highpeakman

22 hours ago, montyburns56 said:

Stourport Power Station 1970s by Keith Chambers

 

 

 

It looks to be an odd place to have a loco shed. Doubtless there was a very good reason for having it there - at the end of some kind of staithe? Perhaps someone can provide enlightenment?

Damn! Someone else who is younger than me! (Although not by much).

Best wishes for a good Birthday and thank you very much indeed for all of the pictures and commentary you post.

17 hours ago, cctransuk said:

 

Why?!

 

In this age of instant, person-to-person communication, we should have seen the end of business travel long ago.

 

Since there is an imperative to reduce carbon-production, business travel should be banned; end of!

 

Let's be honest, it was never about the need to be in the same place at the same time. It was / is an expected / entitled perk of a certain level of business management.

 

Moreover, the transport companies - in particular airlines - rely on being able to charge silly money for first / business class, as it is charged to the employer.

 

Abolish first / business class and see how many business persons want to travel economy.

 

Sooner or later, we will all have to face up to the constraints of reducing carbon output  - let's reserve travel for pleasure, and at a realistic price.

 

CJI.

 

 

Sorry but not really true in my experience. Speaking as someone who spent a 40 year career in international Hi-Tech sales, while I wouldn't deny that a few do exploit such travel and expense opportunities I certainly could not agree with you for the majority of travel and meetings. It is, of course, true that the Internet makes transfer of information so much easier but meeting people face to face is very different indeed to screen meetings (I have done both) and it would just not be possible to pick up so much detailed information on how your customer/supplier feels and to physically see and discuss complex technical equipment is vital. I was a partner/director in a start up business that built up over 20 years and we always watched our expenditure very carefully indeed and certainly never took any car trips/flights/hotels/customer visits as "Jollies". We were successful because of our careful use of our cash and our supportive attitude towards our customers. In 40 years of regular flying, both overseas and internal UK all journeys/hotels were economy. All customer/supplier visits had to be justified and similar attitudes prevailed in the other companies I worked for over the years. 

Edited to add that some of my travel was by train and I am aware that quite a lot of business travel was done by rail. Rail is important to businesses for that reason and i think that the East West link will be very important for travellers between those two high tech centres. I used to live near Bedford and dealt with both those towns. That rail link would have been very useful to me.

I've got 40.2C on the weather station in the garden at 3.30pm but it's 11 degrees cooler inside the ground floor of the house which has been shut up tight since 9.00am. Upstairs though is a lot warmer at 32C especially in our bedroom which is a dormer type. Looking forward to tomorrow!

Just went out in the car and the outside temp gauge on that showed 41.5! That was after several minutes of driving through open countryside.

Edit: To show later temperatures.

21 hours ago, DaveF said:

Now for the normal Sunday afternoon selection, this time in black and white from Trent on the Midland Railway where the lines from Derby and Nottingham met along with the line through the Erewash Valley to form the Midland Main line to St Pancras.

 

 

Trent Fowler  Fairburn 2-6-4T 42184 pass Nottingham to Derby c1951 JVol2152

 

 

Trent 8F 48571 down goods c1953 JVol2161

 

 

Trent Compound 40929 pass Nottingham to Derby c1954 JVol2037

 

 

Trent Jubilee 45608 Gibraltar up ex pass c1954 JVol2042 it is not 45668.

 

 

Trent 4F 44420 up mineral Dec 54 JVol7042

 

 

David

 

 

Often used to go to Trent Station spotting in the early 60s. Wonderful place to visit.

Memories of train loads of 16T behind an 8F with buffers banging as they came down the slope from Toton heading south.

Thanks for these Dave, made my day.

20 hours ago, Donington Road said:

 

A freight did indeed fail whilst crossing from the Up Stamford to New England yard fouling the Down Fast, Up Fast, Up Slow and entrance/exit from the yards.  The only route not blocked was the Down Stamford/Down ECML so north bound ECML services were using that as far as Helpston Junction.

I was lucky to be at Cock Lane for a while to video the resulting chaos.

If you read the comments section you will see one of my regular subscribers Ben GBRf had something to do with it all.😄

 

 

I really enjoyed watching that. Thank you for taking the time to film it.

It showed just how much traffic there is on that line. I was a bit surprised (and disappointed) to see so many empty container wagons though as I feel it shows an underused resource for moving freight around the country especially when fuel costs are so high.

On 12/07/2022 at 15:04, DaveF said:

Grantham in black and white for this afternoon.  The photos are from the early 1950s - I was about 1 year old when Dad took the first photo!

