Danby Moor

With Lindsey, Alex and Ellen we went to the Moors centre at Danby. This is in the North Yorkshire Moors. In the past there has been mining and quarrying in the Moors area. The centre was particularly celebrating the former mining of ironstone.

However the talk we attended was particularly about the former railway which is now the heritage North York Moors Railway ( NYMR ). Formerly this railway ran from Malton through Pickering and on to Whitby although the Malton to Pickering stretch has been removed. The stretch from Pickering actually runs to Grosmont before joining the national railway for the short distance into Whitby. Both Martin and Alex are volunteers on the NYMR.

While the children went to the play area we retired to the tea rooms. The centre was previously a row of houses now all connected together hosting various displays, meeting rooms,  gallery, café and of course a gift shop.

As I have observed before Whitby station is unique in that it is joint between NYMR and national rail. Beyond Grosmont the national rail runs east across the moor to Teesside This remaining line has a halt at Danby although the main destination is presumably Middlesbrough. Middlesbrough is about as far as the Tees river is navigable from the sea. Middlesbrough is famous for its transporter bridge which is still in use although a road bridge carries the bulk of the traffic across the river. Fans of “Auf wiedersehen, pet “ will recall that the transporter bridge was demolished by the crew in the last series to be re-erected in the USA. This was all done by TV fakery and the transporter bridge still exists.

The talk was specifically about the vast variety of industrial sidings between Malton and Whitby, all 42 of them and counting. This showed quite vividly that in the late 19^th and early 20^th century the default transport was by rail. The speaker talked of quite small loads travelling by rail.. By the thirties almost all the sidings were closed, certainly no new ones were constructed. Post war road quickly became the transport of choice as roads improved and trucks became larger and more efficient. The line ( as the NYMR ) is now just passengers.

There is a small amount of residual quarrying on the moors but the big possibility is polyhalite mining.This mineral in huge deposits at great depth below the moor is valuable as a fertiliser mainly as a source of potassium.. A new mine is very controversial with all the usual environmental objections. It is however very much needed in this economically depressed area. At the moment there is a small polyhalite mine at Boulby. The new project would be on a far larger scale. To further its development a new company Sirius has been established. They have an ambitious plan to transport the extracted mineral along a 30 plus mile tunnel to Teesport. This does minimise the environmental impact but sounds like a big technological and commercial challenge.

The present situation is than planning permission has been given but Sirius need to raise much more money before construction can begin. The deposits are a kilometre and a half below ground so a very deep shaft must be sunk; deeper than for coal mining.

Yorkshire humour

A blunt middle aged Yorkshireman ( calls a spade a bloody shovel type ) is referee at the local rugby ground. In the middle of a match a funeral cortege goes past. The referee stops the game, gets the players in line heads bowed. After cortege passes the match resumes.

Afterwards the  home captain approaches the referee and says how pleased he was, albeit a bit surprised, at the respect shown to the funeral.

“Ah” the referee says” well I was married to her for 25 years “