A few train rides of my youth have a habit of sticking in the memory purely for reasons of drama - for instance, passing by the coke works just south of Chesterfield in the evening with the orange glow lighting up the carriage and sulphurous fumes seeping through the windows.

Another such ride was the one between Sheffield and Rotherham where you passed an almost continuous line of steel foundries and factories hugging the trackside along the 9 mile route. And, to complete the industrial scene, there were seemingly endless supplies of vapours escaping outlets and stacks, and mineral wagons parked alongside loading bays bringing in supplies.

Fast forward 40 years and it's no surprise there's little left of this once thriving activity, although some of the more specialist factories have survived (including Sheffield Forgemasters, pictured) and still make a muted presence alongside the railway line. The mineral wagons and sidings are long gone though with supplies now being brought in by road.

Pictured here is the now disused Brightside station, with steps from the footbridge removed, and offering a view to the Sheffield skyline. The gritty and industrial feel still remains but, looking in the other direction, the retail park of Meadowhall now occupies the area where factories once stood, and the grassy environmental transition is well underway.

The train sweeping effortlessly by is a Cross Country Voyager working the 10.35 Newcastle - Reading (1V87) service. No clickety-clack on 60 foot rail-lengths, or awe-inspiring view of the once powerful Sheffield steel industry for these passengers.

I guess the Voyager won't appeal to everyone but this section of track still stirs the memories for me and it was good to finally get down here with a camera.

5th April 2017

Designed by Robin Widdowson and built by apprentices from Sheffield Forgemasters using reycled materials

Sheffield Forgemasters

Lower Don Valley; Brightside Lane in the centre.

book Sheffield Photographs 1988-1992

www.dewilewis.com/collections/new-titles/products/sheffie...

Sheffield Forgemasters

The driver has finally got the green on Sheffield's S199 ahead for authority to proceed through the 'Hell that is Meadow' and powers up producing a nice cloud of 'clag' in the Autumn weather with a lot of cheers going on as it gets underway. The 20s are sallying forth through the station as well, no passengers to pick up since this station closed when the new Meadowhall Interchange was built in the 1990s, but the remnants of what the place looked like can still be seen here, the whole lot enhanced by the 2 lots of classic traction on offer. The leading BR green 37 still has its old reporting number showing in the front display boxes, '1E09' and at rear, another gem, a Colas liveried class 37, 37219. Some information relating to 37057, 'Viking'-

Class 37/0 Number 37057

Current Allocation Details

Number: 37057

Class: 37/0

Depot: BH - Barrow Hill Roundhouse Museum

Pool: HNRL - Harry Needle Rail Ltd - Locomotive Fleet for Lease

Livery: GB - Green - B.R. Style

Builder: English Electric Vulcan Foundry

Built: 05/10/1962

Works Number: E3049/D711

37057 Named: 12/11/1989 un-named: 26/04/1996: Viking

37057 Named: 25/04/1996: Viking

37057 Renumbered

From D6757 on 31/12/1973

The RHTT Sandite units are starting to look 'mucky' and we are only into the 2nd week, this being the 4th run of the season... Autumn colours are resplendent and there was a 4-planet alignment in the eastern skies early on Monday morning... Venus, Mars, Jupiter, the Moon waning, and just above the 'rim of the world', close to the sun of course which was still below out high horizon, Mercury glowered like a jewel...

Class '48DS' Ruston & Hornsby 4-wheel diesel-mechanical (W/No.495994 built 1963) out of use at Midland Rollmakers, Weston Road, Crewe, on 3rd March 1983. Midland Rollmakers was formed in 1947 to build a new plant on a green-field site, with the plant coming into production in 1951 manufacturing cast iron and steel rolls for the ferrous metal and other metal industries. Latterly under the ownership of Sheffield Forgemasters, it went into administration and closed in 2004.

