Wentworth Junction

[Enterprisingwestern]

8 hours ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

I rode down to Thurgoland Tunnel  from Dunford Bridge last month. I can't remember taking any pictures other than anything that got recorded on my GoPro as my hands were so cold I couldn't work the ordinary camera. By the time I got back to the car I had so little use in my fingers I had difficulty in turning the ignition key.

 

Southern softie!!

Barnsley lasses would have upgraded to sleeveless T shirts!

 

Mike.

[Michael Edge]

You would have been warmer riding up...... but not much. You need better gloves to ride round here in winter.

[TheSignalEngineer]

3 hours ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Southern softie!!

Barnsley lasses would have upgraded to sleeveless T shirts!

 

Mike.

I did notice a pair of them having a picnic behind Tesco in Penistone while their children were playing football. Mind you, they did have a lot of natural insulation.

 

It reminded me of a day back in 1982 when we went sledging with our children at Swanshurst Park in Birmingham. I had a flask of hot Bovril in my bag. When I poured it into the cup it started freezing to the sides within a minute. Only time I ever had a beef flavour iced lolly!!

2 hours ago, Michael Edge said:

You would have been warmer riding up...... but not much. You need better gloves to ride round here in winter.

The ride back was slightly warmer due partly to the gradient also the angle the wind was catching us. I had my thickest riding gloves on. I have a pair of really good mitts which I have worn for walking at -10C but I can't use the gears and brakes properly in those. 

My first mountain bike night ride was on the Woodhead line at the west end of the tunnel when we lived within sight of the route. Coming back down towards Hadfield we ran into one of those temperature inversion fogs around Torside Crossing. By the time we got to our house the handlebars were covered in ice and I had to keep touching the brakes to keep them from freezing up.

Edited April 8, 2021 by TheSignalEngineer

[Michael Edge]

1982 was the coldest winter I can remember, our water supply in Hemsworth froze up for a couple of weeks.

I have enough winter cycling kit now to ride in any weather, I only draw the line at ice and falling snow. In my student days I used to cycle between Prescot and Sheffield all year round, frequently in winter overnight on the Woodhead road - and my cycling kit wasn't nearly as good in the 1960s.

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, Michael Edge said:

1982 was the coldest winter I can remember, our water supply in Hemsworth froze up for a couple of weeks.

I have enough winter cycling kit now to ride in any weather, I only draw the line at ice and falling snow. In my student days I used to cycle between Prescot and Sheffield all year round, frequently in winter overnight on the Woodhead road - and my cycling kit wasn't nearly as good in the 1960s.

Yes it was cold. The final run of the Deltics was limited to 90mph because most of the 100mph stock had frozen toilets, coz our good friends at Bounds Green didn't believe us when we said it was a bit nippy.

Edited April 8, 2021 by St Enodoc

[TheSignalEngineer]

3 hours ago, Michael Edge said:

1982 was the coldest winter I can remember, our water supply in Hemsworth froze up for a couple of weeks.

We had several weeks of freezing conditions and snow on Birmingham. From my desk I could see the digital clock on the old Birmingham Mail tower block which showed the temperature for a few seconds as the minutrs changed. One lunch time it got up to showing 00 degrees so I went out for a walk round the city centre without a coat.

1963 was probably marginally worse as the snow which fell at our school on December 27th didn't clear completely until mid-April. My Dad was in the Fire Brigade at that time. One night the hoses froze to the road after a big fire. At Monument Lane they had to go back to steam for some local services because the diesel solidified in the fuel lines on the DMUs overnight.

[Enterprisingwestern]

3 hours ago, Michael Edge said:

1982 was the coldest winter I can remember, our water supply in Hemsworth froze up for a couple of weeks.

I have enough winter cycling kit now to ride in any weather, I only draw the line at ice and falling snow. In my student days I used to cycle between Prescot and Sheffield all year round, frequently in winter overnight on the Woodhead road - and my cycling kit wasn't nearly as good in the 1960s.

 

1963 for me, the year of the big freeze, walking the couple of hundred yards to school in the morning was quite enough, and getting there to continue education without any heating on, the kids wouldn't tolerate it nowadays.

 

Mike.

[TheSignalEngineer]

Two days before the start of term the road to our school was impassable. The Headmaster got the council out to hand dig a way through. One afternoon I walked three miles home through a blizzard as the buses couldn't get through to pick us up. 

