The Cheadle branch line was a railway line of just under in length that served the town of Cheadle, Staffordshire. It was in operation as a passenger line from 1892 to 1963, and closed altogether in 1986. It took 46 years from conception to completion and was notable in that part of the line had to be practically rebuilt partway through its existence.
Proposals for a line
In 1849 the market town of Cheadle, population 3,000, was still without any form of rail transport. The North Staffordshire Railway had completed its Stoke to Derby line in 1848 and the Churnet Valley Line the following year but both of the lines missed the town, passing around to the south and north of Cheadle respectively. The people of the town, along with several mines on the Cheadle Coalfield, wanted a rail connection as a means of transporting their goods. Several schemes for a branch line were proposed over the years; among these was a branch from the NSR east of Blythe Bridge and running via Forsbrook to Dilhorne and then Cheadle. Unfortunately, none of the schemes ever came to fruition.
In 1887, the Cheadle Railway, Mineral & Land Co. Ltd was formed and at long last construction of a branch line leaving the NSR line at Cresswell began the following year. In the meantime, the owners of Foxfield Colliery at Dilhorne had grown tired of waiting for the new line and had built their own connection to the NSR near Blythe Bridge. This line, running entirely over private land and opened in 1893 still survives today as the Foxfield Light Railway, albeit without the connection to the main line.
Opening
The first sod of the line was dug at Totmonslow on 22 March 1888. After several financial problems, the first stretch from Cresswell to Totmonslow was opened on 7 November 1892. The first train ran to Tunstall on the Potteries Loop Line and regular services became an extension of those on the latter for almost the whole of the branch's existence.
Construction of the extension to Cheadle started in 1893. A new colliery, christened New Haden Colliery, was opened at Draycott and the line was already in operation for goods traffic up to this point. The new piece of line involved the building of a difficult tunnel. This passed through a ridge of high ground of sandstone before turning east and running to a station on the southern outskirts of Cheadle. The new section was also beset with financial problems and it was not until 1 January 1901 that the line opened in its entirety.
In December 1906 Totmonslow station was renamed to Tean, although the village of Upper Tean was located a mile to the east. On 1 January 1907 the North Staffordshire Railway inherited the line from the Cheadle Railway Company; until that date they had provided the services but not actually owned the line.
Construction of the diversion line
Problems with the tunnel began almost immediately after completion. Several sections had to be patched up over the years but in November 1918, partial collapse caused the line to be closed for almost a month. While repairs were underway, the coal traffic was important enough to justify wagons being exchanged between locomotives while inside the tunnel, repairs being carried out by men working on a timber platform with just enough room for the wagons to pass underneath.
After the NSR was absorbed into the London, Midland and Scottish Railway in 1923, problems with the tunnel became even more commonplace and construction of a new deviation line finally began in 1932. This skirted the high ground to the east and joined up with the old formation again just outside Cheadle station; this new alignment was opened in 1933. The tunnel portals were bricked up and the track from the south was lifted soon after, but the northern section of the old line remained in use as a backshunt to New Haden Colliery; all trains to and from the latter would thus need to reverse at Cheadle. The southern portal was used as a small private coal mine which operated from 1983 to 1991 and even though it is bricked much of the mining equipment remains inside the tunnel.
By the beginning of World War II the passenger services had reduced to only two trains per day each way, with five on Saturday. In a further blow, New Haden Colliery was closed in 1943 after the Ministry of Fuel and Power decided to move the 500 miners to more efficient pits in aid of the war effort, and its traffic of 3,000 tons per week was lost. However, a brickworks adjacent to the colliery plus an increasing amount of sand traffic from nearby quarries, most of it delivered by road to Cheadle, provided a lifeline.