First trip of 2014! - Peak Rail

A reasonably good day (weather-wise) a couple of weekends ago provided an opportunity for what is becoming my annual winter trip to Peak Rail.

Hunslet 0-6-0ST "LORD PHIL' departs Rowsley South, 11/1/14

Whilst a lot of heritage lines close up for the post-Santa Special winter months Peak Rail continue to operate a regular, weekend steam service and it makes a very pleasant start to the year indeed.

For most of the year trains are operated with a locomotive at each end as Matlock station has no facilities for a loco to run round its train but in the winter months services are cut back slightly to the wooden platform at Matlock Riverside, a short walk from the town centre and Matlock station proper. Riverside station does have a run round loop and this makes the use of a single locomotive on a train possible which I assume brings about a significant reduction in operating costs during the quieter winter months.

Hunslet Engine Co. Ltd. Class WD 'Austerity' 0-6-0ST 'LORD PHIL' (works no.2868 of 1943)* was in action and it's rake of five coaches were surprisingly full (as was the buffet at Rowsley South which seemed to be doing a roaring trade in bacon sandwiches!)

After enjoying a couple of round trips through the Derbyshire Dales I popped into Bill Hudson Transport Books at Matlock station and came away with a couple of secondhand bargains to add to my library, I recommend calling in if you're in the area, the shop is a veritable (if small) Aladdin's Cave!

* 'LORD PHIL' carries the works no.3883 which dates from its rebuild (by Hunslet) in 1963 along with a smaller plaque that reads 'AUSTERITY LOCOMOTIVE BUILT FOR THE 2nd WORLD WAR ORIGINALLY DATED 1943 HUNSLET ENGINE Co. No.2868'.

Signalbox Safari - Glenfinnan

Having mentioned the state of my traditional photographic archives here it would appear that my early digital archives aren't any better organised as this image cropped up today while I was looking for something else entirely, from the other end of the country and a totally different year!

Glenfinnan signalbox, 8/9/05

Built by the Railway Signal Company (RSCo) in 1901, Glenfinnan signalbox closed in 1987 when the West Highland line between Fort William and Mallaig switched over the the Radio Electronic Token Block (RETB) signalling system.

Now part of the Glenfinnan Station Museum (and with a new staircase installed!) the box is apparently home to a heritage film studio, something that probably interests the legions of Harry Potter fans that visit the famous Glenfinnan Viaduct (used in at least one of the Harry Potter films) more than a heritage signalbox would do…

'Twas the night before Christmas

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

Then suddenly I heard a tiny voice speak,
'You lazy old s*d, you've not blogged anything in weeks!'

(with apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)

So instead of three Kings from the east let me wish you all the compliments of the season with a suitably wintry image of one King from the west.

GWR 6000 class 4-6-0, 6023 KING EDWARD II, 25/01/13

The Great Western Railway's KING EDWARD II to be precise… Photographed in the snow at Loughborough Central station during the Great Central Railway's winter steam gala in January this year.

So I'll just finish this brief entry with the last line from Clement Clarke Moore's poem 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'

'Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.'

Guess where I've been…

p.54 of Preserved Locomotives of British Railways (15th ed.)
Reproduced here with permission from Platform 5 Publishing Ltd.

That's right, I went to 'The Great Gathering' at the National Railway Museum in York yesterday. Just as the opportunity to see Mallard at Grantham was too good to miss so was the chance to see all six preserved A4 locomotives together in one place.

Temporarily repatriated (from the U.S.A. and Canada respectively) as part of the celebration of MALLARD's world speed record in 1938, 60008 DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER (the former 4496) and 4489 DOMINION OF CANADA were on display along with the four A4s that are usually based at various locations around the UK. Yesterday was the last chance to see all six together in York but one further event is scheduled for February 2014 at Locomotion, the National Railway Museum at Shildon in Co. Durham.

The Great Gathering, 11/11/13, larger version here.

From left-right are:60007 SIR NIGEL GRESLEY, 60008 DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, 60009 UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA, 4464 BITTERN, 4468 MALLARD and 4489 DOMINION OF CANADA.

If you're wondering how I managed a shot with no people in the way (Dad has already asked me this) then I must mention the 'Exclusive Access Mornings' that the NRM organised at a very reasonable £15 per person that were limited to 50 people per two-hour session. The NRM staff also recommended that everybody take their photographs from the turntable before wandering amongst the exhibits and getting in each others' way. Some distortion is evident in the above shot thanks to the ultra-wide angle 18mm lens (on a full-frame digital SLR camera) that I had to use to get all six locomotives in one shot but I can live with that.

