I worked at Huddersfield, Dewsbury and Scarborough rail stations from 1979 to 1986 - I will tell you about my experience at Huddersfield as I spent most of my time there, on or off duty. I also spent a short time covering holiday at Hillhouse goods yard, such as it was. the K41 trip only ran twice a week from Healey mills, the 08 shunter from Huddersfield station used to visit as required, to clear empty 16t mineral wagons out of the coal yard sidings and prepare for the next K41 arrival.

Huddersfield had a good sprinkling of managers, including Les Lamb and Eric Christopher, with Ken Jones, being station manager at Dewsbury, Huddersfield came under Healey Mills management, Eric Lockwood and Derek Coombes seemed to be the top gaffers there. As they retired no-one seemed to replace them, i think the jobs they did were simply phased out " natural wastage", The early 1980's were awful for the railway in West Yorkshire, loco failures were commonplace, fitters used to travel in loco cabs in case of failure, but there weren't enough fitters to cover every loco hauled train. On 19th July 1985, 45 148 expired while at platform 1, waiting for the 'right away' on the 1248 to Holyhead, 56 084 was following on a tank train on the up main, this was quickly detatched and put on the front of the express with only a short delay incurred.

Dmu's were bad news too, one day the goods yard had four or five defective DMU sets, the supervisor arranged with control to send all the lot on a service to Leeds in order for them to serviced at Neville Hill, anyway, they only got to Batley and all the lot packed up, causing hours of delay, the job was fouled up BIG TIME. I saw a handful of DMU's leave Huddersfield for the Sheffield branch, loco hauled because they couldn't go under their own steam.

In 1984 the 141 units started working, and there were spectacular delays caused by these having faults, the biggest problem was that they were the ONLY things on the railway without buffers and the couplings were different to everything else.

When the Woodhead route closed, class 56 loco's came through on MGR to Fiddlers Ferry power station, they nearly always seemed to have too many wagons for the route, failures between Huddersfield and Marsden were almost an everyday occurence, the job got carved up for hours on end, day after day, after day. it was too bad, with irate passengers and no backup system. The railways have improved especially since 185's came out, they would be ideal on the hilly Leeds new line, or Queensbury lines, but ironically now the trains are here, the lines have gone.