Grosmont

How good is Grosmont? A busy level crossing, a junction with the rest of the system, a tunnel mouth from which engines burst forth, frequent movements to and from the sheds and all set in that snug, village location.

It’s a great place to watch trains. They have even provided a garden overlooking the line for that very purpose. These pictures were taken during a visit there in April 2007. 

Down the Docks

Of all the locations that I’m glad I took some steam photos of before it was too late, then down the docks is right up there. Never mind the picture quality, feel the times. It is two days before Christmas in 1966 and Stanier 8F 2-8-0 No. 48266 is shuffling across Duke Street, Birkenhead, using the lines that ran alongside the East and West Floats.

I cycled from home over the Duke Street bridge to this location, one of only three direct connections between Wallasey and Birkenhead at that time and with all three involving bridges where you could be held up to watch ships arriving or leaving the dock system and that could often take some time.

There was frequently a policeman on traffic duty here in a little box in the middle of the junction. It was overlooked by the Royal Duke pub advertising Birkenhead Ales, which has also now departed the scene.  

 

Should have been a railway station

London’s Smithfield meat market is a Grade II listed building, designed by Sir Horace Jones and completed in 1868. It’s an interesting area to have a wander round, as long as you are OK with the smell of raw meat.

The elaborate Victorian stonework and heraldry are reminiscent of the grand railway termini of the same period. The railway connection is not that far-fetched. The market sits over a cut-and-cover railway tunnel that was closed early in the last century but which has recently reopened for use by Thameslink services.

Doggy Tales

The grand old Potts clock on Newark Northgate station is still wrong on both faces, but who looks at it anyway, when there is a modern digital display right alongside - apart from me, that is?

Nothing stands still for long [except the Potts clock]. Below it, there is now a watering bowl for dogs. As it says on the board, they are looking after all their customers, even the four-legged ones, though I suppose that they might draw the line at - well, any number of other quadrupeds, really.

Gone are the days that unaccompanied livestock in numbers travelled by train, either alive or dead. From cattle trucks and “The Fish” to the invisible “coo-ing” from the crates of pigeons stacked up on the platform trolleys, it is all reminiscent of another age.

I hope dogs realise just how lucky they are to be singled out for such special treatment these days. Earlier this summer, we were sitting in a pub garden in Totnes, when I realised that the pram at the next table was occupied by a dog and not a baby. On closer inspection, its design suggested that that was the clear intention. That was a first, I thought.

One of the differences that our son has noticed living in the States is that entrepreneurs don’t miss a trick when it comes to making a quick buck. The proliferation of doggy shops shows the way things are going and this one was certainly on the ball. Hurricane warnings are full of foreboding for some but apparently provide opportunities for others.

Contrast all this with the lack of attention you can sometimes receive with only two legs to stand on.  The typical English afternoon tea shop frequently seems to flip its “We are Open” notice on the glass panel in the door to coincide with afternoon tea time. Just in time to get across the threshold at a Peak District example recently, we were then met with, “Sorry, the kitchen has just closed”, as though going through one door and putting on the grill for a tea-cake is well beyond rational thought. It’s so removed from established practice that it would take a full-length hospitality course solely addressing the notion of “service” to put things right. Its just not going to happen. Oh, and learn to smile, as well, actually, when you are offering me that last dried-up piece of cake that’s fallen over - apart from the bit that’s welded to the plate.

Maybe I’ll just take in a “fur baby” with me next time. That’s obviously where the action is, if service is what you’re after.    

Railway Stamps

The well-known railway artist, Terence Cuneo designed this set of stamps for the Post Office.

Amongst the exhibits at the Postal Museum at Phoenix Place in London, there are some additional watercolours on display by J. Thirsk for two stamps that did not make the final cut.

Sorry about the photos this time – it was a bit dark in there, in parts.

Mail Rail

In the days when post went mainly by train, the Post Office had its own electric railway under the streets of London. As if there weren’t enough of those already.

Running between 1927 and 2003 from Whitechapel in the east to Paddington in the west, the system’s focal point was the Mount Pleasant sorting office.

From there, part of the line has now been reopened as a tourist attraction - actually, around the maze of tracks beneath Mount Pleasant itself, unless I’m much mistaken. No good if you are claustrophobic, mind, its narrow gauge and effectively a shrunk down tube network.

Reassuringly, the formerly driverless trains now have someone up front. The train stops, periodically, for passengers to view short information films beamed onto the underground station walls.

Worth a visit, I’d say. We always try to find something we haven’t done before when we go to London and there’s still plenty to choose from. As Samuel Pepys said, “The man who tires of London is tired of life”.

OK then, Samuel Johnson.

