Category: Video

Large and little

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Yorkshire “Janus” no 1 at Scunthorpe

It was a busy weekend – on Saturday, we were booked for a brake-van trip around Scunthorpe steel works – and we had “the works” too – a 5-hour trip around the site, taking in the main lines, branches, spurs and sidings. Great fun!

7¼" gauge NER Class C 0-6-0 no 22
7¼” gauge NER Class C 0-6-0 no 22

– and then on Sunday, we paid a brief visit to Gilling East, home of the Ryedale Society of Model Engineers. At the other end of the scale from Scunthorpe, it was fun too. We need to go again to do justice to it.

For more on both trips, visit “Appleby Frodingham” and “Gilling East” on Geoff’s Rail Diaries

Etruria – bones and boats

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That’s Stoke-on-Trent, not Italy, though there’s a connection –  pottery. The Etruria Industrial Museum preserves, in working order, Jesse Shirley’s Bone and Flint Mill, for many years a supplier of finely ground calcined bone and flint (oddly enough) for the manufacture of Staffordshire china. Steam powered, the museum operates on a limited number of days each year – including this weekend, when there would be a gathering of working boats on the canal beside the works. Somewhere old – and for us, somewhere new, a most interesting little outing (and tea and cakes, but sadly not oatcakes – they’d all gone…).

Etruria Industrial Museum

Austerity

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90733No, not today’s dreadful economic state, but a railway reminder of wartime – the 2-8-0 freight locomotives, built quickly and as cheaply as possible for service in the UK and abroad. The BR austerities were all scrapped, despite surviving until late 1967 – but one which never saw BR service survived – and this weekend it is visiting the Severn Valley Railway for their “Spring Steam Gala”. I thought I’d better go and see no. 90733 in action… Visit 2-8-0s on Geoff’s Rail Diaries for more…

The Christmas Cheshireman

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DSC_0652…was the name of the train, a trip from Bristol to Chester for the Christmas market. It was going to be hauled by Tangmere, an un-rebuilt Bulleid pacific, but earlier in the week, Tangmere was advised as “unavailable”, and instead the reliable duo of 44871 and 45407 would haul the trip. At about the same time, the weather forecast was rather unfriendly – happily, the forecast improved, and in the event, the morning’s fog cleared to bright sunshine. Here they are, Black 5s 44871 and 45407 hurrying along, on time, near Stokesay with the Christmas Cheshireman.

There are two steam-hauled specials next week, bringing passengers to the Ludlow Christmas markets – fingers crossed for the weather…