North Country Rover, Day 2: Whitby and the NYMR

On Friday, we went for a day trip to the seaside fishing town of Whitby. Getting from York to Whitby is actually annoyingly difficult: since 1967 the shortest rail route involves going all the way up to Middlesbrough before heading east on the Esk Valley line. This is such a roundabout route that Transdev's Yorkshire Coastliner bus service, running direct between York and Whitby, takes a lot of the business by being faster than the trains.

Before 1967, however, there was a much more direct line via Malton and Pickering which rose over the North Yorkshire Moors to get to Whitby. This line was bought out privately almost as soon as it had closed in 1967, and by 1973 the section from Pickering to Grosmont - where it joins the Esk Valley line from Middlesbrough to Whitby - reopened as the North Yorkshire Moors Railway (NYMR), one of the very first privately-owned heritage railways. It remains open today as one of the most popular such lines in the country, where volunteers try to recreate the environment of years gone by, with lovingly-restored steam engines hauling preserved rolling stock.

This still leaves a six-mile gap between Pickering and Rillington Junction, on the York-Scarborough line just outside Malton. Rather than fuss about getting a train from York to Malton and changing to a bus to Pickering, we decided to get one of the Yorkshire Coastliner buses direct from York to Pickering:

0942 York, Blossom St to Pickering, Eastgate Sq, arr 1058
Service #840, operated by Transdev using Yorkshire Coastliner bus 423
Distance: approx 26 miles; walk-up price: £8.00

The Yorkshire Coastliner bus - a modern, comfortable double-decker which even had headrests (not something I'm used to on my commute to and from campus!) - forms a half-hourly service between Leeds, York and Malton, with extensions every hour or two to various coastal towns such as Bridlington, Scarborough and Whitby; ours happened to be terminating at Thornton-le-dale, just east of Pickering.

It took just over an hour and a quarter to cover the 26 miles from York to Pickering, the route mainly following the A64 to Malton, before going through Malton town centre and heading out the A169 towards Pickering. The route started out fairly level, across the plain of the River Ouse, before gradually becoming more undulating as we got closer to the Moors, with the road rising and falling with the numerous valleys.

Before we could get too used to the nice scenery, we arrived in Pickering and, after buying a drink, walked over to Pickering station on the NYMR. Pickering station is one of very few heritage stations to have an overall roof: the original trainshed, dating from 1845, survived the closure of the line in the 1960s, and the whole station has been made to look as much as possible like an LNER station would have done in the 1930s.

We duly went to buy our tickets to Whitby, only to be told that Network Rail were doing some engineering works on the run-round loop at Whitby - that is, the extra bit of track that allows them to take the engine off the front, run it "round" the train, and put it back on the front. The NYMR had considered top-and-tailing the train - putting one engine on each end to remove the need to run round at Whitby - but unfortunately one engine had failed, and so they were unable to run through to Whitby.

Instead, they could only take us by steam train to Grosmont, where the NYMR meets the Esk Valley Line, and then we would be conveyed onwards by a coach. We asked about service trains, but the trains are so infrequent that if we'd waited at Grosmont for a service train we'd have ended up only having 15 minutes in Whitby. Having no other sensible option, we agreed to take the steam train to Grosmont, and get on the replacement bus.

We had arrived in Pickering with 45 minutes to wait for the train, so we took the opportunity to look round the station. On the wall is an original North Eastern Railway map, painted on tiles and mounted on the wall for all to see just how many lines closed during the 1960s: Malton, far from being a simple one-platform halt on the York-Scarborough line, was once the site of two triangular junctions, one for the line to Pickering and Whitby (now run by the NYMR) and one for the line to Driffield.

At 11:40, our train arrived from Grosmont, hauled by BR Standard Class 4 Tank engine no. 80072, originally built in 1953 but made redundant after just 12 years of service, mostly on the London, Tilbury and Southend line running commuter trains - it being a tank engine (i.e. it doesn't have a separate tender to carry the water) limited it to short commuter runs. It was preserved and now usually resides at the Llangollen Railway, and is currently on loan to the NYMR. After the engine ran round the train and was watered, we boarded for the run to Grosmont:

1200 Pickering to Grosmont, arr 1305
Headcode: 1T12, operated by North Yorkshire Moors Railway using BR 4MT 80072 + 6 mark 1 coaches
Distance: 18 miles; walk-up price: £15.00

Our steam engine hauled six Mark 1 coaches for the hour-long journey to Grosmont, winding for nearly twenty miles through the wonderful North Yorkshire Moors. Heading north, we climbed gradually for twelve miles, winding between the hills through Levisham up to Goathland summit at an average gradient of about 1 in 100, through some beautiful countryside enriched by the sound and smell of our steam engine.

From the summit the line descends rapidly to the Esk Valley at Grosmont, the last three miles at an impressive 1 in 49 - on departing from Goathland station we didn't have to gun the engine at all; all it took was a release of the brakes and we were down the hill in no time. Ascending the gradient would have been quite an experience, but that will have to wait for another occasion when I can head south rather than north; if this journey did nothing else it made me want to come back and see the wonderful North Yorkshire Moors again.

And hopefully that next time can include a trip by steam train all the way through to Whitby. Instead, owing to the problems with the run-round loop, we were transferred by bus from Grosmont to Whitby:

1310 Grosmont to Whitby, arr 1335
Rail replacement bus operated on behalf of North Yorkshire Moors Railway
Distance: approx 7 miles; walk-up price included above

Somehow, in seven years of travelling on British trains, I've always avoided the dreaded rail replacement bus, mainly by planning my travels to avoid the need for such things. Unfortunately that streak came to an end on Friday and I ended up on my first ever rail replacement bus. Admittedly, however, it wasn't exactly arduous, or even annoying in the slightest: it was one of the nicest bus rides I've ever been on.

To get from Grosmont to Whitby, the bus had to climb up a very narrow road with gradients of 33% - much more than a train could handle, but the bus was clearly used to it and handled the gradients with ease - before descending down Blue Bank, a mile-long descent at 20% on the A169. We then climbed back up the other side of the valley before descending down again to the coast at Whitby.

Whitby is not your typical English coastal resort: in fact, it's much more like a traditional fishing village than a seaside town. Nonetheless, it is a significant tourist destination and a lovely place to look around for a few hours. On the recommendation of a mutual friend we went to the Magpie Cafe for a huge fish and chips, which was really good but too big for my stomach to handle (I should have gone for the small, not the regular...).

After lunch we took a walk up the 199 steps to St Mary's Church and Whitby Abbey, set upon a clifftop hill to the east of the River Esk, overlooking the whole town. The views of Whitby were quite impressive: the town is nestled on the hills that make up the Esk valley, but you can also see round the headland to them bay to the north, which had a pretty array of changing huts which stood out on the beach.

After a couple of hours wandering around, we headed back to catch our first proper train of the day to Middlesbrough:

1600 Whitby to Middlesbrough, arr 1730
Headcode: 2D43, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 156469
Distance: 35 miles; walk-up price: £3.50

The Esk Valley line between Middlesbrough and Whitby feels like it should not exist. It is the longest, most rural branch line in England, and most lines like it did not survive the Beeching Axe in the 1960s. Somehow this line did, partially because it runs through an area very poorly served by road: indeed, the whole line's timetable revolves around getting schoolchildren to school in Whitby in the morning, and getting them home in the afternoon. We happened to end up on the homeward train this Friday afternoon, and it was pretty busy, at least at first.

Unfortunately, a combination of factors - the necessity of the school trains, the single-track nature of the line, and a severe lack of available rolling stock - preclude the line from fulfilling its full potential. In particular, having the school train to Whitby prevents there being a commuter train to Middlesbrough to arrive before 9am, with the first arrival from Whitby into Middlesbrough being after 10:15.

This is partly because there is only enough rolling stock for one two-carriage train to shuttle back and forth between Middlesbrough and Whitby, and with a journey time of an hour and a half each way this means there can only be one train every three or four hours, which amounts to just four or five trains a day. These problems are nothing new, however: the line's timetable has remained more or less unchanged since at least the early 1990s.

The line itself, for all the foibles of its service, is one of the most beautiful and undiscovered lines in all of England. From Whitby the line climbs gradually through the Esk Valley, winding through remote countryside, interrupted by a string of small towns like Grosmont. Gradually the greenery thins out and we climb atop the North Yorkshire Moors and head to the remote station of Battersby.

Battersby station was originally a junction: the line from Whitby continued west to join the Northallerton-Stockton line at Picton Junction, with a branch continuing north towards Nunthorpe and Middlesbrough. The former line towards Picton Junction no longer remains, so trains now reverse at Battersby to head towards Middlesbrough. From here the line descends gradually through the Teesside suburbs into Middlesbrough.

On arriving at Middlesbrough, we met up with my cousin Catherine and her husband Martyn, who now live in Great Ayton just outside Middlesbrough. We saw round their lovely house - much of which is thanks to Martyn's hard work at DIY - before retiring to the Royal Oak, their local pub, for an enjoyable dinner. It was really good to see them again, even if having hitherto separate worlds of family and friends suddenly collide did occasionally make my head hurt...

After a short taxi ride back to Middlesbrough station, we headed home to York:

2050 Middlesbrough to York, arr 2143
Headcode: 1P67, operated by Transpennine Express using Desiro 185124
Distance: 50.75 miles; walk-up price: £7.75

Middlesbrough is one of four destinations at the east end of the north trans-Pennine route - the others being Hull, Scarborough and Newcastle - which combine to give an every-15-minutes service between Manchester and Leeds run by TPE, who revolutionised the service by introducing a new fleet of three-carriage class 185 Desiro units built by Siemens in 2006. They have, however, been something of a victim of their own success, and crowding at peak times can be quite severe.

This, however, was not peak time in any sense, and we had half a carriage to ourselves for the quiet hour-long run through the Vale of York. After passing through Tees Yard and the heavy industry on Teesside, we joined the line from Sunderland and the Durham coast down towards Northallerton, where we join the ECML for the last 30 miles to York. On arriving back at the hotel, we settled down for the night, ready for a busy day of eleven trains on Saturday touring around almost all of East and West Yorkshire.