** This is a seven minute video so has to be down-loaded to see the full clip as only 3 minutes are shown on the Flickr front-page.
** It is 193Mby, I hope you think its worth the effort to view it and read the story…..
Another belated end-of-year piece which has been in preparation a number of weeks and would have been ready to go last week were it not for a serious problem which occured with my main work disk. A head crash caused the disk to be rendered useless, and apart from a concerted effort yesterday to move the disk platter from the old drive to an identical new one, this hasn’t worked; so far! The loss of the disk has meant re-creating the whole of the text for this video and that to the next single picture from the end of this clip. So… here it is, a sequence of pictures, sort of rail-related, taken from the years crop of visits to various locations and which all have their own significance in the broader scheme of railway photography. The video is in 10 sections portraying some of the places visited to undertake the rail photo-shoots, where possible, and all photographed during 2015. Each section is titled and each of the 80 pictures is shown for 5 seconds, including cross-fade, music, to my taste only maybe, accompanies the video and reflects the peaceful, silvan feel to many of the places, particularly on the Moors. The sections are-
1. The Derwent Valley. The very low levels of water in the Derwent Valley reservoirs, and other around here, see the Stocksbridge section later, has only changed in recent weeks with the advent of some, though not enough, rainfall, to fill up the dams once more. The 1st two pictures show the state of Derwent Water 1st, the low level of water resulting in it then being possible to walk a good way around the sides of the damn on either side. This image across the water is only a short distance from the two towers and wall where the dam-busters did their practice runs during the 2nd world war; the building at either side of the wall holding commemorative exhibits to this event; the 70th anniversary of ‘Operation Chastise’ when the RAF’s 617 Squadron attacked the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams in Germany with Barnes Wallis’s "bouncing bomb", resulting in flooding of Industrial Valleys below the dams, occured in 2013. The low level of the water can be seen once more in the picture at the head of the reservoir which shows one of the building housing the Dam-Busters material and a line of people sat looking over the scene; the ‘staircase’ is part of an outfall which brings water collected in the hills above the reservoir.
2. Attercliffe Area. The site of the old Sandersons Steel works features in these shots and now shows that even the outfit which eventually took over the site, a Tyre Recyclers, has now also vacated the space and these pictures show the buildings which were left over from the period when Sandersons were here, are now being demolished, leaving once more a large tract of old Industrial land for which it may well prove hard to find another use. The title picture in the sequence looks west to the bridge which carries the occasional cement and scrap trains out of Cemex and what was Coopers Scrapyard, now EMR, European Metal Recyclers. The cement trains go back to Peak Forest for more grist for the cement process and the scrap as far south and west as Cardiff to convey material onto boats bound for other shores… see-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/17819302492/
for an EWS move, 66124 coming out of Coopers, but conveying wagons bound for the Peak Forest. in the lower half of that picture is a pice from Adrian Wynn’s Flickr site showing a diesel shunter in operation in 2009, hauling wagons over to the junction with the main line at Grimesthorpe Junction, see-
www.flickr.com/photos/37093581@N06/11927840045/
There are still remnants, for the time being, of the old internal railway system see-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/17634321318/
which shows the lines outside the building to the left of the contractor who is on his phone, of course, and the building can be seen in a ‘better state’, in the lower two pictures above. Adrian Wynn has an even earlier picture, taken in the 1950s and with his own comparison shot from last year, see-
www.flickr.com/photos/37093581@N06/18651845289/
