North East England - Steam Days Screenshots - Large Screenshots Possible

Thanks Annie. I recently bought the digitised copies of the NER staff magazine for 1911 - 1925 and an article from 1912 is about the TPO carriages.

The terms in use then were "mail van" and "sorting tender" rather than travelling Post Office. Harris muddies the waters by stating in his book on LNER carriages that on grouping the newest TPOs were those built by the GNR with the others being gas-lit clerestory N.E.R. vans built 1902-04 (the five diagram 93s). This completely ignores the three Diagram 183s built in 1910 and given that I now know the N.E.R.A. drawing for them lists their post-1925 N.E. Area numbers rather than the N.E.R. numbers listed in the N.E.R. December 1912 carriage stock listing, I tend towards the belief that they survived in to the post-grouping period. What work they were doing post-grouping is not as easy to deduce. According to Harris the "North Eastern TPO" was shifted from the 8.25 pm out of Kings Cross to the 10.25 pm. I think that logic would have dictated using two newer electrically lit D.183 on this service (one working north overnight while the other works south) but as with the E.C.J.S. rostering older carriages in 1914 while some newer carriages appeared to have no rostered duties I can't rely on logic prevailing! The complaints from the Post Office about older gas-lit carriages do not specify which services they were used on.

A reason for the Post office complaints follows. There was an accident at Charfield, Gloucestershire on 13th October 1928, with 15 or 16 fatalities, which resulted in a fire which destroyed a gas-lit TPO along with six other vehicles. The TPO was part of the 10pm down L.M.S. Leeds to Bristol mail and passenger train hauled by a former Midland 4-4-0, No. 714, which passed a signal at danger. A triple collision occurred between the 10 pm, the G.W.R. 9.15pm semi-fitted goods from Oxley Sidings Wolverhampton and the L.M.S.R. 10.35pm loose-coupled goods from Washwood Heath. A fire broke out, destroying the TPO along with six other carriages. The 10 pm consisted of a parcels van (through-piped), a goods van (a through piped vehicle with electric lighting), a passenger composite carriage, two third class passenger carriages, a further composite, a TPO sorting van, TPO tender, two TPO storage vans (dating back to 1885) and a passenger brake carriage. On reading this I think that the lost TPO was a M.& N.E.R.J.P.S. vehicle. The Ministry of Transport had demanded that gas-lit vehicles were phased out after the 1913 accident at Ais Gill. That so many died as a consequence of fire 13 years after the disaster at Quintshill is a tragedy. The death toll included two small children who were never identified. Initial reports said 15 died but the official accident inquiry reports 16 died. Both the railway companies and the MoT bear some responibility for not progressing a faster conversion to electrical lighting.

An article on the accident is here. https://web.archive.org/web/2008091...org.uk/interactive/english/charfieldrail2.htm

There was controversy in Backtrack Magazine from 1990 in which several letters claimed that the "two children" were unidentifiable remains of adults and that two children survived the crash and were identified. A further letter claimed that a woman visited the memorial for seven years afterwards and that a possible name for the children was Saunders. Now I doubt that we will ever know the truth of the situation.

The 1912 staff magazine has the only photograph I have seen of the D.183 in action - attached to the head of the 10 am from London passing Birtley hauled by a "V" Class Atlantic. The N.E.R.A. Image archive has a couple of shots of the TPOs but they are not yet digitised and the archive at Darlington has still not re-opened in order to see them there or to order prints.

An interesting article Frank. I'd heard a little about the Charfield accident, but not read any report about it. Thanks for that.

The 1905 12 Ton Consett Iron Company Hopper - Roberts Diagram K31

North East England during the steam era. A Consett Iron Company long-boilered pannier tank 0-6-0T hauls empties from the iron works at Consett high yard bound for the company's Medomsley branch.







