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Sheffield Steam Sheds Article in Steam Day Magazine

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The current issue of Steam Days Magazine (March 2008 - £3-75p) as a 16 page article on sheffield railway sheds .

 

The article is very details and as many colour and black and white photos well worth the money for this artilce alone.

 

Copies should be available in the usual outlets - Sheffield Transport Modles on London road as copies but he expects to have to get more than his usual stocks

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Thanks for the tip, bus man! I just popped into Brigg to buy a copy (and got the only copy they had left - there must be more ex-Sheffield transpotters in North Lincs. than I thought...)

 

Oh, the nostalgia.... "Bunking" Millhouses shed after school. Buying a threepenny ticket from Millhouses & Ecclesall to Sheffield Midland. Cabbing the "Jubilees" as they waited on Midland Line expresses... Ivatt 2-6-2T No 41245 looks quite smart in the full-colour 1959 photo. I never knew that A1's had visited Millhouses. "Bon Accord" indeed! That would have been a cop...

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Hey you Railway nuts, let's hear it for Grimesthorpe(19A). That's where all the real graft was.

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Thanks for the tip, bus man! I just popped into Brigg to buy a copy (and got the only copy they had left - there must be more ex-Sheffield transpotters in North Lincs. than I thought...)

 

Oh, the nostalgia.... "Bunking" Millhouses shed after school. Buying a threepenny ticket from Millhouses & Ecclesall to Sheffield Midland. Cabbing the "Jubilees" as they waited on Midland Line expresses... Ivatt 2-6-2T No 41245 looks quite smart in the full-colour 1959 photo. I never knew that A1's had visited Millhouses. "Bon Accord" indeed! That would have been a cop...

 

Thought open minded people would enjoy it, bet the exiles in Aus will have fun getting a copy :hihi::hihi::hihi:

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Thought open minded people would enjoy it, bet the exiles in Aus will have fun getting a copy :hihi::hihi::hihi:

 

No problem - if any superannuated trainspotters in the land of Oz would like to read the magazine, a year's subscription by airmail costs a mere £71 - see http://www.steamdaysmag.co.uk/ :):):)

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Hey you Railway nuts, let's hear it for Grimesthorpe(19A). That's where all the real graft was.

 

17C Millhouses was my stamping ground but made many trips to the round-house at Grimesthorpe - coming off my bike a couple of times in the old tram tracks. Darnall (41A) had a stricter regime but all I wanted from there was the Britannia heading the Harwich Town boat train which came into Victoria Station at 12.45pm. You could see it through the railings by the Wicker entrance to the station. Talking about 1962.

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Oh - the Harwich boat train: I can see it now - about 11 corridor-stock coaches with wooden boards LIVERPOOL - PARKSTONE QUAY. The Britannia (off Stratford shed) brought the train into Victoria station and handed it over to an electric, then waited at Darnall for the afternoon return trip. On the odd occasion when they put a B1 on the working it was quite a let-down. If you sat on the wall on Bernard Road you could see both the Midland and ex-G.C. lines. Happy days.

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Oh - the Harwich boat train: I can see it now - about 11 corridor-stock coaches with wooden boards LIVERPOOL - PARKSTONE QUAY. The Britannia (off Stratford shed) brought the train into Victoria station and handed it over to an electric, then waited at Darnall for the afternoon return trip. On the odd occasion when they put a B1 on the working it was quite a let-down. If you sat on the wall on Bernard Road you could see both the Midland and ex-G.C. lines. Happy days.

 

Spot-on. I understood all your colloquial expressions in your earlier piece. The boat train then returned to East Anglia about 3.15/30pm. I seem to recall the Master Cutler being in at that time too. That left from Victoria for London in those days. If the boat train wasn't a Britannia, a Sandringham sometimes headed it - but agree, B1's were a let down. Lurking around Victoria/Bernard Road, those "Director" class eg Marne, Ypres, Jutland etc.

Ian Allen's "Trains Illustrated"

There once was a Sheffield Locospotters' Club headed by a man called Charlie Foster who lived at Gleadless. You'd get a coach from the LMS station at Saturday midnight say, for Wiltshire and then on the Sunday, do Swindon works and sheds and maybe Bristol Temple Meads 82A. Another trip was to Nine Elms, Hither Green, Old Oak Common, Bricklayers Arms etc. in London.

Just after diesels arrived, about the age of 16, I drew stumps but I spent hours on stations, combining it with watching football and autograph hunting till about 11pm on London stations. I booked my own holiday to Scotland when I was 15, touring with a rail rover and having authentic passes to visit MPDs!

Haymarket 64B and St.Margarets 64A were two of my usual haunts when in Edinburgh.