Moving further south towards the GC’s Lincoln line at Woodburn Junction, more derelict land, now track-side and once used as sidings space for the main lines out of Sheffield to the East. As usual on these sites, the area has been used as a dumping ground for all sorts of materials and the buildings in the background are heavily graffiti’d as is some of the, broken, palisade fencing and a wall along the roadside to the site. A Sheffield Supertram comes over Woodburn road bridge, heading for Meadowhall, its passengers almost certainly oblivious to the scene to to the left as they move down hill over the GC’s Lincoln line just beyond the long building; this building was in fact the GC’s Woodburn Junction C.E.E. (Central Electrical Engineering?) Workshops with lines running into it off the main lines just beyond. This is now all that remains of the facilities and the tracks which once went along here have either been removed or covered over, as far as I can tell from this view. Moving directly west to the South Yorkshire Navigation, Tinsley Canal, and once again the pleasant silvan atmosphere with canal, gas holder and with the old Sheffield Victoria Station’s Victoria Hotel poking out above the Northern Rail service heading into Sheffield across the canal; this being a class 158 unit working the 2B41 Huddersfield to Sheffield service. The Gas Tank domed roof also pokes out above the canal-side building on the right; all the UK’s Gas Holders are now in their ‘twilight years’ as a deconstruction and clearance program is in effect; the land being offered back for other uses… The view towards Park Hill flats at centre, the Veolia Recyclers at left, the Capita Building at the end of the Sheffield Parkway to the right of the flats and dominating the scene beyond that, standing out above the River Don on Sussex St. Gasworks Gas Holder. To the railway once more and the Norfolk Bridge where the quiet stillness of the water, multi-colour traction passing along the road and rail passenger stock flying over-head on the main Midland line out of Sheffield all come together to add dynamism to the scene. In the 1st of the last two pictures in this set, a Cross Country Trains class 222, Voyager rattles over heading north-east on the 1E32 Reading to Newcastle ‘fast service’. Veolia Recycling is close by and one of their trucks adorns the road where the gates to the old Attercliffe Station stand, locked now of course, the station having closed, due to lack of patronage, in 1995; the fact it was only around 1km from Midland station, can’t have helped either. Shortly after the Voyager cleared away, another service, this time in the form of a local passenger DMU, Northern Rail class 158 heads north-east as well on the 1L84, Sheffield to Leeds service whilst ‘down below’, a ‘1 Up Crane Access’ truck heads towards north Sheffield with the logo/graffiti, ‘Imagine Waking Tomorrow and all Music has Disappeared’, writ prominent on the large pipe alongside the road over the river… a poignant reminder of what music certainly means to me…
3. Neepsend Area, Gasworks. The area of Neepsend close to the old Power Station, Gasworks and Neepsend Loco Shed. Of the three only the Gasworks remained until very recently and this, like many others, is in the process of demolition. Here the 1st picture looks towards the still extant Farfield Inn and beyond to the Gas Holder which at this date, 19th October, was still in one piece; though in recent weeks, panels have been removed from the roof and it looks to be in the process of demolition. As recently as yesterday, Adrian Wynn has made comment on this and includes a picture, taken in 2007, see-
www.flickr.com/photos/37093581@N06/24043196150/
in addition, Berris Conolly also has an even earlier picture, when two gas holders were present, and both these photographers provide additional information about the local sites, see-
www.flickr.com/photos/bconolly/23683956064/
The Farfield appears to have ridden out the storms and although looking shabby and ripe for demolition, it is still there hiding, in part, the hilly landscape behind where once the 1908s built ‘Ski Village’ held sway, testament to new things happening in this area, along with others, like the Museum of Pop Music in Sheffield and the ‘Earth Centre’ at Conisbrough, the y all succumbed in one way or another, the Ski Village suffering fire and then vandal damage which finally say it a complete wreck, the land now deserted. Many other notable buildings abound in the immediate area, the next one has been taken over by ‘Wells Richardson, Chartered Accountants and occupies what may be considered a prestigious location, as all the buildings here do in fact, right next to the river and off the main road.The Samuel Osborn building is still in tact and right on the riverside and is part in use as a clothing business; the building itself looking in very fine shape and in a very desirable location; if only!! The tall graffiti’d red brick building, now due for demolition, was the old Cannon Brewery with the hill of the Ski Slope just visible at right of centre above the re/brown graffiti tag. Adrian Wynn also has a piece on this taken just a week before my shot, see-
www.flickr.com/photos/37093581@N06/21261986374/
and, as he mentions, the ‘Window Smashers’ appear to be out and about again, don’t they ever bloody well get fed up of doing this… Nothing like decent advertising to attract the right clientèle and this is a good example of the opposite, ‘Northside Cars’, ‘Man & a Van’ and ‘Circle of Friends’ must have increased their revenue significantly after these well placed ads in one of the old Cannon Brewery boarded up windows. More graffiti on one of the other businesses along the backstreets up to what was Neepsend Shed, ‘The House Skatepark’ it says above the door… so that’s what they do in there presumably, not much parked outside and no sign of any noise or life whilst I was about…