© Gordon Edgar collection - Photographer Roy Burt - All rights reserved. Please do not use my images without my explicit permission

* Blackburn Meadows

Wasn't sure about doing this as parking isn't all that easy, access to a decent view to the north isn't that easy and cars rattle past well beyond the speed limit some, very alarmingly so. Having negotiated both the low metal barriers and the hurtling traffic, from the southern end of the viaduct, the view was well-worth the effort, the greenery another matter. The work-site extended from just the other side of the bridge deck, around the curve towards Jordan Lock, the Sheffield & South Yorkshire Navigation and the River Don, just being over on the right, in the shot on the left. A wide roll of what looked like white PVC matting was being laid in the excavated-out ballast pit with, in the distance, work proceeding to lay new ballast from the back of the 1400 tonne train onto the top of the new matting. The rollers were out as well following? the cranes as they scooped the material out of the NR, yellow JNA wagons, and placed it on top of the base material.. the logistics look superbly worked out, though with the limitation of time this work is subject too, before midnight Sunday to the early hours of Monday morning, around 20 hours, things have to be this way. The line was open again on Monday morning with services running once more, a Stourton Cemex train ran past on the undisturbed line, a few minutes late, at 04:56, en-route to the Peak Forest, the 1st working of Monday morning; the first passenger service ran along the relaid line about a half hour later... on the right Colas class 70, 70813, stands ready with a rake of spent and new ballast, coming into the Possession on the 6C82, Belmont Down Yard to Masbrough Junction, working and will leave at 16:43 this afternoon on the same working number, this time, having drawn forward to Brightside, it will leave from there, like DBS 66113, and head off to Toton North Yard.

* Brightside Station

Another major cloning and now grafting also as it was impossible to take this shot without the prominent, foreground blue lamp standard, cutting straight through the front of the red DBS 66, 66113, the DBS awaiting its next call to duty on the up line; the lamp post not looking particularly good in this position. The result shown here, was rather better than expected and this was facilitated by a picture taken at approximately from the same angle, with no lamp post nearby so, this was a cloning and grafting operation, undertaken with as much dexterity as I could muster. Passing along the back line of the station site, itself re-ballasted in July 2017, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/35401427816/

with the back-line work undertaken between February and April, 2018, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/imarch2/49587068338/

and

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/41536982761/

leading power car class 43, HST can be seen heading the East Midlands Railway service, 1C43, on the Leeds via Brightside Goods Loop and then Sheffield to St. Pancras International. One of the only two North-bound EMR services to Leeds was diverted from Sheffield via the Lower Don Valley line through Tinsley & Rotherham Central and then back onto the Midland line at Aldwarke Junction, this at 17:27 and the second, ran north through here at 21:43. 43257 is passing one of the loops signals, S0197, which controls south-bound moves and although its not visible in this picture, the 'feather' would have been lit as the set has to cross over the down line ahead to access the up line into Sheffield, which can be seen happening in the right-hand shot of the next two pictures, the cross-over also allowing access to the northern end of the Brightside Sidings.

There may well be errors to spot in the 'cloning & grafting' operation but hope they aren't to distracting, if found!

* Grimesthorpe Shed area

The final shots feature another form of traction heading along the Midland main lines towards Sheffield this time time its a Northern Rail class 170, 170476, passing 'The Awkward Week Adventurer' charter, on the 1J45, Scarborough via Hull & Doncaster to Sheffield passenger service; not a good shot of the 170 as the camera focus was on 'First choice for rail freight, in the U.K.', 67013, heading north along the siding line towards Meadowhall. 170476 looks as if it has an 'environmentally friendly pair of frilly-knickers on its coupling mechanism, Ahem..! In the centre and right shots, the view looks to the north passed what was once the huge Brightside Sidings area and what largely now occupies that area, a 'Royal Mail' postal sorting office, red-livery D.B.C. 66019 now bringing up the rear of the set as it makes its way towards Meadowhall and then on to a pause at the Aldwarke U.E.S. steelworks at Parkgate. The title of the charter is meant to reflect on what folk do between the festivities of the Xmas 3-days and New Year 2-days.. mostly watching T.V and eating and drinking when, instead of the latter, they are able to board a charter such as this and go ferret around all those 'freight-based' locations in some far-and-distant' land, South Yorks in this case, but not exclusively so, and have the same Xmas cheer served to them at table, or bring their own... ! Sounds a great idea to me and so do all the folk on the full train, meandering around the 'nooks-and-crannies' of here and elsewhere and before it gets too dark, at around 4pm in just 3 hours from now, though 1.5 hours of that is going to be spent at Meadowhall, shopping! In the last shot, with 67013 passing Forgemasters and the old Brightside Junction area and the rear loco, 66019 passing the 'Royal MAil, postal sorting office, this is the 'UK Railtours', 'The Awkward Week Adventurer' with traction provided by D.B.C. and now in charge is class 67, 67013 at the front and class 66, 66019, seen here at the rear on the 1Z79 Finsbury Park via Doncaster & Swinton to Brightside No.2 Reception/Attercliffe Sidings charter train. LAter in the day, after picking up the passenger at Meadowhall and heading back into the Brightside No.2 sidings, the return working 1Z80 will set off back on the Attercliffe Sidings/Brightside No.2 via Meadowhall, Milford & Doncaster to Finsbury Park working, picking up an additional 66 at Milford, 66023 and then dropping that off at Leeds West Junction arriving back at Finsbury Park at 21:57, from an early departure at 06:40, quite a day... The coaching stock here is- M6051, M6067, M6158, M6054, M5998, M1212(Buffet Car), M3333, M3314(1st), M3390(1st), W80042(Kitchen Car), W3386(1st), W3364(1st), M17105(Guard)...

