View allAll Photos Tagged LangsettReservoir
Beautiful sunset at Langsett Reservoir. I particularly love the reflections on the water with the colours.
Langsett Reservoir is in Yorkshire, England located on the edge of the Peak District National Park. A hot and dry summer has resulted in very low water levels.
Has been a good long while since I last visited here to take any photographs which were rail-related and, here, to do with the regular hauls of steel up from the Aldwarke U.E.S. area of Parkgate in Rotherham. As they say, 'a lot of water has flowed under the bridge' since then and in the last year or two, the working up to here and back have been quite sporadic and, at present, are non-existent. The Fox Valley Retail area has gone from strength-to-strength and on this day, a Friday in mid-morning, traffic was backing up onto the road to get onto the site, mainly caused by folk who wanted spaces right next to the front of the stores they were going too. The shots taken from earlier times, show at the first link below, the development having just begun in early 2015. I got there, with Adrian Wynn, on the 24th March, 2015, but I haven't published any of those shots on Flickr however, just 4 months later, the both of us returned on the 17th July, almost 8 years ago now, see-
www.flickr.com/photos/imarch1/49538374276/
which is a mosaic showing the development as it was then, almost 2 years after it started in 2014, a plan of the old Samuel Fox Stocksbridge Steel site accompanied by a shot showing how close the back of the retail development was to the single track line, though into the works. At the bottom of the mosaic picture, a 1955 OS amp showing much detail relating to the site and the surrounding area with the newly electrified Woodhead line, over on the far right.
In addition, over a year after that visit, I returned yet again, on October 3rd, 2016, to take some shots of the resident shunter, coming back down-grade from the steelworks and passing through the sidings with some old, rusty flat-bed wagons over on the right.
The first shot shows the shunter in the sidings, 'racing' the dustcart down-grade, see-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/29978204952/
and another set of mosaic shots with the shunter continuing to make its way eastwards through the sidings, with me following quickly in the car. Further along the track the line, now single, passes close to what will ultimately be the back of the Fox Valley residential area, the shunter heading for the Ellen Wood Sidings just a bit further along over the River Don bridge, to pick up more steel billets/blooms for rolling in the old Samuel Fox mill, see-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/29464534134/
Although the work was underway and in its early stages in the first pictures I have, taken on 24th March, 2015, there was no development at all on 1st May 2013 and again, during early January 2014, the 7th, when the diesel shunter 'Yorkshire' was once more in action, moving billet/blooms wagons in and out of the sidings down to the Ellen Wood Sidings in the east; no pictures on Flickr for this time either. So the development must have commenced between that date, 7th January 2014 and March 2015. Whilst exchanging a jacket with broken zip at 'Regatta Great Outdoors', I took the opportunity to have a look at what may be seen at the back of the retail shops, where the single line from the sidings makes its way north-west and under the road bridge into the steelworks, once 'Samuel Fox', then 'Tata', then Liberty' now Gupta's 'British Steel', maybe? It was immediately obvious that the rail hadn't seen any traffic for a good while, well before Xmas at least, there's nothing in the sidings and the manual points are set for the northern line into the sidings; the line straight through being at left. In the left shot, the housing at the eastern end of the 'Dransfield Development', can be seen beyond the retail bill hoardings at left. The site is bound by the high ridges of the Don Valley to the north and south, this must make the area pretty dark most of the winter months; the valley is aligned E/W so the swings around to the right, the south, and must be hidden a lot of the time behind the high hills of Hollin Edge, Sunny Bank, Ewden Brows & Ewden Height.. these pictures were taken just before mid-day. In the right shot, the view looks north-west towards the still large site of the steelworks, the single line now hedged-in behind the low concrete wall, presumably a flood defence barrier from any incursion from 'The Little Don or Porter River', off to the right also passing underground here, into and through the steelworks and forming the outlet of the Underbank Reservoir at the west end of Stocksbridge. The sun beams over the top of the surrounding hills off to the left and there is plenty to see in terms of refurbished stone buildings, the massive steelworks running the narrow valley but sadly, at present, no traction activity, large, class 66s, or small, the local shunter, 'Yorkshire, No. 35'...