 

 

Grantham A3 60080 Dick Turpin le c1950 JVol3061

 

 

Grantham A3 60083 Sir Hugo up ex pass c1953 JVol6067

 

 

Grantham A5 E9816 down pass c1948 JVol7049  Possibly this is a train to Nottingham.

 

 

Grantham B1 61405 ex pass Grantham to Lincoln April 52 JVol6113

 

 

Grantham C12 shunting c1952 JVol7183

 

 

David

Thank you very much for these photos.

Took me right back to my train spotting trips to Grantham from Nottingham and brought back a lot of memories.  That was around 10 years after these pictures and it was not a lot different.

14 hours ago, ianmacc said:

And I have no idea what most of this thread means.

 

You haven’t said if they’re two or three rail lol 😂 

 

(I’d plump for the removal for us DC luddites). I think even now the market is bigger for non-DCC

While I am doing it, perhaps I should see if anyone wants them returned to Clockwork. 😀 

But I accept that you are probably right and that there is still a bigger market for DC. 

I am about to sell some locos on Ebay which are all DCC fitted (with a range of decoder brands - non factory fitted - some hardwired). In the past I have had people ask me to remove the chip before shipping because they don't use DCC and don't want the chips left in, even if they set to run on DC, because they don't trust them not to give problems. 

So my question is would it be better to remove the DCC chips before selling or not?

If I did then that would give the non DCC people what they want but also leave the DCC operators with the choice of fitting their own choice of chip. 

If I leave it in place would there be more customers these days as people move over to using it? I would reset all decoders to factory settings before selling though.

Any opinions as to which route is best please?

Also having similar problems but not not sure if it is always jumping back to the same dates. Works normally on some threads but most jump back a couple of years. Has been doing this for a couple of weeks now.

3 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Liverpool St has changed one heck ofa,lot since my trainspotting days - not even particularly easy nowadays to work out where the turntable was 😇

That was exactly my first thought.

The second being "Is that really Liverpool Street?" 

I know things  change but not sure if that is an improvement. I do remember seeing Brits there on my first visits, so a long association, but probably around 20 years since I was last there. 

Progress eh?

39 minutes ago, great central said:

 

Edit: Apologies I've looked closer at the map and can see you're correct in saying the track is in a yard off the B600, the photos attached to the image are, I'm certain,  from Butterley Hill.

If the track is where I think it is there used to be a crane repair company based there, although I did some CCTV work there 30 or more years ago I don't recall any railway track in the yard.

I have studied the maps and was confident the yard was a few hundred yards up the road to the left on that road. A crane servicing depot could certainly make sense and that length of track would suffice for rail mounted crane testing I guess. Thanks.

As to the photo itself, this is current view. The house on the left, before the bridge, of the old picture has been demolished in years past but shows up on the  old NLS map. The houses beyond look the same. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.071344,-1.3401559,3a,75y,245.86h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sSj5W8nAxVk2R4IrcqsxMqA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en

On 02/06/2022 at 15:52, DaveF said:

 

 

Pye Bridge 4F down empty coal Oct 63 J069  This has always been one of my favourites of Dad's photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

David

What an absolutely superb shot. I grew up in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire in the late 50s and 60s and this picture takes me right back to that period.

When I see such pictures that really mean something to me I like to look on Google and old NLS maps to "explore" the area. Such research shows the close web of lines close by which served all of the many collieries in the area but Google maps also showed up something modern which has intrigued me. If, on current Google aerial maps,  you follow the road in the picture down under the bridge and a few hundred yards along on the left there is a short length of railway track in a yard. At first glance it looks like an old railway yard but is in fact where there was a wharf for the Pinxton Canal (a branch of the Cromford canal). While the area around was surrounded by old "Tramways" and lines none of the maps show any of them reaching the wharf where the track now lies.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, does anyone know why there is a short length (100 yds?) of track there please?

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Butterley,+Ripley+DE5+3QZ/@53.071606,-1.347421,165m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x4879929792e2895b:0x9f4e50b35abdb8c4!8m2!3d53.06122!4d-1.402739?hl=en

Dave, I apologise for sidetracking your thread but your Dad's great picture stirred so many memories and this track has intrigued me. 

Only just caught up with the fact that RM Web has returned. 

Just want to say Thank you to Andy and the team for all the work in the last week or so to enable that happening.

I was shocked when I read this on FB. Pete was always so pleasant and very helpful at both the shop and the shows he attended. He had an incredible amount of stuff in a small shop and it was always a great experience browsing around. It was certainly one of the top model railway shops to visit. He will be greatly missed. Condolences to his family.

I look forward to being able to conntinue to support the shop in future.