4. Ecklands TPT. Into early November and ‘the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ is well under way it being the 2nd of November and this the Millennium Bridge at Bullhouse Crossing on what was the electrified route to Manchester through the Woodhead Tunnels just 5km behind the camera back along the Transpennine Trail; which is what the trackbed has now become, and surfaced all the way from Penistone to the portals of the 3 tunnels. This 1st view looks towards Penistone over the new bridge and on the right is the Penistone Wire Co with its now disused Century Works, the last time I was along here, a few months ago, it was all a buzz, but they have now quit the site and lent an eerie solitude to the place, wrapped as it was on this day by swirling fog. Looking along the main road in this area otherwise known as Ecklands or Millhouse Green, it appeared to be jinxed with a series of rail accidents, see-
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penistone_rail_accidents
some of which were quite serious but all beyond the days of the electrified railway. Today the scene of serious accidents has now moved to our over-burdened roads and travelling quite fast back up the grade towards the A628 Manchester Road, an A.M. Bracewell transport HGV, possibly on its way back to Accrington in Lancs before the fog really sets in ‘over the top’. Back on the TPT and a short distance away from the Century Works, one of the well-built accommodation over-bridges sees two cyclists making the best of the scenery and about to come under the bridge adorned with one of a handful of artworks adorning the bridges and side of the old track-bed; the material for the work looking to have been collected locally.
5. Fox Valley, Stocksbridge. What’s to be said about this 42,000,000 pound development of retail shops and housing on land once occupied by Samuel Fox, and others, now the scene of this huge development in the Valley. Nothing much else was happening ‘down there’, Samuel Fox occupied the area to the west where the main retail building is now going up, but the Fox, now TATA of course, Stockyard has been moved over to other land, west beyond the retail building and the whole space is now given over to the development. The private Stocksbridge Railway and the River Don, both still pass along on their old courses behind all the new build, the space being marked by the line of trees in the B/W image and just to the left of the corner of the building where the yellow/green striped tank is located, again along the treeline. The local works shunter brings billets up here every weekday night, see-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/11873748563/
for rolling the mill and transport back to the TATA steel works at Aldwarke, for further processing; there being now facilities at Aldwarke for rolling the large billets, at Deepcar, see-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/8767204891/
and at Oughtibridge, see-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/17234990259/
Finally another view of a reservoir devoid of much water, this is one of the 3 in a line above Stocksbridge, Underbank and it must be only 10% full. In the far distance are its two feeders, Midhope and Langsett and they looked in much healthier condition but considering the water in the high peak reservoirs feeds into the Trent Water network for the East Midlands, its not hard to see that this lot could be emptied quite easily in a drier winter and cooler summer…
6. Rotherham Masbrough Area. The Masbrough area of Rotherham has seen dramatic changes over the years since trainspotting briefly caught my attention and I used to wonder round these parts before finally leaving the area, and the county, in 1970, never to return, well .. almost never! Centenary Way now bisects the area just behind the camera and the land behind the ‘Bohemia’, as it was known when this picture was taken, used to be occupied by the sidings of the GCR’s main line through Rotherham, their Central station a short distance away along Main St. This is a ‘Then & Now’ set regarding this building, the old ‘Travellers Rest’ pub on the one side and the Rotherham Bowling Alley over on the right, this picture taken in August 2011 to compare with the more recent pieces taken a few months ago, at the end of October last year. The ‘Bowling Alley’ eventually morphed into something else, in similar fashion to the ‘Travellers Rest’, it becoming ‘Club Liquid’, though I suspect it should be pronounced ‘Liqweed’. Both the ‘Gentlemans Club’, Bohemia and ‘Club Liquid’, didn’t last very long, unlike their earlier incarnations which lasted many decades in the 1st case and many years in the second and now, as the contemporary pictures show, they have been turned into a car park on the left with ‘City Plumbing’# behind and, on the right, with the RUFC’s ‘New York Stadium’ forming a backdrop, demolition was in progress under control of the Ron Hull Group, one of the big Rotherham Recyclers. The ‘Club Liquid’ pillar still stands amid the ruin in one of the shots which looks north to Masbrough Station, past another relic of past times, the ex-‘Moulders Rest’ pub, see the earlier picture from June 2011, here-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/5860414041/
