Tony S

The “RS” numbering system was comical. RS stood for “road service” vehicle. All the Ruston Bucyrus RB150 face shovels were assigned a RS number. Somehow I can’t see me getting away with parking a RB150 shovel in Tesco’s car park.

I worked on Tunstead kilns while the incline was still in use. The top level sidings only went as far as the end of the rotary kilns (the two chimneys centre) where full coal wagons were held in reserve. Gravity shunting took the wagons through the two discharge points for either the rotary kilns or the shaft kilns. The rules were two loaded wagons ascending, three empties descending. The bottom of the incline joined the south works siding by the “dogs home” shunters cabin. To make it “safer” a set of catch points were fitted leading to a steeply oppositely inclined sand drag. Someone had to break the rules, four empties descending on a rainy day. The catch points worked, the sand drag didn’t. It acted as a ski jump launching the train. The root cause? Poor maintenance. Over the years the sand had washed away leaving bare rail. Fortunately the driver jumped off about half way down the incline. The kilns were numbered north to south Tunstead 1 to 6 Buxton central 7 to 10 Hindlow 11 to 17 Two new kilns were built at Tunstead and took the numbers 7 and 8. If anyone wants information on how the kilns were fired I can give it but it is not a subject for here.