The lead wagon is a 12 Ton hopper built by Roberts in 1905. During 1905 the Consett Iron Company ordered 25 coal hoppers from the wagon builder Roberts Limited. Numbered 235 - 259 they had a capacity of 12 Tons. The drawing survived to be included in Hudson's series of books on Private Owner wagons. The company owned several collieries as well as the steel works at Consett and had its own riverside staithes at Derwenthaugh. Therefore it required a large fleet of wagons to move coal and coke. Even if only alloacating one hundred wagons to each colliery, one hundred to the steel works for internal movements and a further one hundred to the wagon repair works to account for those in repair/overhaul the fleet will have been around one thousand strong.

I believe that it is likely the company ordered more loose coupled hopper wagons of this type from Roberts but unfortunately the records, like so many others, have been lost over the intervening decades. All the company locomotives and wagons allocated to the collieries and coke works were transferred to the national Coal Board on nationalisation in 1947.

I do like those two screenshots Frank. Industrial saddle tanks at work always make for good pictures. Your Consett Iron Co wagons look very nice.

The 1905 12 Ton Consett Iron Company Hopper - Roberts Diagram K31

Thanks Annie, the Consett Iron Company had quite an extensive network of lines around Consett, incuding the Medomsley colliery branch. It also had running powers over the former Stanhope & Tyne lines as far as Eden Colliery which dated back to the failure of the S&T during 1840, when the company became the Pontop and South Shields Railway and the Derwent Iron Company bought the western part of the route between Stanhope and Carr House from the P.&S.S.R. The necessity to a secure southerly outlet for the works, separate from the eastern outlet of the P.&.S.S.R. led the Derwent Iron Company to approach the Stockton & Darlington Railway about a connection between Waskerley and Crook, which was at that time the closest point of the S.&D.R. Unfortunately, like the P.&S.S.R. route, it would have to rely on inclines in order to reach lower altitudes. The route was opened in 1845, with a subsidiary of the S.&D.R. the Wear Valley Railway, operating the former S&T lines owned by the Derwent Iron Company. The presence of the S.&D.R. in N.W. Durham would cause quite an amount of trouble for the young N.E.R. during the late 1850s and early 1860s. The fortunes of the P.&.S.S.R. did not improve until 1844, when the Railway King George Hudson utilised a section of the P.&S.S.R. between Washington and Brockley Whins as part of the very first London to Gateshead main line. There was an incline between the eastern side of the Hownes Gill gorge and Carr House with a winding engine at Carr House.




The A Class at Carr House East.

The Flying Scotsman, mid-late 1950s

North East England during the steam era. "The Flying Scotsman" service on the racetrack four track section between York and Northallerton.




Summer 1955. The down train, reporting number "50" is between Thirsk and Northallerton just after 2 pm. Since 1953 the summer train set has been made up of BR Mk 1 carriages, a process that began in 1951 along with the arrival of lined carmine and cream livery. The train, with the sole destination of Edinburgh and with stops at Grantham and Newcastle for engine changes, had become a 12 carriage trailing load, book-ended by BSK 4 compartment carriages. Four SKs were marshalled ahead of an RB, RSO, RK and RFO catering portion. The London end of the train behind the catering portion was an FK and CK along with the trailing BSK. An engine change at Grantham, code 35B has rostered an A1 Class pacific, in this case the unusual A1/1 "Great Northern", which would not normally have graced such a prestigious express. However, at this time Grantham had no Class A4 allocation, it being dispersed elsewhere since 1950/51 and of the cluster of Class A1s allocated there I have decided that the only one ready for the duty is 60113! A group of four Class A4s would return to Grantham in April 1957 but were all re-allocated from mid-September. The turn at Grantham for the 10 am down was E.R.31, using Grantham turn GR.6 and crew E.R.46 and duty commenced at 12.02 pm. They were relieved at Newcastle at 3.06 pm when Heaton shed relief men would take the loco light engine to Heaton shed. The Scottish Pacific engine which had brought the Up Scotsman to Newcastle would take the down Scotsman on to Edinburgh.




