Recent content by borderreiver

I have decided to post the photograph from the 1990 book "Life and Work of a Northern Lead Miner" since I have not seen it anywhere else. The aerial ropeway was a monocable type, which presents something of a dilemma when it comes to modelling it. The PLL aerial ropeway scenery items and...

Meadowbeck, one of my earliest recollections from the 1970s railway modelling scene was a layout of FOXFIELD just south of the junction between the Barrow - Whitehaven line and the Coniston branch.

The sidings at Blackey's Isle and Billing Shield on the Weardale extension are going to change. I have unearthed an LNER siding diagram with lengths dated Dec 1925/Nov 1927 in the NERA archive It clearly shows a NER-type four-cell coal depot at Blackey's Isle! it is located on a spur from the...

Today, while browsing the NERA archive, I happened across a file called LNER Study Notes and in it "John Dawson" makes some comments about the Weardale branch and so answers what the J stands for in J.B. Dawson. I have also tracked down in the NERA Express that John B. Dawson died on 28th...

Alex, Essentially, the bulk of traffic out of the Weardale branch was stone. J.B. Dawson, who was 70 back in 1982 related his teenage years as the son of the Stationmaster at Eastgate, the first station to the west of Stanhope. Eastgate and the private sidings nearby sent out around 50 wagons a...

I believe that it comes down to two things. Which content creators producing content for paid DLC are prepared to put in the investment in order to make a return on that money and which content creators producing freeware for the download station (or own websites) can devote their time and...

North East England during the steam era. Eastgate station on the Weardale extension of the NER's Weardale branch. 1928, and the substitute for the branch G5 0-4-4T, a N9 class 0-6-2T of West Auckland shed hauls the fifth, and final up branch passenger train of the day, approaching, at and...

Tatham Street in Sunderland runs on a NNW-SSE line to the east of Mowbray Park. At its southern end it passed beneath the Fawcett Street Junction to South Dock line. While the road continues to the SSE beyond the bridge it changes name to Lyndsey Road and then soon changes again, to Suffolk...

I am giving this a bump.

What would have likely also contributed in the case of Chilton Cottages in the screenshot was isolation. Going downhill walking along the track, or alongside it, would bring inhabitants to the exchange sidings at Chilton Junction and the signalmen may have lived in the cottages, but from there...

JBD mentioned that Eastgate sent around five wagonloads of gannister out daily and that between the station, Greenfoot Quarry's output, as well as wagonloads from the two private sidings at Blackey's Isle and Billings Shield normally sent out 50 wagon loads a day, which elevated the station to...

Cab shots from the fourth down branch passenger train of the day bound for Wearhead. Starting at Darlington as set 189 Darlington Link C, travelling with set 190 as far as Wear Valley Junction, where they were separated. This train stopped at Wolsingham at 4.30 p.m. in the 1923 timetable, and...

In NERA Express Magazine, issues 87 through 89, from back in 1982, J.B.Dawson wrote about his recollections of country station life at Eastgate, on the 1895 Wearhead extension to the Weardale branch. He mentioned several locomotive classes, often with numbers and I have been working on them. G5...

A theoretical set of hoppers for 1946. From left to right, two 20T Diagam P7 wooden bodied hoppers, three 20T Diagram 100 steel bodied hoppers, two 21T hoppers to Diagram 167.

Hello Alex, Blyth would have seen, "back in the day" (up to about the 1890s) the chaldron wagon, but gradually the NER introduced larger hopper wagons, with much of the traffic being to the staithes at Blyth for shipping out to markets, foreign and domestic. However, some coal traffic from...