stood on the corner of Masbrough St and Lyme St, the latter now taking traffic to the site of Booths Scrapyard off to the right and also now back onto the newly re-designed junction of Centenary Way with Main St; traffic lights once more appearing in preference to the horrendous roundabout which existed here up until last year. The next picture, a two-part panorama shows the site extending from Don Street where the ‘New York Stadium’ is located west of the town centre and over to the right where the old lighting standards of Millmoor Football ground can be seen, right next to Booths. Looking north in the next shot, Ron Hull have left a small brick building which was just outside ‘Liquid’ but I suspect now, all this has gone and there is, I recall, another car park here. The new Rotherham Council Offices, built just before construction of the New York Stadium was started a few years ago, stands prominent at the top right, The old council offices on the Park Gate side of town were demolished after the move and those offices, along with the awful Library Complex/Blockhouse and local car parks taken over and redeveloped and is now occupied by the large Tesco Supermarket; itself having moved of its old site on Forge Island, behind the ‘Magden’ building, seen to the left of this shot. The old Sheffield and Rotherham Railway line from the Wicker, through Holmes Junction and into Rotherham Westgate was just out of shot off to the right; this was removed a long while ago and all that remains now is a short stub od line into the Booths Recycling Scrapyard where old Coal wagons have recently been taken in for scrapping, see-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/22142289796/
7. Dunford Bridge, The Woodhead Tunnels. Been here before and could say, ‘done that’, but no as the area has now been cleared of the National Grid paraphernalia and apart from the fact there aren’t any lines, stations, signalling or trains, it looks once more as it ‘always’ has done. The old MSLR tunnel portals have now been bricked up, as the introductory shot shows, the old National Grid buildings still occupying the space where steam trains used to lurch through, belching smoke and steam on the climb up from the South Yorkshire coalfields with 1000 tonne trains, double headed and banked and then, easier for the crews, returning with the empties. In this picture the tunnel which carried the down-line, on the left, was subject to the excessive exhausts of many moves of heavy coal trains which caused severe degradation in the tunnel walls and ceiling as the trains went westwards to the power stations. It was for this reason therefore, that the east-bound, up line, tunnel on the right was ultimately selected by National Grid when it came to installing the ‘Supergrid’ cables, running at 500kV, to ameliorate the impact on the Peak National Park, the whole process having been subject to objections on the grounds of preserving the pristine scenery over the top of Woodhead. In light of the fight that the Supergrid pylons stride along the valley at both sides of Woodhead, on the east from the area at Neepsend where the emerge above ground and are conveyed through Wharncliffe Woods, to the north of Stocksbridge and then along through the equally pristine scenery to the east portal of the tunnels. On the east side the situation is no different as the cables there run along the Longdendale Valley, supported on the huge Supergrid pylons and on their way west to the Fiddlers Ferry power station, near Liverpool. Refurbishment of the Supergrid system was photographed recently, on the west side, see a short video here-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/21654747635/
and picture here-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/21655333495/
Moving further back, the next shot shows the scene looking along the ‘new’ access, in 1954, to the new 2.3million pound Woodhead Tunnel now the repository of the Supergrid cables which were moved over from the old tunnel due to its diminishing state of repair; in addition it didn’t, and now doesn’t, seem likely that trains would/will ever run through here again. A rare HDR shot (for me) over the hills with one of the Supergrid pylons standing above the tunnel portals, the cables being taken down to ground level for conveyance through the new tunnel; never sure why the ‘spit’ of ground was left in place when the electrified system was being installed as the excavation for the new tunnel could have easily have removed it, one would have thought, leaving a clear view over both sets of tunnels from this angle! Popular in its heyday, the Stanhope Arms now stands deserted but not derelict and its difficult to see what use this could be put to, excepting perhaps as a terminus facility if the line up from Stocksbridge is ever re-instated for leisure activities into the Peaks and