Same place and same time of day but three years later. Things have changed and not just the livery of the carriages. While the BR MK 1 type still makes up all the set the catering portion has just started with a new arrangement. Out are the RB, RSO, RK and RFO. Instead a new D.97 RMB mini-buffet, an unclassified RU and an RFO are in place. They are also closer to the middle of the train, behind the leading BSK and two SKs, which is still an overall 12 carriages long. Behind the FK trailing the catering portion are a CK, two SKs and the BSK. This was a long walk for a passenger in the trailing BSK in search of a drink from the RMB or a meal in the RU (at its busiest the catering crew could also lay out the 16 seats around four tables at the London end of the RMB). The BSK passenger would also get to wander through the First Class portion of the train, which in earlier times would probably have resulted in letters of complaint to the company from the First Class passengers.

The engine change at Grantham appears to have been dropped for 1958, since the shed, now code 34F, had no allocation of Class A1 or A4 pacifics. As New England shed also lacked these allocations in 1958 I have come to the conclusion that the change took place at York, which means that in 1958 a stop was made at York, probably at the expense of the Grantham one to maintain timings. In any event, the engine changes were not about the range of the engines but rather maintaining service reliability. Running at high speed was stressful on the engines and the crew. The engines on the non-stop London-Edinburgh service changed crew around Tollerton utilising the corridor tenders but while the engines on the service were run the hardest of all duties on the E.C.M.L. they were also the ones which were subject to the highest levels of maintenance. After 1948 the non-stops were no longer the work of "The Flying Scotsman" and therefore engine changes were the order of the day for it after its fall from the pinnacle of East Coast Express trains. For the footplate crew, to be on the non-stops was the cream of the top link duties but being in charge of "The Flying Scotsman" was only a slightly lesser honour.

The last non-stop "Elizabethan" ran during the summer of 1961, with "The Flying Scotsman" going over to Deltic haulage in 1962.

For much of the existence of the East Coast Main Line there was a tradition that the 10 am departure from London Kings Cross for Scotland was the premier day time express passenger train. For many years it was unofficially named, being known as "The Scotch Express" among G.N.R. employees and "The Flying Scotchman" among N.E.R. employees. However, it was only during the 1920s under the L.N.E.R. when it gained its official name and headboard of "the Flying Scotsman" and several more years for it to become a non-stop service between London and Edinburgh.

Speeds by modern standards were slow, with a 60 mph "mile a minute" train being the pinnacle of ambition at the time. The attempt to accelerate services led to the "Races to the North" of the early 1890s but a fatal crash in 1896 near Preston led to an agreement between the companies operating the East and West Coast express passenger trains to revert to the 1889 minimum time of eight hours between London, Edinburgh and Glasgow. However, by the mid-1920s neither the locomotives nor rolling stock resembled those in use thirty years previously and the limit was mutually abandoned by the L.M.S. and L.N.E.R. around 1927. The non-stop service initiated by the L.N.E.R. sought to minimise the journey time within the limits of their current infrastructure and the novel innovation of the corridor tender, permitting a crew change on the footplate while the train was under way. The 1930s saw the L.N.E.R. quadruple the "race track" section of the line to the north of York, with acceleration for the expresses in mind as well as expanding capacity for goods trains. Even after this upgrade there were several places where speeds on the E.C.M.L. remained low, such as the slack passing through Peterborough North, the slow speed when passing through York station without stopping, the 50 mph curve to the west of Durham by Relly Mill, the 20 mph on the through lines at Durham station, the 50 mph curve to the east of Durham at Newton Hall as well as the crawl over the King Edward VII bridge spanning the River Tyne and through Newcastle Central station. Most of these were not rectified until the days of steam were over on British Railways and Newcastle remains an area of slow speed transit for through trains.

