Why "Belstone"?

I have long been intrigued by the railways which run (or ran, as all are now long closed) through the beautiful rural landscape of northern Northumberland.  I blame Ian Futers:  his minimalist models of various Northumbrian branches fascinated me when I read about them in the Railway Modeller in the late 1970s.  Hexham to Riccarton via Reedsmouth: Morpeth to Reedsmouth via Scotsgap: Scotsgap to Rothbury (all North British Railway): and the most hopeless of all, the North Eastern's straggling branch from Alnwick to Coldstream via Wooler, beautifully engineered with some of the most magnificent station buildings ever to grace a branch line, and carrying about five passengers a week.  None survived long enough for Dr Beeching to get his hands on them.  The Coldstream line lost its passenger service as early as 1930.  But much of the trackbed and most of the buildings and other structures have survived.  Most of the stations on these lines are now private homes, and very solid substantial homes at that.

Unfortunately, none of the lines in the area lent themselves to my 4' x 1' baseboard.  The only termini, Rothbury and Alnwick, were both substantial, sprawling affairs which would need at least twice as much space as I have.  So I did what countless modellers have done before me, and invented a suitable location.  We must imagine Belstone as a small market town, about the size of Rothbury, nestling at the foot of the Cheviot Hills.  Close by is a large stone quarry.  (If you guessed Biddlestone as the real-life location, have a gold star).  In the late 1870s the North British Railway constructed a line from just south of Berwick-on-Tweed, running across the fertile agricultural land to Wooler, then hugging the contours of the edge of the Cheviots to reach Belstone, some thirty miles from Berwick.

Construction of the railway was prompted as much by a desire to thwart the North-Eastern's drive into Scotland as by any conviction that the line would generate enough traffic to pay the interest on the capital needed to build it.  (There was a lot of that kind of thinking in the construction of Northumbrian branch lines.)     However a healthy trade in moving agricultural produce and livestock, the stone traffic from the quarry when it opened in 1935, and the fact that the branch provided a direct connection with the East Coast route at Berwick, meant that it survived rather longer than most of the other branches in the area - certainly long enough for Dr Beeching to add it to his list.  It is now 1962, and closure of the passenger service is just a few months away.  Much of the passenger traffic has already been lost to the roads, and a single Gresley brake third plus a couple of vans are normally ample accommodation for the few passengers still making the leisurely one and a quarter hour journey to Berwick.

Goods traffic is in rapid decline, with livestock movements almost ended, and normally just three or four wagons for the daily pick-up goods to shunt at Belstone.  But the stone quarry remains busy, accessed via a short spur from just outside the station and despatching one or sometimes two trains a day.  The freight service will survive a little longer, with final closure not coming until 1969.

Why "Belstone"?  Obviously a corruption of "Biddlestone", and a nice Northumbrian sounding name (although in real life the only Belstone I can find is in Devon).  It sits nicely alongside names such as Saughtree, West Woodburn, Scotsgap, Ilderton and Edlingham - all once served by the branch lines of northern Northumberland.