There was a railway station at Scotswood in Newcastle's West End for nearly 130 years.
Opening in 1839 as a stop on the new Newcastle and Carlisle Railway, one of its earliest newspaper mentions came two years later in a quite bizarre short story in the Newcastle Journal.
The story simply read: "A cauliflower was lately taken out of the garden at Scotswood Railway Station, measuring in circumference 13 feet two inches and weighing 211 Ib 10 ounces."
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In 1845, meanwhile, in more gritty news, the Newcastle Courant reported how John Blagburn was found guilty of an assault at the station on George Pattison and fined one shilling, plus 13 shillings and 10d costs.
And in 1879, the station was hit by a serious fire. "The flames spread rapidly," it was reported, "and the whole structure was in a short time destroyed". Happily, the station was rebuilt and up and running again within a year.
Scotswood railway station sat just south of the junction of Whitfield Road and Roberts Street.
Despite having platforms serving different lines, it was regarded as one station. The Southern platform served the Newcastle to Carlisle line. The Northern platform was on the North Wylam route.
In its early decades, the station was busy with passengers, many of whom were employed in the area’s teeming shipyards and factories. In 1895, for example, just under 150,000 tickets were issued.
But, moving into the 20th century, trains here - as elsewhere - lost passengers to buses over time. In 1951 just over 17,000 tickets were sold and services gradually became more infrequent on both lines.
Then in 1963 came the Beeching report which aimed to radically reorganise the nation’s railways that were losing £140m a year.
Over the next 10 years, one third of the country’s 7,000 stations were closed, and 5,000 miles of track ripped up.
The report recommended closure of 13 stations between Newcastle and Carlisle, including Scotswood.
The station was closed in May 1967 and the station buildings had been demolished by the early 1970s.
Since then, the subject of new rail or Metro services through Newcastle's West End has been mooted from time to time.
In 2019, for example, ChronicleLive reported on plans "that could include a tram-style system running at street level along the West Road or a rail service out of Newcastle Central station running adjacent to Scotswood Road".
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