for the local transport needs of Stocksbridge, Wortley, Oxspring, Penistone, Oxspring, and Thurlstone en-route to Dunford. A shot along the track-bed of the electrified section looking into the Woodhead new portal with its palisade fence and gate blocking entrance to the tunnel and the road bridge through Dunford oozing rain water down the side of the support wall opposite the National Grid control building. This is followed by a close-up of the tunnel portal with its 1954 keystone showing who built it.. B.R., though I think the L.N.E.R had some input in the years before the war and upto Nationalisation in 1948.. Along the old track-bed to the old tunnels, National Grid laid a set of narrow-gauge tracks to convey their materials using small diesel locos. National Grid have now donated the Woodhead tunnel locomotive and rolling stock to Moseley Railway Trust see-
www.narrow-gauge.co.uk/news/2015/04/12/1076
On the far left in the foreground, some cable wrapped around what looks like the burnt off base of one of the stanchion posts for the electrified cables, though why it would be on the track-bed of the old tunnels is a mystery. The public gate of the tunnels is set back along the track-bed at the Dunford road bridge, where more palisade features threats and warnings, something hardly seen on the electrified system in such a profusion. The last two pictures, one in B/W, say it all, gone are the heady days of the busy electrified railway, the subsequent clearance of ALL the materials from the whole length of the complete system from Manchester in the west to Wath at the ‘centre’ of the coalfields and to Rotherwood exchange sidings to the east of Sheffield, and then the presence, in the latter days of National Grid, working to install the Supergrid cables and they finally departing… all is now quiet and the rainbows appear once more on a new Transpennine Trail..
8. Thorncliffe & Chapeltown. On the GC once more, this time its local and time to root out some remnants of line along the trackbed near Chapeltown. Although not particularly close to the track-bed, The Thorncliffe Arms has a name synonymous with the local Thorncliffe Iron Works which was served by both the GC and the Midland companies and was located not far off to the north of Chapeltown. This building looked like it could have been built by the GC to serve the liquid requirements of the passengers using its station, though they would have had a fair walk from there as the station was around 1km due south of here, still on a pleasant summer evening it may well have proved worthwhile to get off the train for a walk, amble up tot this place and sit and watch the sun set over Parkin and Thorncliffe Wood, before the thunderous M1 motorway came, just 500m behind the camera, in the early 1960s. The other building of note, mentioned earlier and just a 20 minute walk away, through what looks like the pleasant Parkin woodland, the GC’s Chapeltown station, seen here as a private dwelling and in very good order. The railway line from the junction at Wincobank, south along the Blackburn Valley, from Sheffield to Barnsley, passed along at the other side of the building beyond the stand of tall trees on the left, the line heading almost due north here and having just passed ove the Midland’s Chapeltown line, in the 1500m long Tankersely tunnel, the line also making for Barnsley. The track-bed south from the station is walkable as far as Wincobank, further south, the line approaching the Midland line to within about 200m, see-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/12521491454/
showing an RCTS (Railway Correspondence & Travel Society) rail tour being hauled by the ‘South Yorkshireman’ on the GC’s line with class B1, 61165 in charge and just behind, a class D11, 62660, ‘Butler Henderson’; running alongside, 2 Northern Rail services one heading south into Sheffield, the other north to Barnsley. Some track-bed remnants remain and the council recently installed a fence along the western side of the footway, allowing the residents on the other side to keep the remaining land on their side of the fence, free-of-charge; nice! At the side of the track-bed, just north of the A629 Chapeltown road bridge and almost buried in the undergrowth, a large block of concrete carrying an old wire pulley system, possibly the baser of a signal post where a change in direction of the wire was required to take it up to its appropriate signal. Finally, looking back north along the trackbed and amusing myself for 15 minutes by taking a series of shots of the other popular sort of traction these days, as a handful of HGV type vehicles rattle along the road, south and north and once again, completely oblivious to the scene below which once carried heavy goods traffic, passenger stock, all drawn along by classic steam locos; behind the camera, the now non-existent Smithy Wood Coking Plant and south of that the Midland line parallels this one to what is now a much simplified junction arrangement at the new Meadowhall Interchange with the line from the Blackburn VAlley and Midland Main Line out of Sheffield.
