Having crossed Barmston Drain by a footbridge the route of the Victoria Dock Railway passed east to Wilcolmlee where there was one of Hull’s notorious level crossings. Just west of Wincolmlee are some sturdily built brick buildings which a 1950s map of Hull shows were part of a local shunting yard. Immediately after the level crossing the line was carried over the River Hull by a swing bridge which survives intact (see photo above, bridge as viewed from Wincolmlee). Clearly the bridgemaster’s cabin remains intact as, presumably, does the bridge-moving mechanism. This, to my mind, is one of Hull’s unsung heroes as regards surviving evidence of Hull’s industrial history.
Having crossed the bridge the route continues east to Wilmington station before crossing Stoneferry Road/Cleveland St. by another level crossing, back in the day. A small building, once part of Wilmington Station, survives. It was at a point just after the Cleveland St. crossing that the rail-line to Hornsea diverted from the Victoria Dock rail-line. For a while the route of the Hornsea line is obscured by later development but the route can be picked-up again just east of the present high-level Alexandra Dock rail-line, the route then swinging north and crossing Chamberlain Road just west of James Reckitt Avenue. Hereon up to Sutton Road (carried over the route by a flyover) the route is a ‘green corridor’, sometimes backed by houses and gardens, sometimes by open fields criss-crossed by footpaths.
North of Sutton Rd. the route passes through a cutting, this signalling the change of terrain from the Hull valley flood-plain to the undulating ground of Holderness. The station at Sutton (still a village for the early decades of the rail-line) was sited beside Church Street. Hereon, north-east the route set-out across East Carr, Sutton and rural Holderness, although today the route through East Carr is surrounded by modern housing the route remains a ‘green corridor’.