firbeck
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Posts posted by firbeck
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Didn't 'Eminem' do a better version,'M##### F###### Wagner Rap Dude' or something similarly obnoxious.
It's operatic arias that earwig me, I can never remember which operas they come from unless it's my favourite 'Madam Butterfly'.
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Weren't a couple of posts deleted, why was that, I was going to respond but didn't have time, now they've gone, but I have the gist of it, the response to Trowell 2 sums it up really.
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Firbeck:I like what I'm seeing!! My Dad used to get "tip offs" too how many big name locos were cut up?? Carnforth was always a fave in the past and Talwyn in Wales.. Cheers,Ian.
Carnforth was my big hang out in the late 60's as my uncle transferred to Morecambe when the GCR was facing closure. Because of his job as signal engineer based in the area, I had access to Carnforth shed whenever I liked. Most of my colour slides are taken at Carnforth shed, Hest Bank and Lancaster, they still seem in reasonable condition nearly 50 years and 10 house moves since I took them.
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Must be rush hour - a D9 with an F5 waiting to turn out of Bramcote Lane at the same time. During the daytime the buses past the Rodney were every 10 minutes - in the sequence D9, F5, E1. (OK Stephen - you've bored 'em all silly now - knock it off!)
It wasn't like that in the evening, if I wanted a pint in the Rodney it was quicker to walk from Park Crescent than wait for an E1, the D9 was almost mythical, I'm sure it only ran every hour, if you were lucky.
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Yes it was NER locos and memorabilia at the old York museum, I now live in the GER heartland and have succumbed to GER propaganda. I think that East Anglia was the first region to be totally dieselised and electrified,few GER locos have survived, perhaps that's why my favourite restored loco is the B12 on the NNR, LNER built but GER in spirit.
The buses, trams and trolleybuses at Clapham were mainly from London Transport and were subsequently moved to a new museum at Covent Garden.
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Just thought about it, looking at the colour light signals, hadn't Trowell Box been made redundant by Trent Power Box by 1975, if so, dad's pal must have worked there.
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Back in the days of the 'Big Four' railway companies they had the foresight to preserve some of the important locomotives of the early years, such as GNR Single No 1, 'Gladstone', 'Hardwicke', etc etc. Most of these were stored at loco works such as Derby and not generally accessible to the public except on 'Open Days'. The exception was the LNER that opened a museum in an old goods shed adjacent to the station at York which I recall going round in the late 50's, it was a bit cramped and had a GNR/GER bias, but at least it was open to the public. In the 50's the BTC took 10 years to gather exhibits together in a museum in an old bus garage at Clapham, a list was compiled of existing steam loco's to be preserved, but this was all scuppered by the Beeching Report of 1964 that didn't want BR to have any part of running museums. At the same time the list of loco's to be preserved was gradually reduced, no place for 'Silver Jubilee', 'Duke of Gloucester', etc etc, if it wasn't for Dai Woodham and Sir Billy Butlin we wouldn't have anywhere near as many steam locomotives preserved as we do today.
Eventually it was decided to convert the old steam roundhouse at York into a national collection or National Railway Museum as it is known today, this meant closing down Clapham and bringing in exhibits from there and around the country up to York which opened in 1975.
Many exhibits were brought in by road but some travelled up by rail, an activity which was not publicly broadcast at the time, well, there was no Internet to do so in those days.
40 years ago I was planning to move down to Essex and spent just about every weekend down there with my then wife to be, we were looking for a house at the time. For some reason I spent this particular weekend at home in Wollaton, my father was an acquaintance of the signalman at Trowell Junction Box who tipped him off that a 'special shipment' was due through Trowell sometime on Saturday lunchtime, this being during the late winter of 1975, my slides were developed in May but it was earlier than that, look at the trees in the photos. We got a phone call from Trowell Box on Saturday morning to tell us that the special was due through at about 12:30 so off we went in dad's Allegro, you weren't with me Bilbraborn as we had lost touch by then, you'll see two figures by the track in one of the photo's, one will be the old man, I believe the other one is Mick Soppitt, I'll confirm that when I next speak to him.
Travelling north on the slow line trundled a Peak going at a fairly slow pace, 30-40mph, this was taken from the River Erewash bridge looking towards the site of Trowell Station, note the support coach behind the loco.