Elsecar

I used to be indecisive, but now I’m not so sure. I’m quite ambivalent about antique shops, for example. When it comes to railway antiques, I feel very much at home. In more general antique centres, such as the complex at Elsecar Heritage Centre, near Barnsley - well, put it this way, I’m through there in half the time and ready for morning coffee.

There is plenty else at Elsecar. Deep-level coal mining and accompanying ironworks developed here in the late eighteenth century. Much of the industrial site is still in place, including the oldest Newcomen steam engine [for removing water from mineshafts] still in its original location, dated 1795. The heritage centre, set up to develop tourism in an area that struggled after the rapid decline of coal, has a visitor centre, museum and cafes, offers arts and crafts courses and has a range of specialised retail outlets and other services.

Elsecar Heritage Railway is the remaining section of a branch line that joined the main network at Mexborough and was built to take out the coal and iron. Opened in 1860 as part of the South Yorkshire Railway, it closed down after the Cortonwood pit ceased to operate in 1985. Reopened as a heritage line in 1994, it was re-connected with Cortonwood in 2014.

Number 14 Gervase is an 0-4-0 vertical boiler Sentinel locomotive in Kent and East Sussex Railway guise. It was pottering around on driver experience turns.

Elsecar Heritage Railway station museum was a bit short on artefacts, to be honest. I tried to think of something from the volumes of stuff in the antiques centre that might have made a difference to their own display. Then I remembered the stand-out feature during my quick circuit there in the morning. It was a giant, fully restored, 1930s neon sign of a stork advertising a draper’s shop that had been rescued from Barnsley town centre - “We supply all but the baby”. Not railway, but certainly heritage and wonderful all the same.

Sir Nigel and Miss Alice

This statue celebrating the life of Sir Nigel Gresley is appropriately placed on King’s Cross station concourse - and there is not a duck in sight. The accompanying plaque says it all, really.

It’s difficult to imagine a world without the Streaks, which I must have seen first on a Wallasey Grammar School railway society trip by train from Liverpool Lime Street to York station, in late 1960.

I came back early on my own that day, aged 11, because around that time I was afraid of the scary, spaced out feeling I often got late in the afternoon and I wanted to be closer to home if it happened. Retrospectively, I’m inclined to put it down to a sugar imbalance, but I suppose I’ll never know for sure what caused it.

Anyway, I’ve been a keen admirer of Sir Nigel’s handiwork ever since that day. I eventually got to see 20 out of the 34 Streaks, which I suppose was OK for a west coast lad looking for east coast locos. Here is my daughter, Alice, underlining Dwight D Eisenhower for me in my Summer 1962 com’ vol’ at the NRM. Dwight was the last one added to my list of 20 and unfortunately there won’t be any more.

Actually, you may not be entirely surprised to know that this photo was highly contrived. There was no way anyone else was going to underline my last Streak for me. I mean, come on, who is the geek round here?

Time for a nice cup of tea

The Nectar Tea Company produced these tea cup enamel signs in the early years of the twentieth century. The advertisements were often located on Southern Railway stations.

The signs were made by the Patent Enamel Company of Selly Oak, Birmingham. This particular example was distributed by Thomas Kershaw Ltd’s Railway Advertising Department at 36, Fairfield Street, Manchester.

Gala Day

It was that time again. The GCR’S autumn gala saw 10 steam locos in steam and a rapid procession through Quorn and Woodhouse on both Saturday and Sunday. The visiting B1, dressed up as Oliver Bury, and the spam can, City of Wells, were the added attractions.

Sunday was bright, starting off cool, so we began in the porters’ room café under the bridge with a nice cup of tea and a fire in the grate. The car park in the field overlooking the station gives photographers a fine, elevated view of the action on the double track section past the island platform. The trains just kept on coming – a festival of steam.

Big Beast

Hark! What is that rumbling outside the museum? I wandered out onto the platform yesterday morning to check that it wasn’t the usual Class 08 on stock shunting duties. That tells you all you need to know about my aural skills when it comes to diesel locomotive recognition.

She put in a bit of a throaty roar when she moved off, even on one engine. It reminded me of a day at the buffer stops at Leeds Central when one let rip, sending twin plumes of blue smoke skywards with a thunderous bellow that ricocheted back off the overall roof.

Chris Beck

As a friend of his mum and dad, I knew Chris for all of his thirty-eight years. Coming from a different generation, and meeting him infrequently throughout that time, I can’t even claim to have known him well.

I am writing this here because during the last couple of years Chris had become a more regular reader of my blogs, or at least of my attempts to flag them up. Eventually, of course, that contact also drew to a close.