9. Attercliffe Area, Gas Works. A failed attempt to try and get the leaf fall season RHTT in a shot with the Sussex St. Gasworks gas holder but unfortunately due to the dominating appearance of the gas tank the pictures taken with the RHTT doesn’t do justice to the DRS class 20s on their jaunt up to Stocksbridge Works. The Sussex St gas holder is one of the 3 remaining in the are, the other two being at Neepsend, seen earlier in this video and the one at Wincobank, now in an advanced state of deconstruction. Just about visible in the 1st B/W picture, DRS 20302 with 20303 on the back is on the 3S14 working, the afternoon Sheffield back to Wakefield Kirkgate move and is here on its way up and then back along the Stocksbridge Branch. It is just about to pass in front of the Victoria Hotel, near the right-hand edge of the picture with the RHTT set crossing the Wicker Arches and passing through the now denuded site of Sheffield Victoria Station. A better view follows with the camera trying to avoid a plethora of verticals in the form of street lighting posts, the most prominent, unavoidable, but probably ‘clone-outable’, although 2 of the grey posts pass across the loco and Sandite tanks as well. Businesses have come and gone in the spaces under the rails, ‘Underneath the Arches’, as it were, the Wicker Bridge having been cleaned nicely some years ago but now once more is showing signs of neglect. Along Effingham St. which runs alongside the River Don, just past the Gas Holder, other more traditional Sheffield businesses still exist in the form of Veolia Recycling at centre background, Browill Rewind Co., electrical engineers and with an old rusty sign along the top of the wall advertising their services from Tel: 0142 760188, with the old STD code for Sheffield; now 0114. And on the left in their nicely kept building, Cromwell Tools just over the road from the Don Riverside; Park Hill Flats pokes into the picture on the far right centre. Swinging round so that the camera faces along Effingham St. with the river on the left and Cromwell Tools at centre, beyond is part of the long run of the Norfolk Bridge and passing along in a north-easterly direction is a DBS/EWS Class 66 on the 6E03, Hope Earles Sidings to Hunslet Yard, working, taking aggregates to Hunslet in what are essentially coal hoppers, with the old EWS rust-red livery on the wagons and loco. A closer shot shows the 66 appearing from behind the back of the Cromwell Tools building, crossing the arches of Norfolk Bridge which will take in on, along the Midland Main line through Meadowhall and Masbrough and so on to the YArds at Hunslet just outside Leeds. Another of the local businesses, and again right next to the Midland line, on the right beyond Browill Rewind, is R.H.S. Paneltech Ltd and possibly these folk who worked at some of these places may well have used the local station; Attercliffe Road station being just around the corner in front of the leading EWS class 66. The final picture shows what is probably one of the more famous names in Sheffield, Thomas W. Ward Ltd., their building sat alongside the River on the other side from Attercliffe Station. Sited in the Albion works, Ward became a legend as the ultimate recycler, his operation responsible for breaking up many navy ships and reusing much of the material recovered, a piece form Wikipedia-
‘…At the outbreak of World War I, 1,235 people were on the payroll of Thomas Ward’s company and a thousand tons of scrap metal per day was being fed to the country’s steel makers. However, with demand so high, and many of the horses Ward had previously used to transport his goods around Sheffield conscripted by the military he had an increasingly difficult time to match supply with demand. Lizzie the Elephant was brought in as a solution to this problem…’.