A rare outing for 'Mallard' behind the support coach, the loco behind is the Adams LSWR 4-4-0.
For some reason the Adams is paired with a GER tender, it must have been interesting trying to hook the two together, I'm assuming the whole ensemble was loose coupled.
Off into the distance, the 'Terrier' seems to be sitting on a 'Crocodile' wagon, which must have given clearance headaches, the tenders are on 'Lowmacs', I don't know what was in the open wagon next to the brake van, piles of nameplates?......unlikely!!
The two figures in the distance I suspect are my old man (wearing a light brown Duffel coat now hanging up in my shed) and Mick Soppitt (wearing his navy blue 3/4 length coat, it must have been a cold day as he would go to Forest matches in mid winter wearing just a sweatshirt or fine knit jumper as they were known then), there weren't any other people around at the time, our signalman friend had clearly allowed me an 'exclusive', actually, I've looked at the pictures again and there appears to be a couple of figures standing on the footbridge, train spotters haven in the 50's and 60's, that's all you ever got on there. The pictures, by the way were taken with a Russian Zenit B 35mm reflex camera using Kodachrome colour slide film, they're a little under exposed as the light meter on a Zenit was not through the lens or electronic and was therefore pretty crappy, I used to guess most of the time.
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Keep em coming Pete,I know you have loads of them so get em on here mate
Rog
You always were enthusiastic Rog, as an aircraft keen type how about my several hundred colour slides of the making of the 'Memphis Belle', or stumbling across and walking round the just arrived silver B-17 (to become 'Sally B') parked at the side of the road at a disused airfield called Duxford back in the 70's, or an SR-71 Blackbird doing a high speed, low level fuel dump and burn more or less over the top of my head at Mildenhall, it'll take forever to upload that lot!!
I have more of Trowell Junction in colour, photo's of a very unique and special event taken in the early 70's and of another incident that happened there a few years ago. I'll put them up sometime if anyone is interested.
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I've been digging out some of my old colour slides as you know, quite frankly, given the lack of interest and comments given to my photo's of Wilford Power Station and in particular Stanton Ironworks (not Trowell Moor Colliery again!!), I wasn't going to bother, but I found some of my early colour slides last night and thought that some of you might like to see them.
Here's a taster, it's too sunny an afternoon to sit indoors fiddling about on a computer.
July 1966, the Bradford to Skegness summer Saturday special and the last timetabled steam hauled passenger train into Nottingham Midland:-
I took this with my brothers Hanimex 35mm camera on Agfa colour slide film, it was a very hot day and as you can see, the driver was opening up for the climb up to Wollaton Colliery. This caused a burst of cinders to blast out the chimney, one of which landed on my head and set my hair on fire!! The loco is Jubilee 45562 Alberta, it had lost it's cast nameplate but the Leeds Holbeck shed staff had carefully painted the name on the backing plate. You'll note the yellow stripe on the cab denoting that the loco was banned from travelling 'under the wires' south of Crewe. For the rolling stock enthusiasts, the second carriage is an LNER Thompson open second, these were produced from 1947 into BR days and were constructed with steel panels rather than teak, the LNER examples were painted in a mock teak paint finish so that they matched in with the Gresley stock.
Interesting to see the station buildings and a glimpse of the platform at Trowell Station, I believe it was still open at the time.
I don't think you were at Trowell with me that day Bilbraborn, I have a feeling that I was with Barry Withey for some reason, I may be wrong though. A few weeks later Bilbraborn, John Smith and I caught the train up to Sheffield so that we could travel back to Nottingham Midland by steam for the last time. The 'Skeggy Special' was notorious for being late, however I recall that Sheffield Midland's timetable gave no posting of the platform number it was due to arrive on, the platform staff had no idea either, nor of it's timing that day. Eventually we missed it, I don't know how as we kept wandering the station trying to find the damn thing, how do you hide a steam train in even a large busy station like Sheffield. We travelled back 'Peak' hauled in the end, we couldn't go the Saturday after as it was the finale at Nottingham Vic, but that was another story and another colour picture.
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#1 - The photo was taken on the East Lancashire Railway in 2008.
The East Lancs is a great line, you can't beat the signal gantry at Bury Bolton Street:-
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LNER teak carriages looked beautiful when shiny, but I presume it faded and peeled eventually.