'Yorkshire' has rattled past with a crew of 3 on-board and is about to pass the local sidings containing a number of DBS/DBC 'liveried' flat-bed billet/bloom wagons over on the right. Some with steel blooms on-board awaiting rolling in the TATA steel mill ahead, behind the camera, others already rolled to the required size and awaiting the trip back to Parkgate on one of the nightly moves, 6J58, normally but while the on-going NR Tram/Train work is proceeding this schedule has been shifted to the early morning around 02:00. The corresponding in-bound moves being 6J57 at 18:15 or at the moment, after a week of the normally timed paths, the working is 6J52 timed at around 23:00. The load usual;l;y consists of 20 wagons amounting to 1500 tones but I was told there is a move to try and increase this to 24 wagons, each with 70 tonnes of steel, not a bad haul considering the grade up from the old Sheffield Victoria site is, on average 1 in 100. The material is brought to the Ellen Wood sidings along the track here, visible in the background in the lower left picture where two of the crewe have walked back to my locale awaiting the arrival of the shunter and allowing us to have a good gossip about the state of the works and what is happening; TATA have still not found a buyer for the works, here or at Parkgate, the other side of Rotherham. Some more pictures of diesel Shunter #35, taken here before the site was redeveloped by Dransfield Properties Ltd, into a shopping centre and housing estate, can be seen here-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/11873748563/
and here
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/11874551666/
and with the 'blooms', having been being brought up from Parkgate, arrive at the Ellen Wood sidings behind DBC class 66, 66151, in April 2013-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/8656869743/
The Dransfield housing estate occupies the whole of the site along the river, the course of which has switched sides again and is now running alongside the site over on the far right, seen to the right of the shunter in the lower right picture. In the lower left picture, the land along to the corner where the rail bridge is situated over the river, it having switched sides once more to run along into Deepcar on this side of the Ellen Wood sidings, the land here deemed to be 'Private Property', the blue sign is visible on the left, and its future use is unknown. As a matter of interest only, on the right, in the lower right picture, standing prominent on the hill, is one of the Super-grid pylons striding along the top of the Don Valley and making its way to the Woodhead Tunnel area where the half-million volt cables are brought down to pass through the 'new' Woodhead Tunnel and on into Longdendale; the tunnel now owned by the National Grid... its just possible that the objection made at the time, to the pylons path over the top of Woodhead, spoiling an area of outstanding natural beauty, and the subsequent solution of putting the cables in one of the _old_ Woodhead Tunnels, may just have been part of the problem when the cables were switched to use the 'New' tunnel, of it ever being used for anything else, Rail or otherwise. One can't help but feel that some concession should have been made, as tax payers originally footed the bill for this tunnel in the guise of the nationalised British Railways, for walkers and cyclists to use the new tunnel, the alternative is a walk alongside the horrendously busy A628, Manchester Road, or over the top, a bit of a detour at the best of times. The presence of half-million volt power cables would of course be seen as something of both a danger and security risk, if this had been possible.
** This is a 6min 25sec video so has to be downloaded to see the full version as only 3 minutes are shown in the Flickr interface.
** For non-Pro Flickr users, the download limit appears to be 3 minutes on download as well, and so there is a link here-
** It has just come to my notice (10/12/23) that the Download option below and to the right of the media _does not_ allow you to download the full version, only the 3 minutes available here. So, I am going to try and 'fix' this for all videos lasting more than 3 minutes, this is the link to obtain the full version shown here-
www.flickr.tightfitz.com/Video/Ladybower_&_Derwent_Vi...
