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Abbey Light Railway 8mm movie


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Many thanks for sharing your digitised film. I remember the Abbey Light Railway being built and then operated in Leeds in the 1980s, the film shows the chilly grittiness of cold winter days in the Aire Valley very well! Also the sunny delights of Kirkstall Abbey halt. It was one of the little highlights which made urban Leeds life bearable at the time.

 

The line is beautifully recreated by Dave Malton's 0-14 layout, he was there and can be seen in the movie. With both of these the magic of the ALR lives on...

 

Dava

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Wow, that brings back a few memories.

 

In my youth I worked on the ALR on Sunday’s and do appear in the film on the Hunslet. 
 

There were two big engineering features on the line, the bridge and the cutting.

 

The bridge steels could be seen early in the video. These were set onto Concrete pads formed on top of wire basket gabions set into each bank of the mill race. The dumper seen early on was transporting bricks to form a ford next to the bridge location. This allowed the dumper and the Ruston excavator to reach the north bank of the mill race. The Ruston excavator sat in the middle of the Ford and lifted the steel RSJ's into place.

 

The cutting just after the bridge was a pig to dig. It wasn’t long after we started to excavate it the we found it was a dumping ground for off cuts of leather from an old long gone factory! It was like a coals seam of leather.

 

I have some photos somewhere of my time on the ALR, I will have to see if I can find them.

 

Thanks for digitising and posting.

 

Andrew

Edited by innocentman
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