Whilst the wife was enjoying Chesterfield market one Saturday afternoon recently I took the opportunity to spend some time by the lineside at Tupton, a small village just to the south of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, England. This is a location I used to visit regularly when we lived in the county before we moved to the Lake District and is on the Golden stretch of line between Clay Cross Junction and Tapton Junction where the freight and passenger traffic flows are merged on the four track main line for a distance of about five miles. The Midland main line from Derby joins with the ‘Erewash’ line from Nottingham before splitting again further north and diverging to Sheffield and Rotherham. This area has always been a hot spot for railfans but as I stood on the bridge with camera and camcorders poised I started to reflect on how this little place typified the changing face of railways in the U.K over the decades. Please indulge me if I waffle a bit over the next few posts! DMU 150 150 on a Leeds service passes north through Tupton 19th March 2011 on the Midland main line near Chesterfield One of the things that I have been doing over the winter as the big freeze prevented me from doing anything else was to start digitising and cataloguing my father Ken’s own large collection of black and white, medium format negatives of railways in Britain during the fifties and sixties (You can see where I got the bug from!) and by coincidence there were a few shots taken at Tupton. I also had images from the 1990s to do a comparison of how the area has changed and show how quickly nature takes over when industries decline. A Dub Dee, War department 2-8-0 in typically grimy condition passes the extensive sidings at Tupton that served the Avenue Carbonisation plant with a southbound goods train The black and white shots my father took were when the giant ‘Avenue’ coking plant was in its heyday and consumed huge amounts of locally produced coal. The exchange sidings where British Rail delivered hundreds of loaded 16 ton mineral wagons were extensive and the plants own Hunslet diesel shunters then hauled the coal over the bridge at Mill Lane that spanned the main line into the coking plant. Avenue no 2, A Hunslet 0-6-0DM very similar to the British Rail class 05 shunts a 16 tomn mineral wagon at Avenue sidings sometime in the late fifties, early sixties
Just to the north of the Avenue plant is the location of the boundary between British Rails Eastern and London midland regions. The map here shows the network in 1977 Taken from a similar vantage to the photo of the WD 2-8-0, 56 003 drags a 33 wagon long coal train south Even in the 1990s huge amounts of coal were used by the plant but in a change to working practices the main line locos now went all the way in and the coal was carried in the numerous HAA merry go round hoppers that featured automatic discharge mechanisms. Already, though, there are signs of Mother Nature reclaiming the area 56 012 sits in Avenue sidings with a rake of HAA hopper wagons Where the little Hunslet locos used to grind up the incline a class 58 Co-Co makes light work taking a full coal train into the plant over the Mill Lane bridge
With the closure of the plant the track was abandoned and the changes were small until the recent remodelling of Clay Cross junction and the moving of the ‘Ladder’ crossovers north to Tupton British Railways standard Class 9F 2-10-0 on a northbound freight in the early sixties to the south of the roadbridge at Tupton and hardly a tree or bush to be seen 30 years later and a Class 60 taken from the same point with a forest behind it
The undergrowth is taking over as a class 58 departs the sidings with a rake of empties Back in the days when 'Rail Blue' liveried locos could still be found an Intercity liveried HST is passed by a class 47 on the southbound afternoon ballast working in August 1990 Now becoming an endangered species as the new generation of passenger trains are introduced, a HST on a London St Pancras-Sheffield working accelerates away I shot some video on that Saturday afternoon and along with a short clip from 1996 posted it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrHGbrFKlPU
in 1998 the track was still in place in the sidings but little train movement was in evidence In 2011 the transformation is complete and you can only just make out the terrain so visible in the earlier shots. This is the same area as Avenue no 2 was photographed all those years ago.No doubt you will similar scenes wherever you live as the decline of rail continues, I am fortunate that with my Father’s and my own archives we can piece together an area’s history spanning 50 years! The area of the sidings is now a country walk and the bridge at Mill lane stands silent sentinel to a lost era. As Frank used to sing “regrets, I’ve had a few” but I wish now that I had videoed and photographed the little Hunslets before they disappeared. Still there are always some nice suprises, an unexpected capture of a Network Rail track machine on a positioning move was an unexpected bonus. In the far distance the famous crooked Spire of the church at Chesterfield is visible
Test Post Kev, Test Post - I spent ages last night replying to this post only for it not to work. If this test post works I'll do it again...! Regards, R