This second, longer video, was produced from a series of 93 images taken last Friday, 30th November, on a return visit to the Ladybower, and briefly to the Derwent, reservoirs. This time the site of the old Derwent Village and its environs was photographed by walking along the lane from the north end along south to the Mill Brook stream where much of Derwent Village once stood. Another fine day, if a little grotty to start with, but with time pressing, advantage was taken of the as yet still fairly low water levels, to investigate what was only seen in the earlier vide, from across the now revealed Derwent riverbed. The scene opens with a view of the remaining houses along the lane which thankfully for the occupants, were above the 'high water mark' when the reservoir was full; others did not fare so well. Of note at the beginning, are the only remaining sign that there was once a church vicarage here, as shown in one of the scenes, are the two remaining gateposts, there being 3 other sets of these, shown later in the video. The church yard was close to the Vicarage but rising waters came as far as the Wellhead Inlet to meet the Mill Brook and the yard was flooded, but not before removing all the graveyard's incumbents to a new home at Bamford Parish Church. Included in the video is a shot of the information board, 'Discover the lost Village of Derwent' which shows some historic pictures of the site and more of these can easily be found on a Google search>Images. All of the features mentioned in the map in the 1st of these 3 pieces on the Derwent Village, can now be viewed in the video and the main ones are labelled at the foot of each section. the rubble and remains which is Derwent Hall with its gatepost and fish ponds are visible, with some of the walls still standing. An odd feature which I was told about is the rather substantially built 'Lovers Seat' set on a bend of the River Derwent and clearly built to last, it would be interesting to know if there are any folk still around who used the 'services' of this most generous 'seat'. The only building still on one piece is the water board's 'Valve House' and is featured several times in the video, a less water-logged version of one of these can be seen here, on dry land-
www.flickr.com/photos/30120216@N07/15007264643
The Derwent Hall gatepost, the sentinel standing erect between the Fish Ponds and Derwent Hall, was the artifact which local and national news reported to have been the graffiti'd; fearing the worse, something involving aerosol cans, I was relieved to find that all that had happened was some folk had used the local small stones to scratch brief messages on one side of the pillar. In fact I suspect the water, when it comes back up to here, will wash it all off; a set of initials and a date were all I could see. Some are being sensationalistic about not much at all, but isn't that the case everywhere in recent times. As may be seen in both videos the Peak Park in this area has seen a large influx of interested visitors and as far as I could tell, all were very careful about things and very interested in the site, as can be seen. A long line of tree stumps can be see along the border of the river and Derwent Hall, the stumps still rooted in place and very substantial. The line of the Mill Brook can be seen in its now deep cutting, passing over the bridge which divided the village in half and as can be see non the map in the earlier picture, the road formation has been re-routed somewhat from the times when the village was in its heyday. Then, the road from FAirholmes in the north curved around along down to the River Derwent's edge passing the Chapel, St. James & St. John's Church, its Graveyard and then the School on the right, with Derwent Hall and the Fishponds on the left, as shown on the map. The pair of Graveyard gate posts stand alone not far from the place where the water usually resides, the grass bank showing where the water comes up to; there must be more occasions when the gateposts are visible, as close as they are to the bank, though I guess the water is deep even so. After the 4 'cheery, brightly decked out' walkers, two shots of the pile of rubble that is now the Church and its date stone lying as testament to its building date, 1867; I guess it would take a lot to move this, so thankfully it hasn't been... purloined. A close-up of the Graveyard gates with their still extant, rusted hinges and then followed by more views across the river to the Valve House with the School gate posts, now half covered in water, in the foreground; it was possible to walk around these a few weeks ago, Derwent Viaduct, which carries some water away to Rivelin, can be seen in the background. There were plenty of folk taking photographs of one sort or another so I guess this event will be the one which has been documented the most, especially now that good, high resolution digital media is now available, which wasn't the case in 1995 and certainly not, in 1976. The Mill Brook flows under the old Derwent Village bridge, the stone-work still in good condition and this would have provided access between the two halves of the village. Coming back along the lane towards Fairholmes and there is yet another structure just this side of the Derwent Viaduct, this is labelled on the map as 'Water Houses' so I expect this means 'Water Works' and would have provided drinking water, for the village, so sited upstream of it; essentially another pile of rubble ans car-parking rapidly running out, meant a hasty hike up to the level of Derwent Reservoir, for the final shots. It was pretty much in the same state as Ladybower, the water level several 10s of meters down, its capacity is 9.5 million cu.m, or almos6t 10 billion litres of water, the same as the last reservoir up the Derwent Valley, Howden Reservoir. A shot of this reservoir from the front can be seen here-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/5824599274/
