The Signalman's House on Callerton Lane

This house and footpath on Callerton Lane are a rare reminder of Ponteland’s railway link with the past.

For almost seventy years, from 1902 to around 1970, there was a railway crossing with the line passing over the lane. The house overlooking the path was the Gatekeeper and Signalman’s house. Just up the railway line from here was the junction carrying the branch line down to Darras Hall which had its own station. The branch line was intended to stimulate building work at Darras Hall which had got off to a slow start but the intervention of the First World War put paid to all these efforts and it was to be another forty years before large-scale building work took place on the estate. The introduction of bus services in the 1920’s meant that there were not enough passengers to justify a rail service and passenger trains were discontinued in 1929 but the line continued in use for freight traffic for another forty years.

This was a comparatively late railway line to be laid. Most of the tracks in the UK were either put down in the mid 1800’s. By the 1900’s when work was carried out on this line, steam powered excavators were available making the work much quicker and easier. There is a wonderful photograph of one of these excavators operating at Callerton Lane and the Morpeth Herald reported on how the work was progressing at the end of 1902.

“Cuttings were commenced at four different points by as many gangs of men, aided with steam navies and other up-to-date methods of quick excavation, and such progress has been made that, adding the work accomplished in each of the different sections together, it is computed, that fully half of the line is now complete”.

For years, although there was a gatekeeper’s house, the gates were unmanned. Drivers and guards would stop the train, dismount and close the gates themselves, drive through and then get off again to reopen them.