nigb55009

The rear vehicle has a yellow end. Could be test car Iris, hitching a lift?

If you look closely at the map Wooden head posted at the beginning of this thread, you can see a fifth platform. It is a bay platform, facing towards west, ie towards Salford Crescent. It was next to, but not connected to the LNWR lines.

The bay platform at Stockport was used quite frequently by services which had terminated short of their original destination. In the 1990s, trains from Southport and Wigan normally terminated at Cheadle Hulme and later Hazel Grove. If there was a problem, then the train would terminate and shunt round, via the south end of the station and back onto the viaduct and into the bay before setting off at the booked time. Sunday services normally terminated at Stockport. These ran straight into the bay from the up fast line. The 2240 to Wigan also departed from the bay, also having arrived directly into the bay.

Is it Western Lone Ranger, or maybe Western Champion the Wonder Horse?

The stencil indicator is there so that if the front of the train is ahead of the signal, the driver can look back before departure and see which route has been set. A lot of terminus stations had signals fitted with this type of indicator. Liverpool Lime St springs to mind.

Down the dustpipe, Status Quo

Fade to black, Metallica

Wigan Cricket Clubs Bull Hey ground is next to the WCML. It's on the up side of the line to the North of Wigan North Western Station.

Always somewhere, Scorpions

Young gifted and skint, New Model Army

If this is still available I would be very keen to take it off your hands.

Run run run, Jo Jo Gunne

Black Sunday, Jethro Tull

Detroit Rock City, Kiss

According to the original Flickr caption, it`s 2x08 + 2x12 = 40.

Snow blind, Black Sabbath

Why is it the BBC seem to use reporters with specific knowledge of the topic, for everytopci. If necessary moving them from one end of the country to the other, on a daily basis in some cases. But when it comes to all things transport related, especially railways, the nearest hack will do. No effort seems to be made to research the subject. Any news item relating to railways gets the same old background photo of some third rail trackwork and a few lines of ill informed words, most of which seems like guesswork. A discovery like Hillhouse would make an interesting article, not just for railway enthusiasts, but also local historians and industrial archaeologists, if only someone could be bothered to do their homework.

Dirty deeds done dirt cheap, AC-DC

Fire, Krokus

I see what you mean about the buck-eye coupling. I hadn`t noticed before.

Agreed, the buffing plates were fitted later. The original high level air pipes were connected to the locos bufferbeam by pipes fixed to the cab front. These were also altered later, to match the other locos in the sub-class. I presume D6580 was also repainted blue at the same time. There are a couple of photos on this site of D6580 in green livery. The exterior metal pipe work and small buffing plate can be seen clearlyHeljan also made a model of it, I think the catologue number was 3346.

D6580 was the first loco fitted with push-pull equipment and was used for testing. It was the only class 33/1 to carry green livery. If you have a blue 4TC set there would be no need to repaint the loco. A smaller than usual yellow warning panel was applied, it fitted between the high level air pipes/ MU cables. The loco was converted in 1965.

You`d have thought they would have found somewhere a bit bigger to hold Eurovision.

Can't take the hurt, Mammoth

There are two articles on Kent coal trains in issues 253 and 254 of Traction magazine. They cover the workings from the north to the Southern Region, as well as returning traffic, both loaded and empty, back north. Traffic for the paper manufacturing industry is also covered.