** This is a 28min video so has to be downloaded to see the full version as only 10 minutes are shown in the Flickr interface. This has recently been increased from the original 3 minutes to 10 minutes. Both Pro and non-Pro users now appear to have the same time limit in the Flickr Interface, however,

** to obtain the full version, right click this link and select 'Save Link As' to save the file to the desktop.

www.rail.tightfitz.com/Video/Views-in-Camera-3.mp4

Other than identifying all the locations, Section Three being a summary only, of the many shots taken throughout the period whilst the other sections have a more detailed folio of work for the location in question. This video, long though it is, was really all I could think of to do with the 400 pictures identified during the last year and a half or so. None of the pictures have been posted before but a few are supplementary shots taken at the same time as the one which made it to Flickr.

1. Skegness Beach, August 2017. Myself and the 2nd youngest and oldest of the 4 boys, Oscar, Casper, Otis and Finley, oldest to youngest. and all lovely boys, a pleasure to have them around; though I don't have to get up at 06:30 for the two youngest ones.! This sequence was taken, partially, to allow presentation of a 'Then & Now' piece, which has been shown already, here-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/36081614983/

The past picture from 1971 and showing approximately the same view as the 4th in this 1st section of shots.

2. Neepsend Area, February 2019. A winter-time walk around the Neepsend area to photograph some of the iconic locales and buildings and the redevelopment which continues apace in the area. Some of this material was also used in another set of 'Then & Now' pieces, this time the past pictures being provide by Adrian Wynn and featured in his 'Sheffield' book, published by Pickard Communication, the Flickr pieces are here-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/25279094207/

here-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/25279096327/

and a third example-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/26277495298/

3. Various. January 2018-May 2019. Bluebell Way and Children's Hospice at Dinnington, Parkgate graffiti, Shalesmoor, Chapeltown-GC signal, Storrs Bridge Lane, Morehall/GC line, Westthorpe Runaround-1, Masbrough Steam, Broomhead Reservoir, Oughtibridge after fire, Bridlington Station, Lock Lane-Tinsley, Parkgate canal & Bunnings, Kilnhurst freight, Spurn Point lighthouses, Heacham Station, Spurn beach, Whitby Station & Steam & Sandsend, Aldwarke Lock & Oil Barge, Deltic at Welwyn, Primrose Bridge, Brookhouse Viaduct, Templeborough DBS, Bridlington Hotel & girl, Robert Jenkins demolition, Chapeltown GC Station, Autumn Moon over Woodhead line, Westthorpe Runaround-2, Deepcar & new bridge-1, Masbrough tramway coal wagon, Orgreave GCR bridge, 25 Ferham Road, Samuel Fox/Liberty Steel Stocksbridge, Oughtibridge Paper Mill demolition, Broomhead Reservoir, Holmes West Sidings, GCR Station platform Chapeltown, Derwent House front gate, Ecclesfield railway foot-crossing graffiti, Masbrough freight and pushchair, Woodhouse Sidings, Bridlington bench, Bamford platform & old Ladybower bridge, Templeborough Tram/Train Lock Lane bridge, 37610 Test Train Woodhouse Sidings, Steel Street & Canal Holmes Junction, Deepcar Station & new river bridge-2, Staveley Canal basin development, Freight on the NER at Carnaby, Killamarsh Freight and Adrian Wynn, old Middlewood Union Carbide electrode factory, Deepcar Station & new bridge-3, Beighton Station X'ing, Brightside Test Train, Ecclesfield new footbridge, Flamborough cliffs & lighthouse, Carnaby 'Pepper Pot' listed folly, Penistone Engineering weekend, Kilnhurst HST move, Brightside steam approaches, Mill Race Attercliffe & 'Flying Scotsman' passage, old Derwent Village bridge location, Attercliffe Station & 'Tornado' passage, Ecclesfield footbridge & 'Tornado' passage, Bridlington Spa & Harbour, Bridlington Station & Semaphores, Bempton Station on the NER, Bempton Cliffs Puffins & other seabirds, Sewerby Park Balloon fest & cliffs, Hilderthorpe UK Basketball Tournament, Botsford Street in Neepsend.