and the Lancaster Bomber flying over the area to the south of here at Bamford, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the bombing of the Ruhr Dams, can be seen here-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/8759276214/
The first picture shows the large stone structure which is the reservoir head over which the Dambusters did their practice runs before going to the Ruhr Valley with Barnes Wallace's 'Bouncing Bombs', intended to destroy the dam walls, by exploding at depth, which they had some success with. The water flowing into the Reservoir at the other side is the Aston Clough culvert, bringing hill water gathered over to the west, into the Reservoir. The level to which this body of water has sunk can be seen in the final shots with the sun shinning over in the north where the third of the 3 Derwent reservoirs reside, and yet another huge stone built wall, to keep back another 10 million cu.m of water... when its full!
Some historic videos of the history of Derwent Village can be seen in this 3-part set, produced by 'Jayceebee44' and made in 1996 and is available on Youtube-
Part 1-
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRSolSz9AsY
Part 2-
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I0_AUx2k6M
and Part 3-
A walk around Langsett Reservoir yesterday..
We followed this route guide, even though didn't really need one! www.bradfield-walkers.org.uk/Walks/Langsett.html
"Distance- 3 1/2 miles: A moderate walk through the woods of Langsett and up onto the moors for some stunning views across the Little Porter valley
Start and Finish at Langsett Barn Car Park (A616) OS SE210 004"
Which is right by - Bank View cafe..! :)
* 3min 15 sec, so video can be watched within the Flickr interface.
** It has just come to my notice (10/12/23) that the Download option below and to the right of the media _does not_ allow you to download the full version, only the 3 minutes available here. So, I am going to try and 'fix' this for all videos lasting more than 3 minutes, this is the link to obtain the full version shown here-
www.flickr.tightfitz.com/Video/Ladybower_&_Derwent_Vi...
The weather conditions over the past months speak for themselves with little or no rain over the summer and similarly into Autumn. With the local news indicating that the Derwent and Ladybower reservoir water levels were the lowest they had been in decades, it turns out to be, in recent times, around 2 and 4 decades ago in fact, so it seemed prudent to go and have a look at the scene. When the water is as low as it is at present, it is possible to see remnants of the old Derwent Village which was flooded in the after the construction of Ladybower between 1935 and 1943. Rather than repeat much of the information available on-line, see-
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladybower_Reservoir
for more details about the construction of the reservoir. The water levels fell dramatically in that hot summer of 1976 but there have been other times as well, 1989, 1996 and 2003, see-
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derwent,_Derbyshire
In recent weeks, the water level has fallen yet gain, but not to the extent of the level in the 90s and 70s, one person present on this day told me he was around here in 1976 and spoke to a woman who once lived in the flooded Derwent Village, she remembers the Post Office, its location being off in the distance, near the A57 road bridge.
The water level isn't sufficiently low at present to walk across from one side to the other at that location near the site of the old Ashopton Village now next to the A57 trunk road over the Ladybower Reservoir. The reduction in the water volume in the three reservoirs, Howden, at the top, Derwent above here and Ladybower, must be colossal and its going to take a lot of continuous heavy rain to make up the shortfall in what are 3 of the major contributors to the water supply for local cities and south, as far as the East Midlands. The storage capacity of the three reservoirs is around 9.5, 9.5 and, for Ladybower with a surface area of 210 hectares, its 27 million cu.m and that's 47 billion litres of water in total. Some water is flowing from the Derwent, and Howden, into Ladybower and the side-streams/feeders are flowing, the state of the Derwent reservoir, over which the Dambusters did their practice runs during the last war, can be seen at the end of the second video.