How not to treat a 1930's teak Gresley Buffet Car, this was the one used in the Harwich Boat Train set which had somehow found it's way to Cambridge station where I came across it in 1976. I think it may have been the one that found itself on the NNR, subsequently restored to it's full teak glory and used as a bar selling Woodfordes draught bitter, but now inexplicably repainted 'Custard and Cream' and doesn't appear to sell beer anymore.
Sorry I haven't been on here recently but I've been so busy, this picture is one of my very large colour archive that I still haven't had time to copy and upload yet.
Incidentally Cambridge was built, rather strangely for a major city station, with only one through platform which caused terrible problems with pathing through trains. Only recently has an up platform been constructed and positioned exactly where this carriage is parked up.
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Can anyone remember the ancient maroon rolling stock set that was stored in London Road carriage sidings during the mid to late 70's? It was only used for summer Saturday holiday trains to Skegness, usually hauled by a pair of Class 20's and I think for those Saturday cheap excursions that BR were fond of at the time. I read somewhere then that it was the last original set of maroon coaches on BR, would you know this Mel. They were in terrible external condition, particularly the roofs, the grey paint was peeling off in large patches revealing bare metal, God knows what they were like inside, I bet the toilets didn't work for a start. I wonder how many survived into preservation as there were still a considerable number of grey and blue Mk1's about at the time.
As for favourite liveries, you couldn't beat a set of malachite green SR coaches, especially if it was Bulleid stock. The only thing that spoiled it were the Brunswick green painted Pacific's used to haul them, a very 'subtle' colour clash!
Just out of interest, a very nice old boy came into our garden centre in Braintree the other day to pick up his fencing, he gave me his name, Graham Bulleid, so I casually asked him, 'Are you related to O V by any chance?' The look on his face said it all, 'Clearly you know about steam locos' and laughed, it was O V Bulleid's great nephew! We subsequently ended up chatting about chain driven valve gear and turf fired loco's, nice start to the day.
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If they get in quick enough with the bulldozers, the 'owners' could do a deal with UK Coal and use the rubble to fill in the shaft at Thoresby Colliery.
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Ever since the place was sold by the Chaworth Musters family back in 1972 it's been a tale of woe and disaster for this wonderful house. I blame entirely the complete lack of action by the Local Authority concerned, whoever it is, to prevent this Grade 2 Listed Building from being subsequently stripped of it's historic interior and allowed to rot, that also goes for the gatehouse complex as well. Enforcement notices should have been served on the owners years ago, clearly it was never done by the useless, incompetent council, but whoever the owners are, they've clearly wanted the place destroyed and out of their hair. Refurbishment under way my ar*e, it was earmarked for destruction by someone of significance, not just a passing vandal.
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Can't be Trowell Moor Colliery firbeck, it closed in 1928. Wouldn't those two towers be blast furnaces????
I never said it was, you must be reading this differently mate, the US time must be effecting your brain old pal, or you have a hangover. The picture is of Stanton Ironworks with it's blast furnaces being very prominent in the centre as it says in the title, like I said you can make out Trowell Moor Colliery slagheaps in the bottom right foregound, they were being used at the time to dump waste from the ironworks blast furnaces, it may have closed in 1928 but some of the buildings and the spoil tips were still there in 1969, as are the grassed remains of the tips today. I grew up in the area in the 50's and 60's and knew the place like the back of my hand.
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Chulla you craft little devil !
What a mine of imformation you have, please share amongst us Nottstalgians & others to read too.
I never knew RR produced tank engines until I read this thread.
You must have loads more to tell, what about a new thread ?
He certainly is Catfan, keeping quiet then comes up with all this usefull stuff does our Chulla.
I knew about the Meteor engines being down rated Merlins, the reason being that a bloke in the West Country obtained one of those fibreglass Spitfire replicas and decided to make it a ground runner for fetes etc etc. The cost of a real Merlin put one of those out the window and he obtained a Meteor instead from redundant military stock, relatively cheaply. It took some fitting, then he fitted out the cockpit with original components and ended up with a very cool looking and sounding Spitfire he was able to transport around on a trailer. I've seen a video of him starting it up for the first time, bloody terrifying it was, but a nice bit of gear for the fraction of the cost of a real Spitfire.