The heyday for the service was during the late 1930s, with Class A4 Pacific haulage and a new set of carriages in 1938. This high water mark only lasted for two summers. The start of WWII in September 1939 brought about an end of non-stop running and dining carriages. While dining facilities returned in October 1945 it was summer 1947 before new Thompson carriages appeared in the service, which retained a Gresley triplet set for dining facilities since the new carriages were not ready. Even at this date, non-stop services did not resume. In the end, the non-stop 10 am "The Flying Scotsman" with Thompson carriages throughout ran for the summer 1948 but only for one season. Come summer 1949 the non-stop service and the carriages passed to a new 9.30 am departure, the named train becoming "The Capitals Limited". The new train ran each summer season during 1950, 1951 and 1952 while retaining the all Thompson composition and teak livery. Come the summer of 1953 the summer non-stop train returned at 9.30 am with a name change, becoming "The Elizabethan" and also in lined carmine and cream. Ironically, from October 1949 "The Flying Scotsman" would regain its former 1948 set to run at 10 am on the winter train service. The non-stop was a summer season train and was suspended between October and June. In a sense, the winter formation was "the normal" train since it ran for nine months of the year (less a couple of weeks when it went for its spring overhaul prior to being re-assigned to the 9.30 am). "The Elizabethan" became a Summer only Monday to Friday service. On Saturdays the set still ran to Edinburgh at 9.30 am but with one stop, at Newcastle. In addition, on Saturdays the trailing BG at the London end was replaced by a BTK (later BSK). In the end "The Flying Scotsman" had the last laugh, since it outlived both "The Capitals Limited" and "the Elizabethan".

1959 - Pontop & South Shields branch, Harraton Junction

A screenshot in the form of a black and white photo taken by a box camera, a widespread camera available from pre-WWII through to the 1960s.
On a murky wet morning an ex-WD Austerity 2-8-0 hauls empty coal hoppers from Tyne Dock staithes bound for Stella Gill yard to the west of South Pelaw Junction.




Within ten years both the loco and the collieries feeding the sidings at Stella yard would be gone, though the wagons would live on through to the early 1980s.
The line would be closed by 1969 too, but luckily only mothballed. It would be re-opened during the early 1970s when the ore trains from Redcar for Consett began with double-headed Class 37s but by 1980 the works closed and in 1984 the line was lifted.

Wow! I would like to know where I could get a vintage box camera with a stop action shutter speed like yours (and consider old B&W film exposure speeds - slow!) Must be 1/500s at least!

Never the less, nice shot!

Rob.

Yes Rob, on a gloomy day the shot would probably have been very dark and blurred to boot.
I think Steve Banks has some shots on his site he took in the 1960s with a 126 camera where he panned the camera during the shot.
For a young teenager he caught the loco quite well but of course at the expense of blurring everything else in the shot.
My own early steps were with a 1979 Zenit 35mm SLR and some of those colour shots were every bit as dark as a kodak instamatic because I did not have a light meter.

Your Zenit SLR is a good camera and a quantum leap over a Kodak Instamatic and with a decent lens and in the right hands could certainly have produced pics like your screenshot.

Rob.

#787 That is a great screenshot Frank. I have my Dad's old box camera on the bookshelf and I did use it for a while until the film it needed became too hard to obtain. In the right conditions they produce a very nice clear photo, but I'm certainly not any kind of good photographer and I had more failures than successes.

Yes the Zenit was good. My only problem was the x/m flash setting. Several times I found I had taken a flash picture with the m setting and only the top half of the picture was bright. At least with digital one can see one's mistakes immediately instead of waiting until one had finished the roll of film when it was too late.

1949 - Pontop & South Shields branch - Beamish Junction

Northeast England during the steam era. Raven's T2 Class 2-cylinder 0-8-0s (later LNER Class Q6), built between 1913 and 1920 were to become a familiar sight across North East England and were in their day every bit as associated with the coal trade as their diesel successors, the English Electric Type 3 (Class 37) would become. That some examples lasted right up until the end of steam on the BR NE Region in 1967 is a testimony to their ruggedness and reliability. They were never rebuilt nor tinkered with by either Gresley, Thompson, Peppercorn or BR under Riddles. They put in a solid work effort day in day out for fifty four years and garnered little in the way of praise or even acknowledgement for it. At least one example has managed to survive in to preservation by the NELPG. That has now done more years as a preserved loco than it did in its working life as a mineral engine.