4. New Morehall Sewage Station, & Paper Mill clearance January & May 2019.

January-----

Some heavy engineering work has been progressing on Manchester Road at Morehall, to build a new sewage treatment facility between the main road and the River Don and just a few hundred metres from the line up to the Stocksbridge Steelworks from Woodburn Junction. The treatment plant north of here at Deepcar, is then to be closed and demolished and that space and much of the surrounding area around the old GCR Deepcar Station site is to be developed by 'Bloor' into new housing estate. Last year, a large pipe was laid in the road between Deepcar and Morehall, and this work went on utilising one-way traffic for segments of the route, during most of the work. However, a 'complete line possession' was instigated over the 6 weeks of the school summer holidays last year, and the road was completely closed from Morehall to Deepcar to allow the work to be finished as a large section of the line of the pipe went along the middle of the road. Its not difficult to determine what this new pipe will be carrying from the Deepcar end 2km away to the north, the pipe now buried beneath Manchester Road, the output from the old and new works is clear water deemed fit for pumping back into the now pristine River Don. At this time, early January this year, the Wharncliffe Arms pub was then still open, as shown, but this didn't last much longer as the subsequent pictures, taken 4 months later, show the pub closed, put up for sale and sold. The area of land to the south of the new Sewage Treatment plant and commencing just to the rear of the Wharncliffe Arms pub, is the old Oughtibridge Paper Mill site and the following shots show the state of play in January with most of the buildings now reduced to just a few metres above ground level. The work being undertaken in the foreground of the first few shots, shows a 'Kobelco' blue excavator and its yellow and grey partners, and the work is related to the excavation for the base of the new river crossing bridge which will go in here and will then be the 2nd of the 2 new river crossings above the ancient one at Oughtibridge. At this time, the Wharncliffe Wood deciduous trees in the background, are without leaf, though some of the coniferous varieties remain green; the Stocksbridge Rail line, the old electrified Woodhead route of course, is just a short way up the hill about 2/3rds the way down below the line of pylons. Towards the end of the 1st section there are shots of the old Paper Mill river bridge, still extant and single track, once the new bridge is finished presumably this will be removed and there will then be a much more convenient access into Wharncliffe Wood, though I'm not sure this is a good or bad thing.

