Viva Hunslet!

Enjoyed a tribute the Leeds locomotive building industry (RIP) that was D2578’s Homecoming Weekend at the Middleton Railway.

In my related internet explorations I came across the Leeds Historical Exploration Society’s site – which is a site of record of their various expeditions. Among their explorations is one of the last surviving of evidence of Leed’s tram system. At one stage there were plans to put it underground – instead the who thing was scrapped at the end of the Fifties – dedicated reserved tracks alongside main roads, the lot.

But there’s more than transport stuff on there – and there’s more on hidden Leeds on this related flikr site.

But in the meantime here is an artists impression of the modernised city centre underground tram system that Leeds could have had …

Dayrover days in the early Eighties

Before the de-industrialisation of the North, and the unit-isation of the railways, the youth cult of bashing was in full swing. Bashing being the art of accumulating haulage behind railway locomotives – either by type, or by distance, or by both.

At that time the railways were still stocked with rolling stock from the ‘modernisation’ era that preceeded and paralled the Beeching era. The diesel locos that had replaced steam were still powering many of the types of workings that those steam engines had – including loose coupled freights and summer Saturday specials to seaside resorts.

The Miners strike was still to come. Rail privatisation was difficult to imagine. Thatcherism hadn’t become a fully fledged ‘ism’ – didn’t stop the riots though. There was still long shadows hanging over the railways – strikes, lack of investment, a total lack of enthusiasm for rail from the Conservatives (coupled with long standing antagonism from the civil service). When the railways ground to a halt on strike days it felt like the last days were upon us.

Bashers were not train spotters. They had no time for ‘kettles’ (steam engines). They were in thrall to the oldest, noisiest and most battered locomotives. Mostly consigned to freight and working out of depots in the deepest recesses of industrial England – Thornaby, Gateshead, Tinsley, Healey Mills. On Summer Saturdays, they would emerge on holiday trains to Blackpool, Skegness, Aberystwyth and Llandudno.

Long trains of compartment stock would draw in behind their monstrous traction – the racket swirling round the station. The front carriages invaded by the bashers – toting their addidas and head bags. Then away, to much flailing and bellowing out of the windows in tribute, triumph, adrenalin and identification

They didn’t turn out to be the last days in the way it looked like at the time. Since then rail’s time has come with passenger numbers soaring. Everything the stolid defenders of rail were arguing at the time – that rail was the right way to go – has come to pass. But at the same time the rail network has descended into some kind of plasticky, modular blandness.

Bashers were worshiping machine and speed like some mutated anglo Saxon strain of futurism. Looking to let loose, to find camaraderie. To mainline nostalgia. To order and catalogue a world that was always slipping away. To subvert the purpose and conventions of rail travel, whilst respecting every aspect of the mode more than any ‘normal’

To mark the last great flourish of locomotive manufacturing in the country that invented it. Wave after wave of orders from Vulcan Foundry, Robert Stephenson and Hawthorns, Brush foundry. As Britain’s late start on replacing steam turned into a stampede. Britain’s locomotive manufacturing industry kept going for a few years more turning out heavy duty industrial design for rail modernisation. Designs heroic in their solidity.

Thrash – ‘the noise made by classic diesel locomotives’
Clag – ‘A term describing the often spectacular (especially blackened, as in Class 37 or whitesmoked, as in Class 55) exhaust emissions of many older British diesel locomotives, especially Classes 52 and 55′
Dreadful: ‘Exclamation denoting enthusiastic approval’

From the summer of 1982 the volume of rateable workings was still high but beginning its long but exponential decline.

A West Yorkshire day rover would give access to the fun and games to a relative bashing lightweight and impoverished sixth former. And sometimes further afield.

