Stoke Bank is an inclined stretch of the

East Coast Main Line The East Coast Main Line (ECML) is a electrified railway between London and Edinburgh via Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle. The line is a key transport artery on the eastern side of Great Britain running broa ...

(ECML) between and . It is named after the village of

Stoke Rochford Stoke Rochford is a small English village and civil parish south of Grantham in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire. The population at the time of the 2011 census was 230 (including Easton, Lincolnshire, Easton). It has two notable Grad ...

, close to Stoke Summit, which at above sea level is the highest point of the ECML between and . It is not however, the highest point of the entire ECML, which is

Grantshouse Grantshouse is a small village in Berwickshire in the Scottish Borders of Scotland. It lies on the A1, and its nearest railway stations are Dunbar to the north and Reston to the south. See also *List of places in the Scottish Borders *List of ...

Summit between Berwick and

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

at . The climb up the bank begins roughly north of Peterborough, which is close to sea level, and ascends to Stoke Summit over a distance of approximately with

gradient In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p is the "direction and rate of fastest increase". If the gradi ...

s of up to 1 in 178. Shortly after the summit, the line runs through the Stoke Tunnel. It then descends for around 5 miles at 1 in 200 before reaching Grantham station, and then continues on a more gradual descent for around 15 miles, until reaching , which is also near sea level.

Speed records

Stoke Bank is most famous for being the scene of a number of high speed runs by various trains. Most famously, 4468 ''Mallard'' broke the world speed record for a

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...

of on 3 July 1938. In July 1998, a trackside sign was erected at the 90 1/4 mark milepost to commemorate the record. On 23 May 1959, 60007 ''Sir Nigel Gresley'' set the post-war steam record speed of . As with ''Mallard'' record, this was descending southward from Stoke Bank, but unlike ''Mallard'' run, which was a special attempt, this was with a full train of passengers returning from an excursion to

Doncaster Works Doncaster Railway Works is a railway workshop located in Doncaster, England. Also referred to as The Plant''", it was established by the Great Northern Railway in 1853, replacing the previous works in Boston and Peterborough. Until 1867 it u ...

. On 17 September 1989 the British speed record for an

electric locomotive An electric locomotive is a locomotive powered by electricity from overhead lines, a third rail or on-board energy storage such as a battery or a supercapacitor. Locomotives with on-board fuelled prime movers, such as diesel engines or gas ...

was achieved on Stoke Bank, by a (91 110, formerly 91 010) which reached .

References

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