Edited April 9, 2021 by TheSignalEngineer

[Michael Edge]

Building a brick lined curved tunnel isn't easy.

The joins between the rings look a bit rough and ready with dark filler on them but I don't think they will look too bad smoothed off, painted and covered in soot.

From the outside, all this will be under the hill up to Knabbs Lane. From here to the baseboard join it won't be tunnel shaped but rectangular section rising to maximum pantograph height. I'm going to fit (very securely) wires across the tunnel to carry rail for the pans to run under, including a high lead in from the fiddle yard. The eventual contact wires will be hooked into holes in the rail inside the tunnel mouth, I'm hoping all this will be dark enough not to be too visible. It's all going to be completely inaccessible once finished so it has to be bullet proof.

[Michael Edge]

Taking advantage of the fine weather yesterday I went on a little trek to get some photos of the surviving Woodhead OLE. One of the biggest lies told to get the line closed was that the OLE was worn out and couldn't be converted to 25kv - less than ten years after the main line closed everything East of Hadfield was quietly and easily converted. All that had to be done was to change the insulators, as far as I have seen no bridge clearances needed to be altered.

Leaving the car parked on the TPT near Crowden I set off by bike down the line to Hadfield.

Just beyond the platform at Hadfield towards Woodhead one portal remains, rapidly being swallowed up in the tree growth.

Most importantly it still has one of the original 1500v insulators for the catenary wire on it - they have all gone from the parts still in use.

Most of this is original, I need to work out how to make the characteristic Y shaped hangers.

Moving on to Dinting the single line to Glossop runs in a cutting alongside the road so I could get close ups from above.

 

A little nearer to Glossop this the arrangement at the junction of the Dinting triangle with two contact wires side by side on the same register arm.

From the footbridge which replaced the level crossing on Dinting lane this is the view towards Glossop. The only snag with all these portal photos is that most of the ones on the Worsbrough were not like this, the cross beams there were attached with adjustable height fittings to cope with colliery subsidence.

Close up of the standard cross beam fitting anyway.

This is a long shot of Dinting viaduct (from nearly half a mile away), just to show how visible this wiring is - I never bought into the theory that "it's so small you can't see it, just put the portals on the layout".

Another long shot from the road bridge at Mottram looking towards Dinting shows the heavy wiring well. All the wires are bright green, the structure looks as though it was painted green - rusty and faded now though.

Following the TPT towards Broadbottom I found that there is a path through what was Mottram marshalling yard with good views up at the structures (trees permitting). The yard itself is now a small forest.

Another close up of the commonest portal type.

Finally Broadbottom station, the attachments here on the footbridge look entirely original. There isn't a footbridge on WJ but there are some very similar looking remains under the bridges along the line so they may have looked a bit like this.

A last look along the line towards Manchester. Broadbottom is a lovely little station but reaching it by bike involves huge hills in and out of the Etherow valley - I've never bothered before, only ever been through here by train in the past. Back to the car via Mottram, Hollingworth, Tintwistle and Hadfield, only 23 miles but some of it hard work.

That's hit the upload limit, this is just a low resolution selection from 40 photos I took, I would never have done that in olden times with film....

 

 

 

[65179]

Mike,

 

Have you seen the Woodhead catenary thread in the Woodhead Route area on here?

 

This post provides a link to Chris Higgs's Hadfield line (and GE) portal photos:

 

Simon

 

[John Tomlinson]

I don't know if this is of any use to you, taken near Gilroyd, I can do you an enlargement of the cross member if it is.

 

 

John.

 

Edited April 20, 2021 by John Tomlinson

[John76]

John

 

Great photo. There are three things I like about it: -

 

the replacement pantograph

the three empty MGR wagons at the back of the train

and 

Dodworth pit and muck stack on the horizon.

 

 

John

[John Tomlinson]

47 minutes ago, John76 said:

John

 

Great photo. There are three things I like about it: -

 

the replacement pantograph

the three empty MGR wagons at the back of the train

and 

Dodworth pit and muck stack on the horizon.

 

 

John

Thank you John.

 

If you click on the picture it goes to my website and clicking on the arrows either side gets more similar pics.

