From Teesside (and Newcastle) to Blackpool in the summer at this date was very much by the Stainmore line, scheduled trains on Saturdays and excursions on Sunday. Also on the line in the week were substantial trainloads of coke from Teesside through Penrith and Keswick to the steelworks at Workington. The huge climb from Barnard Castle over the summit to Kirkby Stephen was made worse by some significant weight limits over the lofty viaducts on the line across valleys, so both passenger and freight trains were double headed at least, and sometimes banked as well. There was a stud of BR Standard 77xxx in the 1950s specifically for the line. The locos would come off at Tebay, replaced for the run down the WCML, which must have pleased Tebay crews otherwise spending their life pushing up to Shap.
A 1939 timetable shows one Saturday train even had through carriages to Southport. It was always a bit surprising that, with all the traffic from the North-east and Glasgow, there was never a triangle line built north of Preston for direct running to Blackpool, Some trains would reverse in Preston station, doubtless a nuisance at busy times, while others passed through the station and ran right round the various connections at Lostock Hall, south of the town, able to come back northward through the station again about 20 minutes later.
Traffic eventually died away, road coaches took the Blackpool traffic and the coke trains were diverted via the Newcastle-Carlisle line. Closed in 1962. There were regular photos of the excursion trains crossing the summit in magazines of the era, and some are linked here
http://disused-stations.org.uk/s/stainmore/index.shtml