This 1st series of 46 pictures, put together as this 1st video, shows the state of play looking from the west side of the upper section of Ladybower, over towards the east where, around 20km away, as the buzzard flies, the centre of Sheffield lies. Speaking of which, 50 million litres of water are taken via pipeline to the Rivelin Valley waterworks to be cleaned and delivered, via Yorkshire Water, to the population of Sheffield; the rest goes to the East Midlands where it provides 10% of the water supplied by Severn Trent Water. Its a colossal, imaginative and creative use of a natural resource, and one can only admire the care and attention paid to it, not to mention the Victorian skill in construction of all this, foreseeing that the nation's water demands could only go up. There were of course 'casualties', directly and indirectly, associated with these huge reservoir building programmes, one of them can be seen in these two videos. The other reservoirs in close proximity to the trio of Derwent reservoirs are- Langsett, Midhope, Underbank, Ingbirchworth, Royd Moor & Scout Dyke to the north-west of Stocksbridge. Broomhead & More Hall just to the south and Winscar over to the far west of Stocksbridge and between Oughtibridge and the Derwent reservoirs are the Damflask, Agden, Dale Dike & Strines reservoirs with Redmires completing the set of large reserves, just to the west of Sheffield.
The pictures here were taken after an initial visit on October 29th, when the water levels had been dropping steadily for a number of months, see-
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/44735748975/
these were taken 4 weeks late on November 29th with this time, a walk along the western footway at Ridges Coppice, just north of the War Memorial, and show the state of play just a week ago today, Monday 3rd December. On all three occasions, the final one was last Friday, the weather was kind during the visit although the low, harsh light has needed much in the way of filtering and colour balance. As is usual with my material, the pictures attempt to tell a story along with the obvious event which has taken place, and only happens around once every 20 years or so, the last great events being 1995 and 1976. At the latter time I was away in the United States during the U.K.'s memorable 'summer scorcher', it being hotter here on some days than it was in New York. We were at the top of the 'World Trade Centre' during July 1976 and 2 days before one of our wedding anniversary's, keeping schtum about which one!, when the American's landed two Viking spacecraft on the surface of the planet Mars on July 20th, a very memorable occasion now and in all sorts of ways undreamed of in those far off days; our one and only visit. Coming back to the UK after a three week sojourn with friends in New Jersey, was a real eye-opener and the hot weather persisted all summer long. One of the results of that summer's heatwave, was the lowering of water levels in these reservoirs. With the Autumn now turning into Winter and water flowing from the hills once more, the Derwent, and all the other reservoirs mentioned above, which are all exhibiting very low water levels, will fill up once more. If this is to continue to be a once-in-twenty years event, we had better start worrying more about the dire effects we are having on the climate; time it seems, is running out to do anything about the severe outcome if the world's global temperatures rise by more than 1.5C, can't say we haven't been warned about this, and really, this for decades as I recall...
The end section of the video shows some shots at the other end of Ladybower, where the water finally flows out and back on course as the River Derwent, the flow controlled by the two discharge towers and, when the levels are too high, the colloquially known plugholes, the eastern & western Bellmouth overflows. A video showing what the lower sections of these are like can be seen on Youtube, see-
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqXGM_L7Zp0
I get the impression that this little 'trip', wasn't official!
Got home again some 60kms later!! Too good an opportunity to miss a ride out on Navi.. Windy but with sunny intervals..!
Langsett reservoir here, cloning about as usual!
