Just posted to Geoff’s Rail Diaries, an illustrated account of Thursday’s visit to the Lickey Bank and Cranberry, in Staffordshire, to see the “Great Britain III” railtour, hauled by 44871 and 70013 “Oliver Cromwell”. Visit “Old friends on the Lickey”
Category: Railways…
…and trams, traction engines, buses, ships, boats, canals and other transport subjects
Great Britain III – steam on the Lickey
It was originally planned to run via the “North and West”, but the possibility of strike action meant the Bristol – Preston leg was re-routed – twice! It would now ascend the Lickey bank before traversing the West Midlands and gaining the west coast main line at Stafford. It would be hauled by 44871 and 70013 – the last time I had seen 70013 in action was 11 August 1968 (when we thought it would be, barring a few trips by 4472, the last main line steam-hauled train on the BR network)… Better go and see it! (and escape from the dreaded painting and decorating)
Here’s a preview – I’ll probably put up a page on the “Rail Diaries” in a day or two – paintbrush permitting… Note the Voyager just disappearing out of the picture, extreme left – no, I didn’t get all the pictures I’d hoped for.
999 standards – and others…
Finished, for now – I’ve just uploaded page 11 of Kenneth Gray’s photos to the monorail pages. Visit BR standards et al. for a look at the BR-designed steam locomotives – and the unloved Austerities…
In due course…
…and here are the LNER pre-grouping tank locos, another interesting selection. I think the number of different classes of steam locomotive on our railways in the 1950s must be greater than the number of locomotives on the modern mainline railways of the UK.
Visit “LNER (part 3)” on the Kenneth Gray section of “monorail” for 12 more photos from a different world.
Just the BR standards to do now…
LNER pre-grouping steam
The LNER had its fair share – and then some – of pre-grouping motive power. Lots of photos in Kenneth Gray’s collection – here’s part 1 – the tender locos (part 2 – tank engines – will follow in due course). Visit “LNER part 2” on Kenneth’s monorail pages.
Nantmawr
Much better weather today – for a ride on the country’s newest steam railway, behind one of its oldest working locomotives. The Nantmawr quarry branch, originally contructed by “the Potts”, is an amazing survivor. The track wasn’t lifted after the last quarry train, nearly 40 years ago. All the preservationists had to do was clear a linear forest… The locomotive is Beyer Peacock 1827 of 1879 from Foxfield.
Visit “Nantmawr” on “Geoff’s Rail Diaries” for photos and video.
Panniers in the dale
This one had been in the diary for a little while – so had the awful weather… (the immediately following shot has a raindrop clearly visible on the filter). But it was well worth turning out for the spectacle of steam in Coalbrookdale – only the second time since the end of steam
Tornado hits the Severn Valley
Yes, that’s right – newly-built Peppercorn A1 no. 60163 “Tornado” – seen here on today’s 11.00am departure from Kidderminster, due in Bridgnorth 12.05. Unusually, the threatened showers cleared, the clouds parted – and there it was, on Eardington bank. Wonderful!
And now for the older stuff…
The relatively recent video wasn’t too difficult – just plug the camera into the firewire socket and away we go. A fair proportion was even easier than that – the raw video was still on the hard disk, it just needed re-editing and re-exporting for YouTube.
But now we’re into the older material, recorded on a Sony Video 8 “Handycam”. In those days, I’d used an ATI “All in wonder” vga card with video capture and a TV built in. But those were the days of Windows 95 / 98 – the card has never worked under XP. The little Canon Mini-DV camera has an option to input analogue video and directly output it through the firewire cable to the PC. Spaghetti everywhere! So we’re off, revisiting content which dates from, at earliest, 1994. It’s a slow job though, and some of the tapes are starting to deteriorate…
Here’s another taster – one of my favourite early video recordings, of Santa trains on the NYMR – Lambton 0-6-2T, Cl 25 pushing, plus both “Austerity” 2-10-0s in action – and some nice light too. As before here’s a direct link to the geoffspages channel on Youtube – now up to 47 clips.
YouTube
I’ve made a start on uploading the Geoff’s Pages rail video clips to YouTube, for a variety of reasons. It’ll take a little while – the links will be updated as and when the clips are moved. In the meantime, here’s a direct link to the geoffspages channel on Youtube – and a sample…
geoffspages.blog 