About three years ago I went to stay with my pals who lived then in Earby, Lancs, just a couple of miles from Barnoldswick, or 'Barlick' as they pronounce it up there. I didn't appreciate how much the town was tied to Rolls Royce and certainly didn't know that Rover originally owned it. It's so isolated you wouldn't believe it, the Luftwaffe would never have found the place. Road access is very limited, I don't know how they get equipment in and out of the place, during the war they had a railway which closed in 1966, no chance of an airfield, too many hills, it's right in the middle of the Pennines not far from Pendle Hill.
The town is clearly very prosperous and well cared for by Rolls Royce, plenty of sports grounds and floral displays, when you get there after passing through the filth dereliction and slummy ghettoes of Burnley, Nelson and Colne, it's like arriving on another planet.
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#7 I have seen some great photographs on Nottstalgia covering a multitude of subjects but for me littlebro, your dad's photo is far the best I have seen for a very long time. Brilliant.
I go along with that, it really is a superb picture. My old man sneaked a camera along with him on his push through Europe, he upgraded it to a captured German Zeiss and made up 35mm film in his battalion radio truck. He was lucky enough to be senior NCO at medium artillery field headquarters and got away with many things. When he took his rolls of film to be developed on Alfreton Road on his return, the whole lot mysteriously vanished in the shop, I think the photographer who ran the shop was lucky to escape with his life.
I have a few photo's he managed to keep, I think this is an official one he may have took at field headquarters, I note a bit of touching up on it, it's actually his battery opening up on the Northern German flank when Montgomery turned south to break up the Ardennes offensive and relieve the pressure on the US Army, the old man said the power of the British response was by then far beyond the means of the Whermacht to cope with.
Sorry to go off the subject. I did hear, I think it was on a recent veterans programme, that when the Deserts Rats were issued with Cromwells they were appalled at the sight of them, they thought they were death traps because they presented too many flat sided faces to the enemy, as usual the British tank designers got it wrong, they said, looking at that picture they do look rather square with very little sloped armour to deflect shot from the enemy, who by then had equipped nearly all their front line tanks with the dreaded 88mm high velocity gun. They lasted a while in service but I'd be interested to know what their loss rate was compared to other tanks.
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I came across this one I must have taken about 1969, it just shows you how much filth was dumped on to the surrounding areas by the place, I must have captured this one at the moment the coke ovens were dropped, that smoke really was sulphurous and somewhere under that was the sports field, I recall choking with the fumes during hockey matches I played there.
Note the remains of the spoil heaps to Trowell Moor Colliery in the right foreground, the centre being dug out and filled with blast furnace slurry. You can just make out the Derbyshire Hills in the background, you could quite clearly see Crich Stand from there on a decent day.
This of course was taken from the top of Catstone Hill, noted for it's fantastic views in those days, we would sit on the trig point for hours and take it all in. The last time I was up there the trees had all been allowed to grow up, the view was totally non existent, why, what was the point in allowing that to happen and ruining one of the best vistas in Nottinghamshire. Have the 'Powers that Be' ever given an explanation for this, are they so stupid, if I still lived up there the first thing I'd do would be to get the view restored, it's only the trees around the top that are a problem.
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I've just been up into the loft, it's in a bit of a mess since they put in our new central heating system last October. I put all my slides in circular Hannimex carousels, these contain 120 slides each and I've got rather a lot of them!! It's difficult to go through everything without tidying the place up first and even though each box has a description, the writing has faded somewhat. I have to clamber over Hornby Dublo, Dinky toys and some interesting documents re Wollaton Vale in the 1920's, apart from that this bloody illness won't go away and I feel terrible, things will have to wait for a sort out. My oldest slides are in old tile sample boxes I obtained from Castle Place in the 70's, I can't find those anywhere, I started getting annoyed and beat a hasty retreat. I've found some old stuff but I want to get it all together.
I did find Trains 1974 to 1980 but the vital one Trains 1963 to 1974 eluded me, can't find much relating to Nottingham in 74/80 either.
This one intrigues me, I came to the conclusion it was Radcliffe on Soar power station under construction, it must date from the time of the Wilford photo and the telephone wires make me wonder whether it was taken from a train in the early morning, bit of a mystery this one, the chimney looks too thin.