Saturday 26th June 1982

40 058 Leeds to Manchester Victoria (class 31 hauled portion attached by 08 at Huddersfield) for haulage
40 069 through freight at Man Vic
40 012 ‘Aureol’ through parcels at Man Vic
47 135 + 47 210 double headed Trans-Pennine running over an hour later
47 002 Manchester Victoria to Huddersfield for haulage in the rain
46 010 Huddersfield to Bradford Interchange (Weymouth to Bradford) for haulage
25 224 Shipley to Leeds

Saturday 11th September 1982

Haulage

47 305 Bradford – Huddersfield
47 286 Huddersfield – Dewsbury
47 526 Dewsbury – Leeds
40 183 Leeds – Huddersfield
40 056 Huddersfield – Leeds
45 009 Leeds – Huddersfield
40 197 Huddersfield to Leeds
31 295 Keighley to Leeds
40 004 Leeds to Huddersfield
47 095 Huddersfield to Leeds

Rosebay Willow herb seeds drift and eddy
A signal stop
The carriage creaks in the heat

An hour and a half at Wakefield Kirkgate 24th November 1982

37 131 HM loose fitted coal
56 106 TI MGR
47 373 HM empty MGR
40 172 SP Tankers
56 030 HM empty MGR
40 162 KD
31 168 IM
37 023 MR mixed unfitted
47 291 cartec
56 093 HM full MGR
56 106 TI MGR
37 040 HM
37 123 HM brakevan

A stolen afternoon from School
Succession of freight trains
Liberation

Indian Metal Music

Added to my fotopic site is a ‘photo essay’ of some hours in the life of Sanchi station in Madhya Pradesh in India.

Transylvania to London by Train

1,800 kilometres of rail travel from Transylvania to London by train. Enter a trance state – addicitve – as Europe roles by. From crumbling platforms and clapped out second hand trains in Romania the trains progressively speed up and the economy solidifies into prosperity. The edge disappears. The golden fields unspool into the mountains and then back down into the endless Central European plain – baking in 90 to 100 degree heat.

‘The Bihor’ from Sighisoara to Oradea. A mamoth overnight holiday train from the Romanian coast sans buffet car, sans air con. Hand me down french railway carriages.

Oradeo to Budapest on some Slovakian carriages with a compartment to ourselves then a couple of hours at Budapest Keleti

Budapest to Vienna – five hour break

Overnight on the ‘Orient Express’ from Wien to Koln (which now operates Milano/Wien – Amsterdam). Thieves try to raid the carriage at Karlesrhue but one of our companions wakes up and sees them off. Breakfast as the train winds its way up the Rhine valley

Worst train of the voyage – boring Thalys to Brussels – a couple of hours break

First class on Eurostar to St Pancras

Cost a heck a lot of more than flying budget from Stansted to Cluj but preferable in every other way.

Cool bus station cafes of Central and Eastern Europe: an occasional monograph

Bus station cafes are not renowned for their imagination or attention to detail – and they don’t usually make many design concessions to the mode of transport their customers departed and arrived on (unless its some faux references to Greyhound buses). However in Szekelyudvarhely (Ordorheiu Secuiesc) which is in Szekely Land in Translyvania in Northern Romania – someone has put a great deal of effort into an elaborate bus motif for the bus station cafe. Paying particular tribute to the phat, chunky Comecon designs of Hungarian ‘Ikarus’ buses – though the main feature – the bus bar is a German import.

Pictures taken during brief period when there were fewer of the scary looking men who hang out in bus station cafes

It’s banging house music at full volume and treble strength espressos from early morning to midnight – totally wired…

If you ask her – she will flash the headlights…

Bad Bahnhof indeed

I want to go Jowetting…!

Bradford once had its own car industry…not only that but its products were Class winners at Le Mans and featured in Raymond Chandler. And only in Yorkshire would vehicles be be named a Curlew or a Weasel (pictured below outside Bradford Town Hall)!

The company was established in 1902 in Bradford before moving to the Springfield Works in Bradford Road, Idle. They broke out of their local markets in the 1920s but it wasn’t until the 1950s that they really went for it with the streamlined Jowett Javelin and the sporty Jowett Jupiter. But their ambitions outran their engineering, production and distribution capabilities and in 1954 the dream of a Yorkshire car industry and marque came to an end.

1950s Jowett styling is something else. Airstreamed but stolid. Like a plane that’s too bottom heavy to ever take off (though the craftsmanship and innovation under the bonnet meant that it surely did). Like a bank manager looking over his glasses…at his mistress. Definitely Northern – with chips, mushy peas and scraps.