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A few memories there, CHAIRBOY! I don't actually remember a Sheffield Locospotters' Club; apart from day trips (and a 3-day trip to Scotland in 1966) with the Warwickshire Railway Society I used to visit sheds unofficially and organise my own excursions like you. The Sheffield area sheds were fairly easy, as were others within cycling distance such as Doncaster, Hasland and Ardsley (though I once got thrown out of Canklow). Leeds Holbeck had a sympathetic foreman, but it was well-known that Colwick was almost impossible (though I managed to bunk it all the same). Later, there was T.W. Ward's scrap line at Beighton - I copped 60118 Archibald Sturrock there. In 1957 I went with hy mum and grandma to London for the day on the Master Cutler. It was always an A3, and we had 60102 Sir Frederick Banbury. It wasn't the same after the diesels arrived, but for a time in about 1966-68, the new Brush Type 4 No D1500 was the regular loco on the Master Cutler. This was when it was made up of Pullman stock and went via Retford, instead of down the old Great Central line. I once went to Retford on it, just to be able to say that I had travelled Pullman. The boat train did indeed leave for Harwich at about 3-15 to 3-30. In fact at "home" in Wadsley I have an old Sheffield bus guide for 1954 with a list of departures from Victoria and Midland stations. It makes interesting reading, with trains shown as stopping at long-gone stations such as Dunford Bridge, Stockport (Tiviot Dale), Dogdyke and Heath - some of them pulled by those ex-Great Central "Director" 4-4-0's with names evoking First World War battles...

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Dogdyke? I wasn't an angler but on Sunday morning at about 5am when getting back from a Wednesday game in the south, the Victoria station approach was thronged with fishermen going to catch their trains.

I used to catch the 5.42pm from Victoria to Retford when a London team had played in Sheffield to travel on their London train and get autographs. Ron Springett used to travel on this train.

We used to visit Canklow, Barrow Hill and Rowsley on our bikes. The return half-fare to Doncaster was 1s 8d but I've cycled there as a teenager with the sole purpose of climbing up the paint shop wall at Doncaster plant. My last A1 was in the window, Kingfisher (despite my time in Edinburgh). Do you remember ever going over North Bridge at Doncaster to near a canal that overlooked the back of the plant? St.James's Bridge was brilliant for spotting. If we went the other way, it was 4/6d half return to Manchester London Road and then a further 3/6d to Crewe - that was big stuff! Crewe 5A was very difficult but Crewe South and Gresty Lane not so busy. In Sheffield, Archer Road steps, by Guylee's, was my usual haunt - unless word got round something special was on the GC line but I have been to the Bernard Road location with bino's.

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More memories here, of course. I'd forgotten the 1/8d day return to Doncaster but you're quite right. I never completed my A1s or A4s (Kingfisher was an A4) even after two trips to Scotland but I was a regular at Doncaster. I do remember going over the North Bridge at Doncaster to see the back of the Plant, and a bike was useful for peering over the wall into the paint shop. In 1966-67 I was at college in Doncaster and my landlady's garden in Sprotborough Road backed on to the freight avoiding line - even then there was the occasional steam loco, usually a WD. The "rarest" engine I ever saw in the Plant in c. 1959 was a K1 from Scotland, 61997 McCailin Mor. I went to Crewe several times in 1961-64 but maybe you were going there a bit earlier than me, as I remember the total of the two day returns was 8/3d rather than 8 bob. I once went via Derby and copped some useful stuff around Uttoxeter etc. Barrow Hill was quite good - in 1965 the newly-built Clayton Type 1 diesels (D85xx) were stored there; they didn't last long apparently. Crewe South was indeed very easy, also Gresty Lane. I was in Crewe a few years ago and found that there is a breakfast cereal factory on/near the site of Gresty Lane shed. And where we used to sit on the wall at Bernard Road is now somewhere in mid-air above the Parkway. How times change...

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A4s indeed - "streak" would be the cry on St.James's Bridge! I have corrected it - just a blip - Kittiwake was an A1. Talking of factories near stations; Warrington Bank Quay was famous for the soap aromas coming from the Lever factory and Wigan Low Level was much better "Uncle Joe's Mint Balls"! On the low level at Wigan, you could see the Preston- London line over a bridge - a bit like Tamworth. I went to Wigan, one day, needing four Coronations for a full book - I copped three of the four just leaving 46235 City of Birmingham outstanding on my retirement! What's

3d to us? It was about the same time as yourself. I remember bending the knees at the ticket office to get a 'half'.

Those Scottish engines were just a dream - MacLeod of MacLeod - etc. only seen in T.I. pictures. Even with my time in Scotland, I was east coast and never made those Highland lines.

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