2 hours ago, Pandora said:

I do not think the 9F is at the Doncaster Plant,  I think the 9F is at 36A Carr Loco, in the background is Sandbank an abandoned quarry with a high wall and the Balby Bridge, to the left is the up hump yard, the path to the right of the loco the fence leads to the Kelham Street gate, the building on the right in the skyline is the Vine Pub at the top of the hill of Kelham Street, behind the 9F is a derelict structure which I think is an abandoned coaling stage

Happy to accept what you say. I know where you mean but I was obviously trackside and don't know what I would be doing there. Too far away to walk and i don't remember doing that.

Another puzzle!

1 hour ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

Not trying to read your life, but if you did geography or geology  O-level, then I'd imagine the quarry trip would be May at the very latest, maybe even earlier. Unless you studied them at A-level, then obviously September or later. By the way, Easter was the last Sunday in March that year.

No problem. Yes, I did take Geography at O level so you are probably correct on that. I note that one person in the photos is wearing a duffel coat so that might be right for Buxton at that time of year? I thought it was quite a hot summer later that year as I remember sitting in a deck chair in the garden to do my studying. (Or maybe that was A level two years later).

(Got quite high marks at O level so also took it as one of my subjects at A, two years later, and failed! Such is life! ).

15 minutes ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

Is the order you've posted the photos, the same order they are on the negatives? Do they start at Crewe and end at Dowlow? 

Unfortunately there is no way I can tell. There are no numbers or indicators of any sort on the negatives that are readable and I don't know which way round they went through the camera.  The negative film was cut into sections when developed so I don't know which slice or event came first. Making it more difficult is the fact that the pictures are half frame on a 120 film and in some cases I turned the camera to the left by 90 degrees to get a different shot and sometimes to the right! No idea why I did that! I have just looked through all of the negatives again on a lightbox but cannot work out the order of things and I just cannot remember the order I did these events that year. The Quarry trip was a school organised trip but Doncaster was a school Railway Society Trip. Crewe was a private trip. I can recall the detail of a lot of my school life but it seems that memory of 1964, even though apparently quite busy, have just faded. Concentrating on studying for O Levels perhaps?

1 hour ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

"Crepello" was at Doncaster 8th-9th April '64 for an unclassified repair, and between 6th-11th June for a light repair. Bothe involved work on the engines.

 

Thank you Peter.

That is the year I took my O Levels so June would be an unlikely time for a School Trip. Must have been April.

Thought that I might as well post the remaining pictures as they may be of use to someone who models quarries (like me). These were taken on a school trip to either Hindlow (or possibly Dowlow) near Buxton before they became the Mega operation that they are now. It was in full operation but, of course, no hi-vis, etc!

More pictures from that roll.

This is a model railway site after all!

Not mine but a close friends. I suspect we may have been a little free with the cotton wool smoke and steam!

The rest of the pics taken at Doncaster.

As I remember it Crepello was inside having the engine worked on.

6 minutes ago, JeffP said:

I was going to suggest 1964 as in the op Doncaster works being full of diesels with one 9F was mentioned.

The Plant closed to steam in 1963, but there were still several steam locos hanging on there by the end of that year.

The 9F was parked outside the Works and looks like it was on a engineering train.

Only diesels inside.

17 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Well we now have a date within a month or two.  the very shiny, new, Brush Type 4 in the top photo is D158'something' as far as I can make out and that group came into traffic in May 1964.  I wonder if it is D1583 which would make a bit of sense as that was a Canton loco and it appears to be heading towards the Salop line at Crewe.  I took photos of several of that batch, in that sort of condition, at Canton on 21 June 1964 

Thanks very much for that information.That helps a lot.

Later than I had originally thought but it does make sense when you look at the loco line up shown in the photos that day. A lot of EE type 4s on display as well with very little steam activity.

Somewhere around this time I went to Loughborough and saw the "Brush 4s" (as we knew them) being built. My next door neighbour worked there.

On 24/02/2022 at 11:04, jcm@gwr said:

 

Agreed, but having owned a few of each, (my first car, and what I learnt to drive in, was a 

Vitesse 6), and then spent 15 years running a repair shop specialising in them, it's almost

second nature to know the differences!

It's not really possible to see the difference between the white rubber bumper strips and the 

aluminium covers in monochrome, but the big give away is the chrome (stainless steel) trim

stopping at the filler cap. It was continued after the cap on the Vitesse.

I happily accept your knowledge. I really liked my Vitesse 6 and enjoyed it but the major problem was that I could never get the overdrive to work. I am not, in any way, a mechanic but, because I did it so often, I was able to take the gearbox out (from inside the car of course) and put it back in a couple of hours! Never did solve the problem though!