Book looks back at passenger train services across the north
In the background sits the steam shed and on the opposite side of the tracks are the chimneys of terraced housing typical of West Yorkshire's mill towns.
It’s a sunny spring day in 1959 and the engine, Jubilee number 45564 New South Wales, is providing an extra service to the seaside resort popular with West Yorkshire[1] folk.
The evocative photograph by Gavin Morrison is one of more than 270 pictures contained in a new book featuring steam, diesel and electric- powered trains on routes across the North.
Passenger Trains in the North of England by John Matthews takes the reader from South Yorkshire and Cheshire to the Scottish borders and into regions including Cumbria, West and North Yorkshire.
Main line expresses, branch line and local trains are pictured, plus special workings running along today’s railways and once busy lines that have faded into history.
Also on its way to the west coast, the last Fowler 2-6 4T number 42410 is pictured delivering the 9.15am service to Blackpool, via Halifax. Churning out clouds of smoke, it makes it way up the 1 in 50 climb out of Bradford[2] Exchange, the city hazy in the background.
When it reached Halifax its five coaches would be attached to the main train from Leeds City, hauled by a Jubilee Class engine for the journey across the Pennines.
The high-quality black and white images, by top photographers who have kindly provided them, capture trains through the years, from the majesty of steam trains to the workaday diesel locomotives. Captions are concise and informative.
There’s the Devonian, a green Type 2 loco number 5147, about to depart from Platform eight at Bradford Exchange to make the long journey south to Plymouth on April 10, 1971.
And Wakefield B1 number 61030 Nyala leaving Bradford Exchange with the 3.05pm service to King’s Cross on a sunny September day in 1966. The train would run to Wakefield to be attached to the main train from Leeds and be diesel-hauled onwards. The view in Peter Fitton’s picture, as the train emerges from beneath Wakefield Road Bridge, would be lost when Bradford Interchange station replaced Exchange in the early 1970s.
There's an image of the Gresley K4 loco number 3442 The Great Marquess as it travels along near Blackburn as part of The Mercian rail tour which ran from London Euston to Keighley on April 16, 1967, with a variety of engines used throughout the journey including number 4472 Flying Scotsman.
Author John Matthews grew up surrounded by railways. He was born in 1951 at Preston Royal Infirmary which overlooked the Preston to Longridge line.
On his walk to school he passed under the Preston to Southport line was passed under on the walk to school, and the clanking of coal wagons could clearly be heard in Ribble Sidings as he played football in a nearby field.
Not surprisingly trainspotting became a huge interest and, armed with an Ian Allan ABC Combined Volume from Summer 1961, he spent many hours watching them come and go.
On leaving school with two O-levels, John went to work in a bank followed by a time as a Ribble bus driver. Today he enjoys watching cricket[3] and art plus spending time with his two grandsons William and Charles.
Anyone who has travelled by train across Northern England will appreciate the diverse landscapes from inner city to industrial, to rural, that feature in this absorbing book. It's enjoyable whether a train buff or not.
In North East England the Ashington Rail Tour, run on June 10, 1967 and starting out from Huddersfield, takes in scenes of Ashington Colliery with its overhead coal buckets, which can be seen in the image by John S Whiteley.
There’s a stunning picture by Peter Fitton showing a steam-powered train crossing the imposing Larpool Viaduct over the River Esk at Whitby, which I used to admire on family days out as a child. This 300-yard long, 13-arch brick structure was built in the 1880, and until 1965 carried the coastal railway to Scarborough.
I was delighted to see Battersby Junction, the station local to my childhood home in North Yorkshire, pop up as I looked through the book. On the picturesque Esk Valley line from Middlesbrough to Whitby, the Battersby photograph was taken on August 6, 1989, shortly before its signal box was closed.
The picture caption, describing the movements of three Pacer trains, mentions the station's water tank ‘which that day contained fish’. That may sound strange but it's true - it often did.
*Passenger Trains in the North of England by John Matthews is published by Pen & Sword and costs £20.