The Great Gathering, 4464 BITTERN, 4468 MALLARD & 4489 DOMINION OF CANADA, 11/11/13

The Great Gathering, 60007 SIR NIGEL GRESLEY, 60008 DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
& 60009 UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA, 11/11/13

I must thank Platform 5 Publishing Ltd. for allowing me to reproduce part of their Preserved Locomotives of British Railways book. I realised today that I've been buying Platform 5 spotting books for almost 30 years now so must definitely qualify as a satisfied customer.

Driver J. Ball & Fireman C. Higgins

October 31 saw Dad and I once again taking advantage of London Midland’s ‘The Great Escape’ offer of one day’s unlimited travel on the London Midland network for just £15 each, this year’s trip taking us from Lichfield Trent Valley to Rugby, Stafford, Liverpool and Crewe.

I'd never been to Liverpool before and although I enjoyed the journey I didn't find much of interest at Lime Street station itself other than this…

Plaque commemorating Driver J. Ball and Fireman C. Higgins

The plaque refers to the crew of the 13.15 Liverpool to London Euston express on May 20 1937 who were seriously burned after a collapsed smokebox deflector plate in their London Midland & Scottish Railway Princess class locomotive caused a blowback that turned the footplate into a furnace. Driver Joseph Ball and Fireman Cormack Higgins stayed at the controls and brought the train safely to a stand outside Primrose Hill Tunnel just north of Euston station but sadly died in hospital the following day.

The memorial originally stood in the lobby at Edge Hill locomotive shed (where the men were a 'top link' crew) and a smaller plaque notes that it was removed upon the depot's closure, being rededicated by British Rail staff at its new location on platform 1 in 1986.

Interestingly the legendary railway photographer (and later Bishop of Wakefield) Eric Treacy was Vicar of St. Mary's Church in Edge Hill at the time and held a memorial service to the two men that became an annual event for many years.

The Night Riviera

I've always been fascinated by the idea of sleeper trains, I'd love to climb aboard a train in London, retire to a compartment and wake up in the highlands of Scotland or the far tip of Cornwall. Thanks to ScotRail and First Great Western (and government subsidies) such things are still possible in this country but as yet aren't something I've been able to sample for myself.

So when I found myself staying in a hotel just across the road from Exeter St Davids station a couple of months ago I couldn't resist a late night in order to photograph the 'up' (London bound) 'Night Riviera' as it passed through. The train takes almost eight hours to cover the 300 miles from Penzance to London Paddington and usually calls at Exeter at around 1.00am, stopping for 10 minutes or so to change crews and thus making photography possible.

57602 Restormel Castle at Exeter St Davids, 7/8/13

57602 Restormel Castle (converted from Class 47, 47337 in 2003), is one of four Class 57s in use on Night Riviera services and was bang on time having departed Penzance at 9.45pm with its load of seven BR Mk.3 carriages, five of which were sleepers and would eventually arrive at London Paddington eighteen minutes early at 5.05am. If that seems a bit early in the day to be getting out of bed into a west London morning then I should point out that 'passengers may remain on board until 07.00' according to the FGW website.

Having packed up my tripod and watched 57602 depart into the night I discovered that Exeter St Davids station gets locked up for a couple of hours after the 'up' train has departed until the 'down' service passes through, luckily a member of the station staff had spotted me and let me out of a side gate so that I could make my way back to my hotel and bed.

From the (Vuescanned) archives - Vic Berry

Easter 1987. I'd lost interest in railways for a little while (for the usual reasons, girls, beer, music, not necessarily in that order though) and was travelling through Leicester by coach when I spotted this.

Vic Berry's scrapyard in Leicester, 1987

Vic Berry's scrapyard, smack bang in the centre of Leicester. I fired off a few frames with my increasingly unreliable Zenit TTL camera and this is the only one that survives.

Piles of EMU and Mk.1 coach bodies on the left, a stack of what look like Mk.1 GUV bodies on the right (in the background) and a heap of Class 25 cabs in the foreground! The wasp-striped end of the yard's shunter 03069 (the former D2069) is also just visible on the right hand side.

The yard was on the site of the former Great Central Railway Braunstone Gate goods yard and the former GCR warehouse can be seen in centre of the picture. A serious fire in 1991 led to the yard's closure and in 1996/97 the site was redeveloped as 'Bede Island' a small commercial and residential area with streets named after herbs and spices. Even the bridge the photo was taken from is no more, Upperton road has been considerably lowered and apart from the River Soar only a footpath passes beneath now.

My interest in railways returned but I regret not making the short journey back to Leicester (with the Zenit's replacement, an Olympus OM-1) for another look.

Incidentally, 03069 managed to survive the scrapyard's clutches and the fire and can now be found at the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway.