The Dundee and Newtyle Railway opened in 1831 and was the first railway in the north of Scotland. It was built to carry goods between Dundee and the fertile area known as Strathmore; this involved crossing the Sidlaw Hills, and was accomplished with three rope-worked inclined planes. Newtyle was a remote railhead, and the anticipated traffic volumes were not achieved, the inclines incurred heavy operating costs, and the railway never made money.
Responding to the criticism of the remote Newtyle station, two further railways were built; these were nominally independent but for practical purposes were branches of the Dundee line. The lines were the Newtyle and Coupar Angus Railway and the Newtyle and Glammiss Railway; they opened in 1837-1838. The extension lines did not transform the finances of the main railway, but when the Scottish Midland Junction Railway wanted to build a main line between Perth and Forfar, it adopted the lines and upgraded them, incorporating them into the route of the new main line.
The Dundee and Newtyle Railway was taken over by the Dundee and Perth Railway and the difficult inclines were by-passed by circuitous and more easily graded routes in the period from 1860 to 1868. Nonetheless the line declined and closed to passengers in 1955. The Coupar Angus and Glammis (Glamis) lines continued as part of the Forfar main line, but that closed in 1967.
History
Conception In the first decades of the nineteenth century Dundee had been established as an important manufacturing town and port. The topography of the area presented a challenge in gaining access to the agricultural hinterland. Strathmore forms a broad and fertile plain running from northeast to southwest, following the Dean Water and River Isla flowing to the River Tay. Hilly land is located immediately behind Dundee, and a steep and unproductive range of hills, the Sidlaws, presents a second barrier separating Dundee from Strathmore. The need for connection came from both ends: Dundee needed access to Strathmore for processing its jute and hemp products: flax was imported from the Baltic states on a scale unmatched anywhere in Scotland,John Thomas and David Turnock, A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: Volume 15: North of Scotland, David & Charles (Publishers), Newton Abbot, 1989, and the agriculture of Strathmore needed access to a sea port. The sea port might not necessarily be Dundee, and that fact motivated the Burgh Council of Dundee to consider a transport link.C J A Robertson, The Origins of the Scottish Railway System, 1722 - 1844, John Donald Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh, 1983,
A canal had been proposed in 1817, but a more realistic idea was formed in 1825 when Dundee Burgh Council decided to fund a survey for a railway. Charles Landale was commissioned to undertake the survey. (He was later described as "an apothecary" by General Pasley.) Landale proposed a route that passed through a gap in the hills formed by the Glack of Newtyle; the summit of the route was to be at above sea level. Railway locomotives were primitive and inefficient at this early date and Landale's route involved rope-worked inclined planes: one (the Law Incline) climbing immediately from the Dundee terminal, a level section, a second climb (the Balbeuchly incline), another level section, and a third incline (the Hatton incline) descending to Newtyle. There was no community at Newtyle at that time; the location was just a railhead. The Dundee terminal was not close to the harbour, or even the waterfront, at Dundee.
A parliamentary bill was submitted for the line and it was enacted as the (7 Geo. 4. c. ci) on 26 May 1826; it was the first railway in the north of Scotland.S G E Lythe, The Dundee and Newtyle Railway: 1 - Promotion and Management, 1825 - 1846, in the Railway Magazine, August 1951Charles E Lee, The Dundee and Newtyle Railway: 2 - Engineering and Operation, The Railway Magazine, October 1951
Construction The line was built with fish-bellied rails on stone blocks, with the rare track gauge of ; the rails were rather light at . 600 shares were issued at £50 each, that is £30,000, with authorised borrowings of £10,000.From Lythe, page 548, and also Marshall, page 12, and Carter page 32, and Robertson, page 66. Groome says £140,000, apparently adding the additional capital authorised by later acts of Parliament. Awdry is silent on the matter.E F Carter, An Historical Geography of the Railways of the British Isles, Cassell, London, 1959Francis H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: A Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical, 1892–1896, volume 2, page 426Francis Whishaw, The Railways of Great Britain and Ireland Practically Described and Illustrated, 1842, reprint 1969, David & Charles (Publishers) Limited, Newton Abbot, Peter Marshall, The Railways of Dundee, The Oakwood Press, Headington, 1996, These were quickly taken up. The estimated cost of the line was to be £25,600 including £3,700 for the supply of the three stationary steam engines for the inclines, but excluding the cost of land acquisition.
The tunnel in Dundee under the eastern flank of The Law seems to have been added as an afterthought, and difficult tunnelling conditions proved expensive; moreover land acquisition was considerably more expensive than had been allowed for. The Law Tunnel was completed on 21 January 1829, but later in the year the works generally were reported as at a standstill. Landale was dismissed from the service of the company, amid criticisms that he failed to control the contractors properly, and that the estimates had been considerably overspent. The company had exhausted all its capital, and amid considerable acrimony, it decided to seek authorisation for additional capital and for borrowing powers, and these were granted by the (11 Geo. 4 & 1 Will. 4. c. lx) of 29 May 1830: £10,000 in additional shares and £20,000 in borrowing. The act also conferred powers to extend the line in Dundee to the waterfront, "through the streets", and "the additional funds enabled completion of the line".
