Whitby NYMR Walk

There was a time when the only main way in and out of Whitby was by sea and the only men who dare to venture over the moors were either monks or smugglers!

In 1784, 1785 and 1827 Acts of Parliament granted the building of a turnpike road between Pickering and Whitby (the forefather road went via Thornton le Dale and the Fox & Rabbit Inn). The road was first laid with limestone and wasn’t fully tarred until the 1930s.

Although the NYM Railway opened in 1836 as the Whitby & Pickering Railway, the idea to construct a trade transport link was first proposed as early as 1795 … but as a canal. The success of the Stockton & Darlington Railway persuaded backers to switch their attention to building a railway.

The line we see to-day is not the original … the one of the 1830s, the brainchild of George Stepheson, was much narrower and built as a horse-drawn railway. When steam came along, a parallel line had to be constructed in the 1860s.