May-----

Returning to the site in May this year, with the weather warmer and the greenery more rampant, the first 3 shots show that the Wharncliffe Arms pub has been closed, put up for sale and by this time carried a SOLD sign on its 'Fore Sale' board. The pub board outside describes a little of the history of the pub and why its called the Wharncliffe Arms. At the time of preparing this text, June 15th, the pub remains much as it has since the earlier picture was taken, the Paper Mill site however has now changed completely, that is, its now almost cleared to ground level. Work has progressed on the supports for the new bridge over the River Don with two large reinforced caissons now built for the new bridge deck; the old, single-track bridge can be seen just behind it to the right. Most of the material which was on the site in January has been pummelled up into rubble for use elsewhere and the pictures in this section show how far the work has progressed. The Paper Mill site, like the site around Deepcar Station and the soon-to-be decommissioned sewage works close to it, will then be re-developed for upto 345 houses, though access, services and communication routes don't appear to be figuring in all this; Manchester Road is not the best of accesses into the northern part of Sheffield at the best of times... The River Don flows through the middle of it all and continues on to Oughtibridge alongside the site and the road on the right-hand side. The River Don flooded badly in July 2007 and brought the water up over the road bridge deck at Oughtibridge, something which ultimately resulted in 18 months engineering work on the bridge, to provide extra concrete strengthening, the work requiring periodic closures of the bridge which during almost all of the time resulted in single lane only operation; all the houses immediately next to the River were flooded.

5. Derwent, Agden & Broomhead Reservoirs, January 2019. Some winter shots and creative processing in a rather bland time of the year, with the short days meaning not many hours of light. This short section of 8 pictures show the scene at looking north at Derwent Reservoir on a particularly still day with the clouds rolling on over the hills threatening rain or snow.. Some filtering experimentation follows using the bare trees alongside the walk along Agden Reservoir, heading towards the parish of Bradfield, not far from where I live.

6. Sandersons Works area Attercliffe, February 2019. Just a month later and a visit to the large area of land around Attercliffe which was once home to the Sanderson Steel Works. It has seen a variety of uses since Sandersons closed with much activity on the large site occuring not long ago, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/17634321318/

and some background information-

'...It will be also noted that 3 lines also crossed Stevenson Road and went into some of the works on its right. The uppermost of these, recently occupied by a car tyre recyclers, but now vacant, was the Sanderson Steel Works, some background information-

'...1879 Records left by members of the firm who went out to Syracuse are still in existence. These show that a number of alloy tool steels were already being made by Sandersons both in Sheffield and America at that early date. The steels included 1.0 per cent, carbon, 1.5 per cent manganese steel of the Pitho Non-Shrink type, and a 22 per cent tungsten steel with a substantial chromium content similar to the present Kerau Wunda high-speed steel. This is termed a "self-hardening steel" in the record but it is far removed from the self-hardening steels as originally developed which had much lower tungsten. It is clear that, even in those days, Sandersons were well to the forefront in the search for improved tool steels...'

There is also a 'Then & Now' piece, using, once more, a picture provided by Adrian Wynn from 2009, to show the changes in the fortunes of the bridge area over the river, the bridge carrying a single line into what is now the European Metal Recyclers and Cemex Cement Works, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/17819302492/

Towards the end of the shots in this section shows the scene near Newhall Bridge and behind that, Sheffield Forgemasters with one or two of the still extant, 'heavy-metal' buildings prominent in the shots. Walking back along the river from Newhall in the middle of February, the scene had a somewhat feel of the 1970s/80s and this area does tend to accommodate, as Adrian Wynn put it, a definite feel, smell and view of operations as they would have been when this area was at the height of its productivity; this being particularly so along the East Coast, Faraday & Washwood Rd. area near the River.

7. Riverside area, Sheffield, March 2019. This section, along with the last two, form the core of shots taken in the last few weeks around the Wicker/Riverside area in Sheffield, here and following on after the next section, the Broomhall area near Hanover Way just west of Midland Station. The incentive to photograph these areas was taken from viewing the excellent work by Adrian Wynn, on his now fully developing blog, 'Prosaic Landscapes', see-

www.adrianwynn.co.uk

where the three areas re-visited here, are given full voice, in 3 of the sections in Adrian's historic narrative. There is little point in my trying to add anything further to what is said there, only to say that the pictures provided much encouragement to go and take a contemporary look and view what was now to be seen in the 'Fire and Water: An Upper Don Walk, March 2019' and 'Broomhall: Slight Return, Jan 2019' pieces; some of the pictures dating back 30 years or so. The 3 sections here relate to the 2nd, 3rd & 4th, Riverside, Kelham & Neepsend parts of his 'Fire & Water' piece and section 9 to his 'Broomhall' piece, published in January this year. I encourage anyone interested in the historical context to sit with a glass or two of something and read through Adrian's blog, its well worth it.