A T2/Q6 goes together with coal hoppers like toast with butter. If they were photographed it was almost inevitably on coal trains. However, these hoppers are a twist on the theme. They are Diagram 167. This type was built early on during WWII to haul iron ore since an explosion of domestic iron ore mining was required as imports were threatened by enemy action. Over 2,500 were built, utilising materials from a government order in 1939 to build wagons to continental specs for shipment to France in support of the BEF. Before they could be delivered France had fallen and with steel in short supply the frames were suited for use as ore hoppers. The L.N.E.R. agreed to build the hoppers for the government on the proviso that they would become L.N.E.R. stock post-war. By September 1945 plans were put in place for redeploying them to the L.N.E.R. and by November 1947 1,000 were on domestic ore traffic, 1,000 were in the NE Area on coal traffic, 300 were at Tyne Dock for the Consett ore traffic, 144 were in West Cumberland for ore traffic and 50 were in West Cumberland for coal traffic. They lasted through to the late 1970s with British Rail, though by then many had been rebodied.

You have to look closely to discern the differences with the ubiquitous L.N.E.R. Diagram 100 steel bodied hopper, with the main ones being the continental axle boxes of the D.167, the continental style buffers and the dog leg style of brake lever. The overall length of the D.167 was 25ft 4 1/2 inches compared to 24ft 6 inches of the D.100. In a thirty wagon train this would add up to 26ft 4 inches of additional length, more than a wagon, so the crew could be caught out if they needed to fit the train in to a short spur and thought that they had D.100s.

The line trailing in from the right foreground is the Beamish Wagonway. By 1949 this had been in the hands of the NCB for two years. During the mid-1950s the NCB diverted the line from the collieries at Beamish to the former S&T line at Pelton Level with a new washery also being located there. This allowed them to close and lift the lower section of the two-hundred year-old Beamish Wagonway.

While the Q6 is on the alignment of the former S&T it is not on the route as such. When built in 1834 the line crossed the Great North Road (later the A1) on the level and there was a winding engine to the east at Harraton to work the inclined plane. During NER days the new ECML alignment through the Team Valley necessitated raising the former S&T (by this time the Pontop & South Shields branch) to cross the new ECML on an overbridge. The Harraton winding engine and incline were dispensed with, the line being raised to cross the ECML and Great North Road on overbridges. At the same time the line was doubled and the gradients between Stella Gill and Harraton were reduced.

1958 - Tyne Dock 9F Iron Ore Power - South Pelaw Junction

Northeast England during the steam era. The last decade of steam has arrived and among the ultimate expressions of steam power on the UK network was the BR Standard 9F 2-10-0. Available in single chimney. double chimney and crosti-boilered variants, the small stable of ten allocated to Tyne Dock shed reuired an unusual variation to permit them to haul the custom built British Railways 56 Ton bogie iron ore hoppers, two Westinghouse pumps at their right hand side running plate level with air reservoir tanks on their left hand side. By 1966 they had relinquished their duties on the ore trains to pairs of Type 2 Sulzer diesels (later TOPS Class 24). During tests of diesel haulage the banking locomotive eased off earlier than expected while on the steep grades and nearly "blew up" the diesel locomotive at the head of the train as the full load of the train came on its drawbar! This incident contributed to the decision to double-head the ore trains when diesel power was introduced. this practise continued when the trains switched to Redcar as the loading terminal in the early 1970s and to 100 ton rotary wagons for the new ore depot at Consett Fell. The switch was from Class 24 Bo-Bo to Class 37 Co-Co.







At South Pelaw junction near Chester-le Street in County Durham, the banking locomotive, a former LNER Thompson Class O1 2-8-0 approaches the tail of the ore train bound for Consett. In US parlance a banking engine is a "helper loco". However, in the UK a banker was typically not piped up to the train it was banking/helping. In the case of banking the ore trains the coupling was loosley hooked on and there was a lanyard from the cab to release the banking engine without stopping the train at South Medomsley junction. The banking engine would coast to a stop as the ore train drew away ahead. The banking engine would then use the trailing crossover (trailing switch) to switch to the Down line and return to South Pelaw junction for its next banking duty. The iron ore trains would run continuously when an iron ore carrier was docked at Tyne Dock since the iron ore loading gantry, while huge, did not have the hopper capacity to hold an entire ship's worth of ore. Trains would run at roughly 90-minute intervals until the iron ore train was unloaded. I doubt that there was an out of shape fireman on the footplate crew of either a 9F, O1 or Q7 at Tyne Dock shed!! If on either a banker or ore train duty they would not have needed a gym membership.

