North Eastern Railway Goods Shed, 1913

Moved and rebuilt brick by brick from Rowley Station to Beamish, this is a typical North Eastern Railway Goods Shed, recreating how it would have looked in 1913. Most UK railway stations had a goods shed - large cities would have had enormous houses, but most stations serving towns would have had something like this, with one railway line running through it for wagons or vans to be unloaded and loaded sheltered from the weather, usually with a platform inside or outside and a small crane to help with heavy or awkwardly shaped objects (This example has a platform inside and outside, and a crane inside and outside too). From the goods shed, onward transport would be made by a horse drawn vehicle, or more increasingly in the Edwaridan era, a petrol or steam lorry. Nowadays, goods sheds are a thing of the past, as any railway freight is dealt with in large yards, and the vast majority of goods sheds have been demolished, however some have survived either on preserved railways or converted to other uses