Living in Cumbria, where for three months of the year it is cold, wet and windy (the rest of the time it is Winter!) you get used to railfanning in all sorts of conditions. One thing that happens is Steam railtours do run all year round in the U.K although the bulk of them are in the Summer months. The Stanier 8F 2-8-0 were built in large quantities by the LMS railway as a standard design freight locomotive and fortunately a few have survived. In the early days of Barrow Hill Roundhouse's resurrection as a working steam centre and museum we had the 'Barrow Hill Collier' railtour locomotive 8F 48773 come onto the shed for servicing. I was exhibiting at The Chesterfield model Railway exhibition that weekend but Merv borrowed the camcorder and shot this footage of the 2-8-0 bringing its coaches into Barrow Hill Up sidings where they are taken on by a class 47 diesel to the local station whilst the steam engine and its support coach take the spur onto the museum site. it is turned on the turntable in the middle of the roundhouse and later on is seen departing back onto the Midland Old road to rejoin its train. The date is the 16th of January 1999 and the hours of daylight are short [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dMKS5GfjUI"]YouTube - 8F 48773 Barrow Hill January 1999[/ame] Seen doing what it was designed for, 8F 48650 drifts through Grindleford station in Derbyshire with an unfitted freight in the late 1950s in a photo taken by my father Ken Smith. 16ton mineral wagons make up the bulk of the train On a nice sunny summer day 48151 a regular on the Cumbrian Coast line attacks the bank heading south through the village of Askam where I live with the 'Brief Encounter Special' This loco is based at Carnforth and disgraced itself last year by setting fire to a big chunk of the Cumbrian Coastline including seriously damaging a viaduct. It was sinbinned in the siding outside my office when I arrived for work on the Monday morning! Not on the main line, but on the preserved Keighley and Worth Valley railway is 8F 48431 which has the earlier 'Fowler' straight sided tender attached. It is double headed with a Great Western Railway Panner tank as it waits to depart Keighley station This weekend we should have LMS Jubilee 4-6-0 'Leander' passing through and hopefully I should get some good shots (the weather forecast is O.K) and I'll start a thread on them next week
The station area appears to be marvelously maintained. I hope that one which started the fires, did not cause an anti-steam backlash from the non-fan public? Boxcab E50
One thing it highlighted was that in the days of steam there was a lot less vegitation by the track to catch fire as it was aways being set alight and being burnt back. It appears that the problem with the 8F was a faulty ashpan that was allowing live coals rather than ash to drop into the 'four foot' and hopefully this has been fully rectified now. It caused us some work as we had to 'scramble' a traindriver and a class 37 diesel to take the train back to Barrow in Furness where the tour companies own diesel could take over. Grindleford station is still open but much of the scenic details you see in the picture will be gone, many timber built goods sheds have perished as have the timber station buildings with the move to unstaffed stations on British Railways, in many case a single bus shelter on either platform suffices. colour light signals have swept away many areas of semaphore signalling . I'll put another reply on in a few minutes to show why Grindleford is famous as a location on the railways
Grindleford station Found thses two pics to show how the station looks nor and realised they were taken back in 1994, the last time I was there, seems like only yesterday! The main attraction at Grindleford is it is the western end of the infamous Totley Tunnel, at 6,230 yards on a steep gradient, a real challenge for footplate crews in the days of steam. Not so much of a challenge now for the drivers of air conditioned units. Somewhere I have a fabulous picture I took of 'Flying Scotsman' after its return from Australia just after it had exited the tunnel. I'll see if I can find it.
Flying Scotsman at Grindleford Back in April 1990 I stood on the bridge at Tapton Junction,Chesterfield and photographed 4472 Flying Scotsman heading north after its return from its Australian tour. Turning to a lad called Pete Drury I said "If we get a move on and thrash the car we can catch it again at the other end of Totley Tunnel" challenge on! A short time later we were at Grindleford with the sun setting fast. As the loco and its two support coaches came around the curve it was illuminated by the full glow of the setting sun head on. But what was going on? the engine was going very slowly and one of the footplate crew was hanging out of the cab. Seems there were serious doubts about whether it would get under the next bridge because of the changes in clearances as a result of the greater superelevation put in for the high speed DMUs in use of the line. it went under with inches to spare. ' My suggestion to them to 'let the tyres down to make it a bit lower it' did not amuse them!
The more modern station area still looks well kept. However, without those buildings, it seems to have a rather vacant feel. Somewhat dehumanized? Boxcab E50