8. Orgreave Site/Waverley housing development, April 2019. The site of the old Orgreave Coking works has long since been devoid of the old works and it is now the Waverly Country PArk and, at the north-west side, a large, 4000-unit housing estate. The 5 shots in this section show the view from the road which runs between Catcliffe and ORgreave, the latter the site of the 'war' between police and miners in 1984. Now, 35 years on, things have changed and the place is now surrounded by technology firms, a large Morrisons Supermarket and other businesses and soon there estate will be complete and around 10,000 or more people will live here and be able to enjoy the now open parkland and water areas running alongside both the North Midland's 'Old Road' and the the River Rother, on the eastern side. The 1st couple of shots, taken in early April this year, show the view from the top of the site near Orgreave Lane bridge, which crosses the GCR's old Lincoln Line from Sheffield and through to Worksop and Lincoln. The large stone forms a monument for the Orgreave Site and which reads-

'Dedicated to the Workers of Orgreave Colliery, 1851 - 1981'

The type of housing available, almost all of that seen here is already occupied, varies from detached, semi-detached, flats, terraced and, for some bizarre reason, a hark back to the awful 'back-to-back' style, prevalent as a very cheap form of housing, and rife in the filthy slums of past decades, and long gone I had thought... but no, the site boasts that housing, conceived of in 1838, may well be good enough for the present generation..

9. Broomhall area, Sheffield, May 2019.

See section 7 above...

10. Neepsend, Wardsend & Owlerton, Sheffield May 2019.

See section 7 above...

* Brightside

A quick discussion with the local expertise, saw a rapid(ish) move to the next location, to photograph the set coming out of Sheffield Midland and today passing though its correct namesake 'Bright'side Station on the northbound move to Hull. With the Brightside ex-Station 'Station Hotel' in the background, its outside having been recently re-furbished, making it stand out more prominently in the background but unfortunately in the angle of this shot, sans-ladder, that damned tree is in the way. No matter, the scene looks colourful and now, with class 37, 37419 at the head of the departing South Yorks RHTT, the area is enhanced with colour from the InterCity livery of 'Carl Haviland 1954-2012' on the 3S14, Sheffield via Selby to Hull RHTT working. As this is a passenger line, the Sandite units should be in full spray but I see no evidence for this, nor in the departing shots showing the other side, as the set prepares to pass though Meadowhall Interchange? On the old metal footbridge, a small band of enthusiasts has gathered, and are enjoying the view over the old station site, its 'beginning' to look in need of some TLC though I guess there would be no reason for this 'ex-parrot' to have a face lift, given that the then new, Meadowhall Interchange, replaced this station in the mid-1990s, the former being more convenient for main-line and Blackburn Valley services when the area took on the mantle of being a bus, car and train interchange, surrounded by shops instead of steelworks of course. Fortunately, in the grand new schemes, the Brightside 'back line' has been retained and recently re-railed and re-ballasted and finds often use for diversions and moves directly along the Blackburn Valley line, as required, this line looking new, but rusty, in the right corner of the picture.

* Atlas

But on a lighter note.. everyone in the locale appeared perfectly pleased with the performance, earlier at around mid-day, even though it was then 25mins down on time. Here, in this dramatic picture with the clouds gathered, and enhanced a bit as well!, and a few folk turning up at the last minute, a pair at _the_ very last second, 60103 heads towards the Mill Race bridge with a fine view for the passengers of the Sanderson Weir at the other side as it passes through some very iconic ex-industrial landscape, once home, on this side of the tracks, to the extensive 'Atlas Steel & Iron Works', the 'Bessemer Steel Works, the 'Norfolk Steel & Iron Works', the 'Carlisle Steel & Iron Works' & the 'Cyclops Steel & Iron Works'. Form all this, its not difficult to spot what went on in these parts, and the total land devoted to this type of business was far more extensive than these; hardly surprising with the rich iron ore, coal and rail connections in the locality... but now a complete, pale shadow of its former self. In some ways, 60103 passing through here, looking as it does with the WCRC coaches and with a great head of stem, brings back, in just some very small measure, what the scene would have looked like here; the signal gives things away a bit though! 'Scotsman' is on the return 'Great Britain XII Charter Tour', 1Z31, which was York to Paddington Station, but for reasons explained more fully in the last picture, it only got as far as Reading. The last time 60103 was in the area, and photographed by me, was at Treeton, on September 26th, 2017, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/36623712744/