 

This is a bit more than a shameless plug. There's another shot taken more or less where the front of this train is. Looking at where the masts and cross pieces meet the two diagonal bracing plates appear to be of varying slopes. Not helpful for someone doing a model.

 

John.

[John76]

John

 

Always good to see new photos of the Worsbrough branch. I particularly like this one of 76049 ‘banking’. 

 

 

John. 

[John Tomlinson]

Thanks John.

 

That's the one I was thinking of with the bracing plates being a different shape to those in the other picture. Looking at the strappings around the vertical posts makes this more clear.

 

To help Michael with his overhead gubbins, does anyone know why these are different?

 

The other interesting thing on this snap are the wires leading to the posts immediately in shot, at a diagonal to the track. I wonder if these are tensioners in some way? The picture of the train they are banking shows more of these posts than in the view of the banker.

 

 

John.

Edited April 20, 2021 by John Tomlinson

[woodenhead]

Is it an end of section for the power supply?

 

Was looking at wrong posts - I thought you were referring to the big ones that the wires terminated into.

 

Those other ones further back were adjustable for subsidence and were a feature on the mining parts of the route.

Edited April 20, 2021 by woodenhead
Was looking at the wrong posts!!

[Michael Edge]

6 hours ago, 65179 said:

Mike,

 

Have you seen the Woodhead catenary thread in the Woodhead Route area on here?

 

This post provides a link to Chris Higgs's Hadfield line (and GE) portal photos:

 

Simon

 

Thanks, I'd missed that thread entirely - no ideas how!

 

5 hours ago, John Tomlinson said:

I don't know if this is of any use to you, taken near Gilroyd, I can do you an enlargement of the cross member if it is.

 

 

John.

 

An enlargement of the fastening of the cross beam would be very useful, thanks. Nice to see the "new" colour of the pantographs - much what I thought it would be but they very quickly turned fairly black.

 

1 hour ago, John Tomlinson said:

Thanks John.

 

That's the one I was thinking of with the bracing plates being a different shape to those in the other picture. Looking at the strappings around the vertical posts makes this more clear.

 

To help Michael with his overhead gubbins, does anyone know why these are different?

 

The other interesting thing on this snap are the wires leading to the posts immediately in shot, at a diagonal to the track. I wonder if these are tensioners in some way? The picture of the train they are banking shows more of these posts than in the view of the banker.

 

 

John.

These are anchor posts where separate sections of catenary overlap, the wires run up out of contact to these and there will be another pair facing the other way somewhere down the train. I'll have at least one set of these on the layout between the tunnel and Moorend Lane.

[cheesysmith]

Were the adjustable stanchions used just a angle bracket, then a series of bolts to a plate on the other side of the vertical, to allow easy adjustment to compensate for the ground settling from the old mine workings.

[John Tomlinson]

These are the larger views of the shot going away with 76008

 

 

and then the one of the cross piece seen with 76049 and the diagonal wires to the side posts. I'm sorry my old Ektachromes aren't a bit sharper.

 

 

 

 

John.

Edited April 20, 2021 by John Tomlinson

[Michael Edge]

1 hour ago, cheesysmith said:

Were the adjustable stanchions used just a angle bracket, then a series of bolts to a plate on the other side of the vertical, to allow easy adjustment to compensate for the ground settling from the old mine workings.

Yes, that was the idea, there were also some at Rotherwood but I don't know of any others.

[Enterprisingwestern]

16 minutes ago, Michael Edge said:

Yes, that was the idea, there were also some at Rotherwood but I don't know of any others.

 

Weren't there quite a few in Wath Yard?, subsidence also being the reason Wath Electric shed was built on a concrete platform.

 

Mike.

[Michael Edge]

There might well have been, I've not looked everywhere. 

[Enterprisingwestern]

39 minutes ago, Michael Edge said:

There might well have been, I've not looked everywhere. 

 

With above 500 different designs of portals to go at I'd be very impressed if you had!

 

Mike.

Edited April 20, 2021 by Enterprisingwestern
Clarification.

[John76]

4 hours ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Weren't there quite a few in Wath Yard?, subsidence also being the reason Wath Electric shed was built on a concrete platform.

 

Mike.

Mike 

 

If you mean along the four track main line from Moor Road towards Elsecar Junction, then yes.

 

John