham church on the slope down to Swalwell. This was part of the Roy ...

and running roughly parallel to the A694, forms part of National Cycle Network route 14 and is a northern spur of the

C2C Trenitalia c2c Limited,Companies House extract company no 789726 ...

Cross Country cycle route.

References

Disused railway stations in County Durham Former North Eastern Railway (UK) stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1867 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1955 1867 establishments in England 1984 disestablishments in England Consett {{NorthEastEngland-railstation-stub