hauling a single WCRC coach up from Barrow Hill to the National Railway Museum in York and, before that, at Masbrough taken on July 1st, 2017, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/34889295173/

and again at Masbrough, on June 25th, 2016, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/27319311813/

seen in much more dramatic looking conditions, though this was partially processed for this sort of HDR effect. Today's shot is as you see it with possibly other steam-heating connectors looking o be leaking on the 1st and second coaches, at both front and back..

* Brightside Station

Well, the last of the pack, and not a merged shot, just 'Serendipity', once more helping out... Heading south from a station stop at Meadowhall, having come of the Blackburn Valley line, is a now regular Northern Rail, class 195, 'Civity"', 'CAF, Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, S.A.' 195010, on the 1L57, Leeds via Sheffield to Lincoln Central passenger service.. With yellow front panel, matching the receding light engine move from Sheffield. passing along the down main line is 'Devon & Cornwall Railway', class 56, 56091, 'Driver Wayne Gaskell' on the multi-part route learner, this one 0Z64, Sheffield to Kilnhurst Up Goods Loop working. In the distance is Meadowhall Interchange, built on the site of huge engineering works facilities including a loco engineering construction works amongst may other great, traditional, engineering concerns...all obliterated in the 1980s and 1990s push for new redevelopment of this and many other large engineering and money creating/generating, rather than money depleting/spending, sites.. What a happy circumstance to find two bits of engineering, their design and building separated by.. almost 50 years, calmly gliding through such an area...

As one enthusiast, further north than me at Masbrough, mentioned today, 'another sad passing', as a line of coal/coke hoppers is trundles down, all the way form Tees Yard to the site of the old Coopers Scrapyard at Attercliffe, now the abode of E.M.R., the European Metal Recyclers. I guess there is a reason why such a load would come all this way to be scrapped but the reason is good enough I guess so, if this must be done, better to do it here for our sake! This 1st pair of shots in a series of shots taken at 3 locations as the working made its way south from Wincobank Junction clattering along here through the increasingly sad looking state of affairs and the ill-named, though maybe not today, Brightside Station. The working had set off a few minutes early from the Northern side of the well denuded Tees Marshalling close to the River Tees. In keeping with other sites such as this, much of it has now gone and been taken over for redevelopment, one area, 42 acres, now given over to the Maze Park Nature Reserve. After leaving, the load made good progress but then vanished for almost an hour once it got into the vicinity of Doncaster and looked to be 'holed-up' in Belmont Down Yard, where it should have only spent around 40 minutes but loitered around for a further 35. I had decided to set off home, only to check developments after 10 minutes to find it was on its way and it managed to pick up about 15 minutes once it got moving. In these pictures it is passing very slowly through the station, due to traffic density towards Sheffield and is here 30 minutes late. The coke hoppers are being hauled to their demise by DBC class 66, 66129 and the view south on the right shows the 25 hoppers stretched out along towards Brightside Junction and the sidings beyond in the distance, at the left-hand side of which was the location of the Grimesthorpe Engine Shed. All that has long since gone, leaving only Forgemasters continuing trade in an area once crammed with Iron & Steel works of one sort or another. The sidings do get used occasionally, those on the left, as a run-round facility, once a week by the cement and scrap moves out of the Yard; today this train will do the same thing to access the Yard with the loco on the back pushing the wagons into the Yard, see next pictures.