One of the more famous ship-breaking projects was the recovery of all the materials from the SS Majestic White Star Liner in the early 1900s which was broken up at his yard near Morecambe in 1914, before that she had been commanded for 9 years by Capt. Smith who went down with his new command – the Titanic!
10. Barnetby, Visit 2. And, finally, in this long narrative piece, destroyed last week when the disk heads crashed on the unit holding all this material, and now re-typed over several hours and to include as the last piece, some images from Barnetby on December 14th, 2 weeks before the grand change-over to Multi-Aspect Signalling. The six shots, taken in the mid-afternoon and in a mixture of bright sun but with mist swirling and finally making for atmospheric shots as the afternoon wore on to our TPE train departure at 15:50, back to Sheffield. First up, taken at 14:20, with soft warm lights glowing from the porch to the cabin, the iconic, listed and, up to this point, holder of second ranking for the largest manually operated lever box in the UK; Wrawby Junction Box. One would have thought the contemporary adornment of a radio aerial would have neb better sited around the back; the new lighting looking unobtrusive. In a location where it is occasionally difficult to determine what is straight and what isn’t, at the other end of the station, in this 2nd picture, this is put to a real test and one can only assume the signal posts are vertical, leaving Barnetby East box with a definite pronounced ‘lean’ as are some of the telegraph posts her, though these are out of shot. DBR class 60, 60001, first of the class, passes on the 3200tonne 6M00, Humber Oil Refinery to Kingsbury Oil Sidings working. On the bracket above the passing tanks, Barnetby East’s signal is off, of course, but Wrawby Junction’s distant is on, possibly indicating a slow speed turnout at the junction ahead. BE20 in the foreground is off, signalling the approaching East Midlands class 158 train, it has a clear run after its station stop. In the background around the corner, above the roof of the box to the right, 2 Network RAil personell are at work, track-side, preparing, I suppose, for the inevitable. In the 3rd, B/W picture, the oils is passing along west and indeed the gantry at Wrawby Junction has the junction signal off for a left-hand turn out towards Market Rasen and Lincoln. In the yard at left, a Biomass train from earlier has paused on its way over to Drax and at left, parked up all the afternoon, Freightliner class 66, 66524 on an empty coals. Its now 15:05 and the signal lights are starting to be more evident on the triplet of gantries near Wrawby box. The 4th picture, taken at 15:30 with the ‘Xmas decorations up’, as it were, shows another DBS oils train this time with 60020 in charge, this time coming back with empties, the 1000 tonne 6E54, Kingsbury Oil Sidings to Humber Oil Refinery working and is approaching from the distant ‘gloaming’, passing as it does, an Iron Ore train, this one also led by a DBS class 60, 60074 on the 6T26, Immingham B.S.C. Ore Terminal to the Santon Foreign Ore Terminal at Scunthorpe; this scene, at this time will now look completely different, the semaphores and their soft lights having been replaced by appropriate single head, multi-aspect colour light LEDs’ I just noticed, for a change, the shutter speed at 1/160s must have been sufficiently slow to capture the rear ‘STOP’ light of the Iron Ore train, in the ON aspect; they typically flash at 1Hz; no fudge here! The empty oils has a clear run though the station but for some unknown reason the driver stopped at the platform end, with the Barnetby East BE20 signal in the OFF position allowing a run along the platform to photograph the loco, halted at a clear signal and with the new MAS signal in front of the semaphore, hinged over in front of the loco at the side of the rails ready to stand erect in front