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Of course, I've been there, but given the financial state of affairs at B&Q it might not be there for much longer, the small stores are fairly safe, the mega stores aren't.
Not much Nottingham stuff in this box, it's full of odds and ends, all my real stuff is cataloged and in the loft, I have found a nice colour slide taken inside Nottingham Shed roundhouse in the 1960's, I'll save that for when I'm more organised, and for you aircraft enthusiasts a photo of the Queens Birthday Flypast in the mid 70's taken from my garden in Witham and featuring 3 Vulcans, 4 Buccaneers and 2 Phantoms and that must be only part of it.
I must find the huge flypast celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, I seem to recall 250 aircraft being involved, I was standing right outside Buckingham Palace at the time, it was so impressive I even found time to stop glaring at Thatcher.
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Even less reason to vote for the Tory scum then.
Sorry, was that politically incorrect.
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Hi, I apologise for not being on here much recently but I've got a new job at the B & Q garden centre, which, in relation to my other charitable, voluntary works, has kept me very busy, it's also THAT time of year up at the allotment. I should be flogging away at the garden centre today but I've come down with a really savage dose of gastro enteritis which has laid me low for the past few days.
Last weekend, I managed at last to set up my PC and my all singing and dancing scanner which allows me to upload slides and even sort out my old black and white negatives properly. I've got thousands of slides, many of Nottingham and steam trains in the 60's, I've dragged out a tatty old box to experiment with and came across this one, I took it in 1968, interesting to note that every structure visible in the picture has now gone:-
This is just the start, how I'm going to find time to get these all sorted I'll never know, also in the box by the way are some ancient slides of Crich Tramway Museum when it was just being set up, I'll leave those for another time, I need to find those trollies and trains.
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''Sorry about the leaking roof and the smell of smoke, must get those chimney's unblocked, at least the letters didn't fall off this time when you tried to get in the door, must fix that some time. Now then sir, how about a little something for the weekend, step this way and we'll show you the little gems that we have awaiting your service out in the back.''
''Now then sir, how about our little red runabout over there, plenty of window ventilation for those hot, summer evening Mystery Tours, why do we call them that sir, well, it's a mystery how we ever get any of these coaches out of the garage''.
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Thanks Bamber and catfan 'tis university challenge you lot should be on!!
I think you'll find that Bamber was, every episode in fact until that young upstart JP took over.
Trowell Junction in Colour-Early 1975
in Pete's Nottingham Transport Forum
Posted
I've got some colour pics taken of that when I can find them, that's going to be Trowell in Colour Pt 3!!
Just a few for you Ian, these were taken in September 1966, using my brother's Hanimex again, this time it was loaded with Ilford colour film.
9F 92125 heading southwards with a long mixed freight, by the looks of it fitted. This was at the very top of Hest Bank which was between Carnforth and Lancaster, the water troughs started just behind where I was standing, it wasn't a good idea to stand too close to the troughs, the concrete slabs and longitudinal sleepers along the track formed the run off for the water pushed along by the force of the scoop in the tender.
The weather clearly wasn't too brilliant, clearly blowing in off Morecambe Bay which was over to the left, I used to walk round the bay from Morecambe to get to this spot, I believe that there's a caravan park next to this then desolate place now. If I remember right there was a thunderstorm brewing, my other photos showing locos coming up the bank and taking water were taken rather quickly before I had to make a quick exit.
Another 9F, this one approaching Carnforth Station from the north with the breakdown crane, presumably it was kept in the extensive yards at Carnforth, it's grey colour suggests a diesel crane rather than a steam crane which would have been kept near to the sheds for coaling and watering.
Carnforth shed with Britannia Pacific 70029 'Shooting Star' minus nameplates and looking somewhat dirty, it appears to be in the later livery of unlined Brunswick Green. They were used on a variety of duties including the last steam hauled Barrow-Euston as far as Crewe, I travelled on that a few months later, except the loco, 70027 'Rising Star' failed at Carnforth and was replaced by a Class 5 which put up an extremely fast performance to make up for lost time.
Somewhere I have a photo that I took at Crewe North Shed roundhouse with just about every surviving Britannia occupying all the shed roads, my print has disappeared but I have the negative somewhere among the other several hundred, this miracle copier should reproduce that quite well when I find it.