Routes

The railway network in the North East of England comprises around 200 different routes. The majority of these were built by, or absorbed into, the North Eastern Railway (NER) around the turn of the 19th Century. The remainder are legacies of the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER), British Railways North Eastern Region, British Railway Eastern Region and, most recently, Railtrack and Network Rail.

This section of the website aims to act as a gazzetteer to these routes. For each route, a route diagram shows the bridges, junctions, stations and major sidings and goods stations. The majority of the underlying data comes from the NER Line Diagrams that were produced; other sources have also been used and are detailed on each route page.

Most modern-day research categorises routes into the original NER Northern and Southern Divisions; however, for clarity and ease-of-use, they have been organised into their appropriate NER Engineering Districts (plus a separate category for the main lines) so that the lists are easier to navigate. There were five Engineers’ Districts covering the lines on this site:

A sixth District covered Hull. There is also a separate category for the main lines which cover multiple districts (York to Newcastle, Newcastle to Berwick, Leeds Northern, Leamside and Newcastle to Carlisle):