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The Whitby, Redcar and Middlesbrough Union Railway (WRMU) was a short lived railway line, running along the northeast coast of England from the River Tees at Middlesbrough to the Esk at Whitby, where it met the Scarborough & Whitby Railway line and the Whitby and Pickering Railway (now the Esk Valley Line as far as Grosmont and the NYMR to Pickering). For much of its journey it hugged the cliffs, and had a troubled build due to the proximity to the sea and poor build quality of the construction on many of the original bridges and viaducts.
It was essentially created from two separate sections of railway - from Middlesbrough to Loftus and from Loftus to Whitby (West Cliff).
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This section has a complex heritage, being built in stages by the Cleveland Railway, the Middlesbrough and Guisborough Railway and the NER. The first section from Loftus to Priescroft Junction, near Brotton, was part of a route built by the Cleveland Railway to serve the rapidly developing ironstone industry in the Eston Hills and East Cleveland. The line ran from Normanby via Guisborough and on to Loftus with branches to various ironworks and mines along the way. North of this came the Saltburn Extension, opened to goods in 1872, and to passengers in 1875. Originally it had no stations, as its main purpose was for goods traffic, although North Skelton opened in 1902. From Saltburn, the line continues along the coast via Redcar along the former Middlesbrough and Redcar Railway – now the Tees Valley Line.
The extension of the line from Loftus to Whitby was authorised by an Act of Parliament in 1866, with the majority of construction carried out under John Dickson from 1871 to 1873. Due to a lack of funds and problems with the original contractor work was suspended on the route until the NER took up the lease in 1875. John Waddell won the contract, and the line was scheduled to open on 13 July 1881, but due to the extra work required to bring it up to standard, it was two and a half years before the line was finally opened on 3 December 1883. Many of the bridges were defective and piers out of vertical. Even the original tunnels were so out of line with each other that when boring was done from each end they did not meet in the centre![1] Part of the proposed line was so dangerously close to the cliff edge that the NER abandoned it and took a route further inland through Sandsend and Kettleness tunnels.[2]
The completed section ran from Whitby to Loftus, where it joined the NER Middlesbrough – Loftus route head on. From the beginning the line was run by the NER, which held the lease and which was at that time also running services to Whitby along what is now the Esk Valley Line and Whitby's 'main line', the Malton – Whitby line. The NER took over the line fully in 1899.
By 1958, British Rail claimed that £58,000 worth of maintenance was required to keep the line open (mainly on repairs to the viaducts).[2] With dwindling passengers since the war years, the route was now only popular during summer weekends. The line closed on 5 May 1958. Only Whitby West Cliff station remained open for another three years, serving trains from Whitby to Scarborough until it too finally closed on 12 June 1961, after which Scarborough trains had to reverse at Prospect Hill Junction where the line from Whitby Town met those from Scarborough and Loftus.
In 1960 work began to dismantle the line, viaducts were sold for scrap metal and concrete was used in the construction of the local sea defences.
In the 1970s the northern section of the line was revived after ICI decided to sink Boulby mine for potash, conveniently located next to the former route, just north of the village of Boulby in Redcar and Cleveland. This section of the line remains open today as a freight line, but all of the passenger stations remain closed. The dismantled section south of Boulby is now used as a footpath.