muddythefish
On Moderation
- Joined
- 13 May 2014
- Messages
- 1,576
Views from a window and memories of Britain's heavy industry past...
Agree with previous posts on the landscape around Sheffield. I travelled from Manchester - Sheffield behind an EM1 circa 1971, and the steelworks and other industrial plants surrounding the city were awe-inspiring. The "Northern Powerhouse"really existed in those days.
Similarly, the DMU ride from Middlesbrough to Saltburn in the late 1970s, before Mrs Thatcher did her worst, and sheer gob-smacking power and might of the blast furnaces along the Tees, past South Bank. I'd hate to do the same journey today, they've probably all disappeared and been replaced by Tescos.
Schoolboy trainspotting trips to the sheds around Manchester and Liverpool, in some of country's poorest and most run-down areas, yet still clean and full of working class pride. Passing Speke Junction, with almost every withdrawn Crosti-boilered 9F in a long line - who could forget that ?
Another trip to Derby, barely 70 (?) miles from Manchester yet like another world with locomotives I'd never seen before, such as Peaks, and stations with different architecture, double telegraph poles, and diagonal station fencing.
Sitting on Carlisle station in 1967 after a visit to Upperby - and seeing about 40 Britannias in one day - and watching a Metrovic Co-Bo, the only one I ever saw, struggle through Citadel on a loose-coupled freight.
And then the big one - a trip to Bournemouth in 1966, to catch the end of SR steam, down from Manchester on the ultra-modern new electrics, walking across London at 5am and cabbing 35007 Aberdeen Commonwealth at Waterloo before the run down the SR main line.
Most of all, journeys then were full of railway interest. Even on short rides from home in Blackburn to Preston and Manchester there was always something to see with working goods yards and sidings full of wagons and shunting locomotives.
Journeys by train don't have the same appeal these days, while all the cities look much the same
Agree with previous posts on the landscape around Sheffield. I travelled from Manchester - Sheffield behind an EM1 circa 1971, and the steelworks and other industrial plants surrounding the city were awe-inspiring. The "Northern Powerhouse"really existed in those days.
Similarly, the DMU ride from Middlesbrough to Saltburn in the late 1970s, before Mrs Thatcher did her worst, and sheer gob-smacking power and might of the blast furnaces along the Tees, past South Bank. I'd hate to do the same journey today, they've probably all disappeared and been replaced by Tescos.
Schoolboy trainspotting trips to the sheds around Manchester and Liverpool, in some of country's poorest and most run-down areas, yet still clean and full of working class pride. Passing Speke Junction, with almost every withdrawn Crosti-boilered 9F in a long line - who could forget that ?
Another trip to Derby, barely 70 (?) miles from Manchester yet like another world with locomotives I'd never seen before, such as Peaks, and stations with different architecture, double telegraph poles, and diagonal station fencing.
Sitting on Carlisle station in 1967 after a visit to Upperby - and seeing about 40 Britannias in one day - and watching a Metrovic Co-Bo, the only one I ever saw, struggle through Citadel on a loose-coupled freight.
And then the big one - a trip to Bournemouth in 1966, to catch the end of SR steam, down from Manchester on the ultra-modern new electrics, walking across London at 5am and cabbing 35007 Aberdeen Commonwealth at Waterloo before the run down the SR main line.
Most of all, journeys then were full of railway interest. Even on short rides from home in Blackburn to Preston and Manchester there was always something to see with working goods yards and sidings full of wagons and shunting locomotives.
Journeys by train don't have the same appeal these days, while all the cities look much the same