What I did know about Chris was that he was a quiet, kind and pleasant man, without an ounce of antagonism. His friends told us about the sense of fun that Chris always brought with him when they were together.  

It is blatantly unfair that such an inoffensive and amiable person, who only spread happiness wherever he went, should end up enjoying only half a lifetime to share his humanity with others.

Chris loved his music, travelled widely and touched all those he met with his positive demeanour and his easy manner. I’m glad that I knew him and I’m grateful, too, that Chris showed me through social media that I had occasionally said something or offered a photograph that resonated with him. I could not have asked for more. It was a pleasure to have known you, Chris - and thank you.

Blackfriars Bridge

I would have passed by such emblems of the old railway companies without so much as a glance, as a youngster. Yet, these colourful and attractive reminders of the early railway scene continue to decorate today’s landscape, even as wholesale changes take place all around them.

This case in point shows the London Chatham and Dover Railway insignia on the former bridge support, as viewed from the adjacent Blackfriars road bridge over the Thames. Peaking above the scene is the top of the Shard and the chimney of the former Bankside power station, now the home of Tate Modern.

The LCDR reached Victoria station in 1861, and three years later a link from Elephant and Castle gave the company access to the City of London via Blackfriars Bridge station.  

The bridge [itself a replacement structure] has been transformed in recent times. The revitalised north-south link across London is part of the Thameslink Programme. The platforms of a refurbished Blackfriars station now extend along the widened bridge, itself.

Now, where was I up to?

Not content with an embarrassing case of mistaken identity, in which I confused some names and faces from half a century ago, the next day I left my jacket on a train. At King’s Cross lost luggage office a few hours later, I was told that it was probably already in Newcastle. My jacket had also been to Newcastle in June, but on that occasion, I was there with it.

After my shower yesterday, it was only when I put my tee-shirt on that I remembered that I had not towelled my back. Is there a pattern emerging here? Just coincidence, I hope. Dementia is no laughing matter. My mother suffered from it - as did those closest to her, as a result.

Now, which platform are we on, I wonder?  

Travelling Light

A twentieth century incumbent at Dudmaston [NT], in Shropshire, was a British ambassador abroad, taking nineteen suitcases in three taxis each time he and his wife went off on official jaunts - though, admittedly, they would have expected to be away for some time.

I had also been a little surprised to see folk bringing fairly large cases onto our Icelandair flights last month. I had thought that cabin bags were limited to very specific dimensions these days. Not all air lines apparently, so we had the added entertainment of some very substantial cases being put in overhead lockers. Cabin crew on Icelandair must have some very well-developed biceps.

I thought back to when we went on family holidays by train as children. I carried a rucksack but Mum and Dad had leather suitcases with metal clasps and locks. Often such items were also strapped up, as though there was little confidence that they could otherwise take the strain. Our taxi dropped us off on the station concourse at Birkenhead Woodside, Liverpool Lime Street or Exchange, where it was easy to attract the attention of a porter, who Dad would tip, once the cases were up on the luggage rack.

As youth hostellers in the 60s and 70s, we could live out of a rucksack for weeks at a time. Today, I’m reassured that having checked wallet, glasses, pills and keys, I could readily acquire while I am away anything else I might have forgotten to pack. Even so, we still usually take too much stuff on holiday with us. I confidently predict that the next time I buy a suitcase it will be smaller still.  

  

St Pancras 150

London St Pancras was first opened by the Midland Railway one hundred and fifty years ago this week. In danger of demolition, then saved by a campaign in which Sir John Betjeman was a key figure, it survived to become the iconic location that it is today.

It is a fascinating mix of the old and the new, showing great foresight by those who grafted the Eurostar terminus on top of the original Victorian building. Alongside a revitalised King’s Cross, the gateway to the capital from the North East and the Midlands makes the first stage of many a holiday an uplifting experience.

Freebies

Freebies first caught my imagination with baking powder operated plastic submarines in packets of Corn Flakes, comics with wedge-shaped cards that you shook out to make a bang and the splendid British bird cards in packets of Brooke Bond.  

Some were genuinely sought after, especially where trying to complete a set of cards was concerned, for example, bubble-gum cricketers. Others were so naff that they were mildly amusing and then instantly disposable.

I’m not usually so easily drawn in these days, but I’m making an exception on behalf of the current edition of Steam Railway. This is partly to return a compliment. Assistant editor, Toby Jennings, wrote a kind and appreciative item on my book Train Spotters when it first came out, that actually reduced me to tears when I first read it in the magazine.

Together with the SR editor, Nick Brodrick, he has produced a most useful and informative Complete Guide to Britain’s Preserved Locomotives, which is such a labour of love and appreciation that not to award it shelf space in perpetuity would be a travesty.