The Dundee terminal was at Ward Road on the north side of the town, and immediately ascended Law Hill by a 1 in 10 incline, long; at the top it entered Law Tunnel, about long; the tunnel was wide and high. There was a level section of long, after which the Balbeuchly incline rose at 1 in 25 for . A further level section followed, also of to Hatton. The final incline descended to Newtyle at 1 in 13 for .
The inclines were all straight; the Law incline was laid with three rails at the top, four in the central section and two at the lower end; a high pressure engine was provided. The Balbeuchly incline had only a single track and was worked by a condensing engine; the Hatton incline also had a single track and had a similar engine.
A newspaper advertisement stated that the line had been opened for traffic on 16 December 1831, but this was only on the upper levels, not including the Law and Hatton inclines; the extension to the full extent of the line was reported to have taken place on 3 April 1832. 2,645 passengers were carried during April 1832.
The line in operation The original estimates for the line had assumed a dominant goods traffic, approximately balanced from Dundee and to Dundee. Passenger traffic became remarkably buoyant, notwithstanding the lack of attraction at Newtyle. The company introduced a variety of season tickets, and workmen's fares conveying sheep shearers at cheap rates as well as excursionists. The original passenger coaches were said to be old stage coach bodies set on trucks. "Outside" passengers travelled on the roof of the coaches. Marshall states that two old "Tally-Ho" coaches that had been operating on the Perth turnpike were fixed to a wagon chassis.
Whishaw described the carriages differently: there were first class carriages and mixed carriages; the latter "resemble an ordinary stage coach, with the addition of an entirely open compartment both before and behind; the middle compartment, which holds only four passengers, is called the extra first class; and each of the open compartments holds eight passengers; altogether twenty." There were about 100 wagons.
There was a sophisticated system of signalling on the inclines: a white board with a black centre was fixed at the foot of the Law Incline, and was turned to face the engine house (at the head of the incline) five minutes before departure time. The engine operator had to wait for the board to be turned before commencing the ascent. A bell was rung in fog, and red and white lights were used at night.
The stations were very crude, and in these early days were more comparable with the places at which stage coaches might pick up and set down; they were at:
Ward station, Dundee; Off-set at back of Law, later known as the Cross Roads; Off-set at Flour Mill, St Mary's Road, later known as Baldovan; Off-set at Baldragon; Foot of Balbeuchly incline; Top of Balbeuchly incline; Off-set at Auchterhouse; Newtyle depot.
The train service consisted of mixed trains leaving both Dundee and Newtyle at 8.00 a.m., 10.00 a.m. and 4.00 p.m. with an additional goods service at 1.00 p.m.
The company was evidently unhappy about the state of the engineering of its line, and in 1832 it commissioned the engineer Nicholas Wood to review it. He generally approved the situation, only commenting that horse traction should be continued "until the traffic should be more developed", and that he "looked forward to the early extension of the line at both ends, particularly at Dundee." This referred to the 1830 authorisation to extend to the harbour in Dundee; this was not carried out until 1836. He recommended contracting out the management of the operation of the line, clearly a criticism of the current management.
Traction
Horse traction was used on the level sections between the inclined planes. From September 1833 steam locomotives were introduced: no. 1, Earl of Airlie and no. 2, Lord Wharncliffe were delivered (on 20 and 25 September respectively) from J and C Carmichael of Dundee. They had the 0-2-4 wheel arrangement. They had single-acting vertical cylinders driving the front wheels through bell cranks; the trailing wheels were mounted in a bogie, a very early implementation of that construction. A third locomotive, no. 3, nicknamed Trotter was delivered from James Stirling and Co on 3 March 1834; it was similar to the earlier engines, but a little smaller. A fourth engine, an 0-4-0 of the Planet type named John Bull, was acquired from Robert Stephenson & Co in April 1836. The four locomotives cost about £3,300.
The Earl of Airlie entered service on 29 September 1833 on the level section below Balbeuchly incline.
When Alexander Allan (superintendent of the Scottish Central Railway) discovered one of the original locos in use as a stationary engine in 1854, he realised it was of historical importance, and had it 'removed and all the parts carefully put together, cleaned, painted, and lined'. He then had it photographed, and a lithograph taken from the photograph was reproduced in an article in The Engineer journal of 1883. The date on the maker's plate of 1833 identifies it as either no. 1, Earl of Airlie or no. 2, Lord Wharncliffe.
The introduction of locomotives, and therefore somewhat faster speeds, now showed up the deficiencies in the engineering of the line. Passenger trains averaged 15 mph (24 km/h).
Development of Newtyle Early in 1832 Lord Wharncliffe, as the landlord of the small settlement at Newtyle. offered a prize for the best plan for development of a village there; George Matthewson of Dundee won the prize and his scheme was implemented between 1832 and 1838, somewhat enlarging the community and providing roads and drainage, and water supplies; however the expansion did not materially affect the income of the railway.
Reaching the harbour