I like 'cloning about' - if you wish to see some more from me cloning about - check out my album here - www.flickr.com/photos/mjjtlee/sets/72157641329382743/ and here - www.flickr.com/photos/mjjtlee/sets/72157633212202805/
This is a view of the area discussed in the following two videos, relating the Village of Derwent, flooded in the middle years of the 20th century to permit the damming of the 3rd in a series of three large reservoirs, on the Derwent River. The outline of the water can be seen, taken from a Google Earth view of the area as it currently looks, along with the 1922 map overlay of the area, showing details of the village which seemingly changed little over the 50 years before it was flooded. MAny of the features in the two videos can be discerned-
Mill Brook, Bridge-end Farm, the Valve House, St. James & St. John's Church, the Vicarage, Derwent Hall, Derwent School, the Derwent Footbridge, Wellhead, the School, the Fish Pond with its 2 islands, outside Derwent Hall, St. Henry's R.C. Chapel, The Shooting Lodge, still extant and seen in the second video and Ashes Farm. What IS also of significant note on the 1922 map, is the railway line which ran along the Derwent Valley from a junction on the Midland's Hope Valley line between Bamford and Hope, the line continuing along north to Howden and Derwent. It was the only means by which the huge amounts of material could be brought in to build, first, Howden Reservoir, then when it became quickly evident that the volume of water in that reservoir was insufficient, the line was also used to bring materials in, and take waste out, for the later building of Derwent Reservoir. A small section of the line can be seen in the lower left-hand corner of the map, the majority of the line's formation is now the road, also visible on the GE view underneath the map, which takes motor vehicles along from the A57 at Ashopton along past the Fairholmes cafe, cycle shop and car park, past the Derwent Museum and Reservoir head and then on up to Howden Reservoir head, along the edge of its waters to finally come to the north-end and the bridge which allows passage over the River Derwent; from here walkers and cyclists can then come all the way back along the eastern side of the 3 bodies of water and back to the Ashopton Viaduct on the A57, very good indeed and a fine place to have on one's doorstep.
Open since July this year with the shopping area now in full swing, though there are still units to be filled, it has made given the centre of Stocksbridge, on land once occupied by the Samuel Fox Steelworks, somewhat of a new lease of life, I guess. There is currently a medium size housing development going on at the eastern end, see
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/19785112330/
which shows the development of the shopping area in July 2015 with the housing area off to the left in the middle picture and at that date no work had been done. Well, things have moved on a bit and now, the space which was once festooned with Steelworks related matters has been cleared and rebuilt on, the more important items of materials, i.e. the stockyard, belonging to the Steelworks, having been accommodated on the main Samuel Fox site over to the far right of that picture. To the right of that central picture from last July 2015, the rail track into the Steels works can be seen, running now between the outer perimeter road of the Fox VAlley development on the left and the River Don, in its 'cutting', just over on the right. Today's somewhat serendipitous picture, though I did have the camera with me, was taken looking back towards the place where the July picture was taken from, last year, now things have changed. The area has been landscaped, there is a proper road running along the line out of the works to the sidings behind the camera, see next mosaic picture for the details, and all looks nice and tidy and clean! The Samuel Fox, now, for the present, TATA steelworks shunter, #35, 'Yorkshire' was just rumbling along out of its hidey-hole where it crosses the Rover Don in the background, the shunter then passing under the road to access the line alongside the Don, just at the other side of the yellow fence on the left, seen here. A local recycling truck was temporarily parked on the access road and this had to be taken advantage of, as yellow diesel shunter 'Yorkshire' came by, heading to pick up some wagons from the sidings behind the camera and attach them to the raft of wagons further down the line at Ellen Wood, this for the evening run back to the steelworks at Aldwarke. I was told that during the floods in 2007, when persistent July weather cased severe flooding in the South Yorkshire area, and beyond, mass of water, released from the Underbank reservoir, beyond the Steelworks, the level being perilously high, caused a flood here which took away all the ground underneath the line; the rails being left hanging in mid-air. THe tracks are supported by ground which has been built up from the materials from the Steelworks, primarily of the slag and asphalt type which does not have the structure to support a flooded railway line, so it didn't and the lie was left hanging, cutting off the steel bloom deliveries from TATA's works at Aldwarke in addition to being able to send rolled material back the the steelworks on the nightly steel train run up at bout 6pm, returning about 9pm.