of the semaphore… when the time comes. The 5th shot, taken 5 or 6 minutes before our return TPE service arrives, shows Barnetby East’s BE49 signal, with both arms at danger, though the upper one will have to clear for the TPE in a minute or two, and again ‘approaching in the gloaming’ is a DBS but EWS liveried class 66, 66148, hauling the final Biomass of the day, for us, the 4R53, Milford West Sidings to Immingham Biomass Loading Point working with a clear run through the station eastwards to the Humber post; the pictures are now becoming ‘noisy’ as the ISO is racked up to 2500 from the previous shot’s ISO2000. The 6th and final picture of the video. Spent some time on this ‘cloned-out’ picture and is the view along the lines looking west to Wrawby Junction and its listed signalbox, which can be seen in the distance under the signal gantry along the line on the right. The cloning operation wasn’t too easy as the pole, the un-cloned version can be seen at lower right in the picture here-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/23554709060/
as this almost vertical structure, one of the oddities here as a lot are much worse, went right across three tracks and the the third wagon of the Freightliner, 66524, coal empties. Barnetby East’s BE49 signal is now off for the approaching passenger train, our TPE service back in the direction of Scunthorpe, Doncaster and onto Sheffield, so there wasn’t much time to hang about. The 3 NR personnel had ambled along round the fence at the end of the platform and appeared to be discussing the fate of the marked, with green crosses, see BE70 at left, BE49 signal post. At this date,m 14 December, it was only 2 weeks away form the Line Possession when all the Victorian Signalling system would be removed over a two week period, commencing, 27th December. Wrawby’s distant is ‘On’, signifying a reduced speed at the junction turn out for the main line through to Scunthorpe; the TPE service won’t be held up as it has a ‘clear signal’ and in not too long a time it will be a case of ‘Cleared Signals’ as this area becomes the home of the 21st century signalling preference, colour-light LED, multi-aspect/multi-head equivalents to the arrays of semaphores… a significant change to the feel and look of this place in north Lincolnshire…
Posted by Views in Camera on 2016-01-13 18:17:30
Tagged: , Howden & Derwent Reservoir , Western Spillway , Sandersons Steel Works , Coopers Scrapyard , Woodburn Junction , Graffiti , South Yorks Navigation , Northern Rail class 158 , 2B41 Huddersfield to Sheffield , 1L84 Sheffield to Leeds , Norfolk Bridge , Cross Country Trains , Class 222 – Voyager , 1E32 Reading to Newcastle , Neepsend Area , Farfield Inn , T.K. Lynksey Recycling , Sheffield Ski Village , Samuel Osborn & Co. Ltd. , Cannon Brewery , Northside Cars , Circle of Friends , Ecklands TPT , Penistone Wire – Century Works , A.M. Bracewell , Bullhouse Millennium Bridge , Fox Valley, Stocksbridge , Samuel Fox Steelworks , Underbank Reservoir , Rotherham Masbrough , Travellers Rest , Bohemia Gentlemans Club , Bowling Alley , New York Stadium , Ron Hull Group , Dunford Bridge , Woodhead Tunnels , National Grid , Stanhope Arms , Thorncliffe & Chapeltown , Thorncliffe Arms , Chapeltown GCR Station , The Wicker Arches , DBS/EWS Class 66 , 6E03 Hope Earles Sidings to Hunslet Yard , DRS Class 20 , 20302 , 20303 , 3S14 Sheffield to Wakefield Kirkgate , Veolia Recycling , Cromwell Tools , Browill Rewind Co. , Thomas W. Ward Ltd. , Sussex St Gasworks , Victoria Hotel , Park Hill Flats , Wrawby Junction Signalbox , Barnetby East Signalbox , Freightliner , 66524 , DBS Class 60 , 60001 , 6M00 , Humber Oil Refinery to Kingsbury Oil Sdgs , 60020 , 6E54 , Kingsbury Oil Sdgs to Humber Oil Refinery , 60074 , 6T26 , Immingham B.S.C. Ore Term. to Santon F.O.T. , 66148 , 4R53 , Milford West Sidings to Immingham Biomass LP , Semaphore Signals BE49 BE70 BE07 BE20