So it was only right and proper that there were Javelins and Jupiters at a vintage car event that was occupying a local park the other day.

Mmmm – i could be tempted. I’d be in good company, former Jupiter owners include General Sir Mike Jackson, Peter Ustinov, John Surtees and Martin Fry.

And according to one website Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe was partial to the Jupiter experience. In the Long Goodbye, Marlowe commented:

‘We went to Victor’s. He drove me in a rust colored Jupiter-Jowett with a flimsy canvas rain top under which there was only just room for the two of us. It had pale leather upholstery and what looked like silver fittings. I’m not too fussy about cars, but the damn thing did make my mouth water a little. He said it would do sixty-five in second. It had a squatty little gear shift that barely came up to his knees.’

Now a Yorkshire car industry would have been complemented by a Yorkshire Airline…

Scunthorpe steel works – a great Northern day out

Stuck for a plan for a day, or an evening out? Can I suggest you make your way to Scunthorpe steel works (or Appleby Frodingham to give its proper name) for a tour of the works.

Leave time to find the assembly point – because it’s not easy. But somewhere near one of the admin blocks and the empty Saturday morning car park is a small garden. Make your way across it and you will find a short deserted railway platform. Hang around and chugging up the grade towards it will come a steam or diesel shunter and two brake (guards) vans. When we were there the first diesel loco staggered up the incline then promptly expired in a cloud of evil fumes. But we were rescued by another shunter proudly bearing the name of its former owners – the Eccles Slag Co LTD.

Then you are trundled in and out and around the complex.

Shockingly in Britain this is an heavy industrial site that seems to be thriving – with a railway network that’s busy and integral to its operation. Modern radio controlled locos pass you with massive ‘torpedo’ wagons carrying molton iron from the blast furnaces to be turned into steel. You can feel the heat coming off them. The internal rail network changes regularly apparently – well this is a steel works. I guess If you want to change anything in a steel works you can melt down what you had and make something new.

Huge stacks, yards full of massive dumped industrial artifacts, sulphurous sheds and glimpses of the furnaces. For several hours the unfitted brake vans (complete with stoves for heating in the winter) ramble around the site as indulged interlopers.

Strange to see heavy industry that’s not in terminal decline in England. Strange that this one is surrounded by a rural hinterland. And stranger still that you are trundling around it in a guards van on a Saturday morning while ‘proper’ trains carry out the business of the works all around you.

And when it’s over you pay by donation and then you can get a cup of tea at the railway preservation site that occupies an enclave within the complex.

And if that wasn’t enough there’s an small interesting museum about the history of Scunthorpe and the steel works not far from the station, and a rather nice cafe / arts centre within a converted church in the town centre.

Would be good to do the tour on a winter’s evening – when you get the full industrial drama of the place.

Scunthorpe – it’s a great Northern day out…

PS: Bonus feature…for those who like their industrial action…heavy!

Colne – holiday trains to Blackpool in the 1960s

Foxline publishing do a wonderful series of books (five volumes so far) on holiday trains from East Lancashire towns to the Coast (mostly Blackpool) – plus linked titles on Blackburn and Colne. Most railway books suffer from ‘rivet counting’ syndrome – but these books by Stuart Taylor immerse you in the life of those towns in the sixties, the characters and culture of the railway and the popular attractions that await you when you finally get to Blackpool. The excitement as whole towns decamped to the coast during the holiday weeks and the massive scale of the railway operation that got them there. So resonant and absorbing you feel like like you are there.

But all that’s solid melts into the air.

On the morning of 10th June 1962, fifty special holiday trains ran into Blackpool. By 1964 Blackpool Central was closed…to make way for a car park. In 1962 Colne had through trains to London, a carriage depot, goods yard – the lot. By 1971 it was an unstaffed halt on a single track stub stopping service.

The rise of the car – and the shafting of the railways by Marples via his ICI hatchet man, Dr Beeching, with his pseudo science and fixed figures – decimated the railways in less than a decade.

[ 2nd May 1971 and Jim Wilson turns the lights out for the last time at Colne station ]