Worksop

I’d been meaning to go back to Worksop for ages. My 3-car Class 170 unit arrived 6 minutes late at Whitwell station for the 12-minute journey into town. Warm, air-conditioned and comfortable, it was carrying very few passengers, which suited me fine. The 170s are a distinct improvement on what went before on this line, even though this example of cascading downwards from other routes, as new stock is added to the overall fleet, was looking rather tired and worn as far as its upholstery and fitments were concerned, but at least it looked and felt fairly clean.

I had actually postponed this trip many times during the autumn. I’d been on the look-out on the very useful Real Time Trains website for a freight train through Worksop at a reasonable time of the day that I could go and photograph. To cut a long story short, where they were once plentiful, they are now few and far between. When I was visiting Worksop station regularly - a decade ago now - as well as frequent passenger trains to Nottingham, Sheffield and Lincoln, there was the regular rumble of Class 66 hauled coal, limestone and gypsum traffic and their returning empties. They really were quite a common site, reminding me how much the energy market has changed again in such a short time. Megawatt Valley, the name sometimes given to the series of coal-fired power stations along the Trent, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, with only two left at the time of this latest visit. West Burton will finish production in 2022, followed by Ratcliffe-on-Soar two years later.

As we swung off the ex-Midland Railway’s metals to join the former Great Central Railway route at Shireoaks South Junction, the recent transformation of this area becomes apparent. Where there were once rows of graffitied coal hoppers, there are now lines upon lines of withdrawn passenger stock and in amongst them, Class 47 No. 47715 in Network South East livery, which is apparently retained for train heating purposes, or perhaps more accurately for periodic train airing. By the time we had joined the line for Sheffield at Shireoaks East Junction, the impact that investment from Harry Needle Railroad Company is having on the town and its landscape was perfectly clear. Sidings on both sides of the line are packed with displaced stock, stored stock, brand new stock and locomotives and passenger stock being maintained and repaired. New buildings have been constructed and the place is a hive of activity. Some deliveries of rolling stock to HNRC also come in by road. Their website also makes it abundantly clear that this is a secure site, safe from unwelcome visitors, whatever their intentions. I noticed the body shells, minus chassis, for Class 92 Nos. 92021/40 and 45 at the Worksop station end of the site and also a Pacer unit and a number of Class 08 shunters.

Our train crossed over to platform 2, where it had two minutes left of its intended stopover time, before it was due to head out back to Nottingham, as the 15.39. I had time to take a picture of No. 170419 while the drivers changed shifts, having enjoyed the briefest of chats half-way along the platform. There was no time for me to revisit the café or take a photo of the station frontage, as I’d planned to do.

Worksop station was opened in 1849 by the Sheffield and Lincolnshire Junction Railway, itself part of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway. This in turn became the Great Central Railway in time for the station extensions and new buildings that were added in 1900. The pedestrian bridge and the level crossing of Carlton Road at the platform edge, as well as the Grade II listed Worksop East signalbox, all give the eastern end of the station its distinctive character, along with the impressive station frontage and side elevation behind platform one. It is built of local stone, with Dutch influenced gable ends an added attraction. It has a rather splendid and extensive frontage, which faces onto a spacious car park.

I took my seat in a deserted section of the front carriage. I had thought it wise to avoid the rush hour and so I enjoyed a further 9 minutes of solitude, staring out into the early dusk of a dismally dark and drizzly December afternoon. No worries, though, because I was back on track and I’d just got one in, as I’d hoped to, before the end of this second, very strange year.