1958 - Stella Gill coal yard

Northeast England during the steam era. The iron ore trains between Tyne Dock and Consett steal pretty much all the limelight in the South Pelaw junction area but there was an old but important yard to the west of the junction, Stella Gill. The main part of the yard was on the alignment of the 1834 Stanhope & Tyne Railway and for nearly thirty years was the only outlet to northeast for the collieries and ironworks of the Consett district. Stella was situated at the foot of Pelton incline, the lowest of a sequence of inclines which brought loaded mineral trains down from the heights of the Durham plateau at East Stanley. The Stanhope & Tyne failed in the early 1840s and the section around Stella became part of the Pontop & South Shields Railway, later the N.E.R.'s Pontop & South Shields branch. The yard grew as the Grange Villa, Craghead and Burnhope waggonway joined the P&SSR at Pelton Level, the locomotive-worked section at the top of Pelton incline, and grew further still with the building of the waggonway to Waldridge and Sacriston, which joined the P&SSR at Stella. The fourth source of traffic came from Pelton Colliery (Newfield pit) which required its own incline, the Pelton Colliery incline, to reach Stella Gill yard.




Here, during the 1950s, a National Coal Board 0-4-0ST brings a short rake of loaded NCB internal user hoppers down from the Sacriston waggonway in to Stella Gill yard for the cokeworks. In the distance a BR Q6 0-8-0 descends the Consett branch's Pelton incline towards South Pelaw Junction.




Taking the western link line between the Sacriston waggonway and the former S&T tracks.




Passing Waldridge Signal Box.




Looking west, up the S&T/P&SSR Pelton incline.

The sheer amount of coal coming down to Stella Gill meant that over several decades to the Colliery owners paid a fortune to the N.E.R. to haul it to the company staithes at Tyne Dock. During the late 1880s they decided to build their own staithes on the River Tyne at Dunston, since works by the Tyne Improvement Commission had meant colliers of 1,500 to 2,000 Tons deadweight could now reach as far upriver as Derwenthaugh. the colliery owners decided that they would build their own line from the Stella Gill area to Dunston, roughly west of, and parallel with the ECML. The N.E.R. would not take this threat lying down, especially not when the West Durham and Tyne proposal required running powers from the N.E.R. on their existing P&SSR branch as far as Annfield Plain as a feeder for their new line. The proposal went before parliament but the N.E.R. failed to stop it in the House of Commons. The N.E.R. redoubled its efforts though, and defeated the WD&T proposal in the House of Lords.

The N.E.R. realised that the Colliery owners would likely persist in their efforts so came to an agreement. This lead to the N.E.R. building its staithes at Dunston. The company also built the Ouston chord between South Pelaw junction and the East Coast main line in order to access the Dunston staithes as well as the 1892 diversion from the P&SSR between South Pelaw junction and Annfield Plain junction. These double track lines meant that a passenger train service became possible for the settlements of Pelton, Beamish, Stanley and Annfield Plain. Pressure on the N.E.R. then led them to double the section of line between East Castle (to the west of Annfield Plain) and Consett, relieving the bottleneck around Leadgate and thus permitting the passenger train service to reach Consett, with a circular Newcastle to Newcastle service becoming possible via Gateshead West, Birtley Consett, Blackhill, Rowlands Gill and Scotswood.

The Colliery owners behind the WD&T proposal had good reason to be satisfied. the N.E.R. built the staithes they had wished for and the lines to get the coal there.

Excellent screenshots and history lesson Frank. Always an enjoyable read.

Great screenies there Borderreiver, love the detail.

Very cool indeed Border, so Newcastle had a loop line?