* Brightside Station

With the 56 still to reach Sheffield and then it pausing in there for around 15minutes, there was ample time to get back from Holmes Junction, along the the Blackburn Meadows Reserve path over the Tinsley canal and head to Brightside where the working would soon pass through. The last shots, the first two showing its approach into the old Station site with, thankfully, no passenger service due through the other way to spoil the view. A few enthusiasts, 3 I think, can be seen on the mucky footbridge, seems a magnet for litter and soil blown along its length, which then results in lots of weeds growing, D.C.R. class 56, 56091, 'Driver Wayne Gaskell', heads through on the 0Z64, Sheffield Midland back to the Kilnhurst Up Goods Loop. This time of year, the 'Railway Hotel', still in operation, stands sentinel above what used to be a very busy station site, in the days, the early 1990s, before the Meadowhall Interchange, usurped its position, and this site became derelict. 'Devon & Cornwall Railway' class 56, 56901, ex-56103 & 56303, was built by 'British Rail Engineering Limited, B.R.E.L. at Doncaster Works between 1976 and 1984, the years which spanned the introduction of the while fleet, their popular name of course is 'Grid', after the metal grid on the side of the loco; though many other classes also have this feature of course.. The station site, track-wise, looks to have been tidied up, though all the old relics survive but the staircases onto the platforms appear to have been repeatedly denuded over the years... Today's light engine workings started off in the Derby area at 08:42 and will terminate with last working, see below, at 17:32 with last working, back to Chaddesden Sidings-

* 0Z60 Chaddesden Sidings to Thrybergh Junction

* 0Z61 Thrybergh Junction to Sheffield

* 0Z62 Sheffield to Kilnhurst Up Goods Loop

* 0Z63 Kilnhurst Up Goods Loop to Sheffield

* 0Z64 Sheffield to Kilnhurst Up Goods Loop

* 0Z65 Kilnhurst Up Goods Loop to Brightside Up/Down East Slow

* 0Z66 Brightside Up/Down East Slow to Thrybergh Junction & finally,

* 0Z67 Thrybergh Junction back to Chaddesden Sidings.

The old class 150 is now passing the Brightside Loop in the distance and the GBRf is about to enter the station site, this is class 66, 66757, 'West Somerset Railway' working the 0Z91, Duddeston Jn. to Doncaster Down Decoy(GBRf). The unit looks in pretty good condition as it should and was named 'West Somerset Railway' on September 25th, 2015, it also looks like its had a recent paint job undertaken and this loco this week is running up and down the Midland Main line from Doncaster Down Decoy to Duddeston Junction, near Washwood Heath in Birmingham earlier in the day, as 0Z90, at 06:50 and then returning at 10:32 from Duddeston to Doncaster as 0Z91, as seen here, at 10:32; driver training, route learning?? Apparently the new name for the area is 'Eden' though today , as is its wont, 'Brightside si far from being either 'bright' or an 'Eden. To the right of the GBRf, the southern extent of the Brightside Loop can be seen with new ballast and railhead; the old materials being dumped on the bank side. Presumably there will be a Sunday working one of these weekends, to remove all the wood and scrap metal... the old 'Coopers Scrapyard', now the E.M.R., 'European Metal Recyclers' is off to the left in the background to the south-east of the Brightside sidings.

* Brightside Station

A series of 8 pictures sets taken last Sunday during an involved, in terms of traction, Network Rail Line Possession on the section of line to the east of Meadowhall, just at the other side of the M1 motorway, carried by the Tinsley Viaduct. A similar operation took place, just over a year ago, in February 2019, further along the North Midland line closer to Holmes Junction, the work taking place on the same, down line, out of Sheffield, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/46980805961/

This time it was the section right next to the Tinsley Viaduct, the latter a good place to take the shots although noisy and a bit dangerous though it being Sunday in the latter stages of the Covid-19 lock-down, not all that bad. The shots here reflect the situation between Brightside, Meadowhall and Blackburn Meadows with the first seven pictures from Brightside. This was selected first as it meant being able to grab shots of the diverted passenger trains, including an E.M.R. HST set, passing along the old Brightside Station, back line; only rarely used these days, though it has recently been re-ballasted. For a while now, I had thought that shots here were a bit spoiled by the old, blue, defunct, station lamp standards, but in fact usually it is possible to exclude these from approaching or receding shots. Today however, as there was a parked up engineering train, and the action being across the platforms in the direction of the 'goods loop', it was decided to try and clone-out the prominent lamp post which in the original shot on the left, ran straight down from top to bottom, to the left of the loco and in front of the 'waiting shelter', which was all you got by the latter days, in the late 80s, at this station before the Meadowhall INterchange arrived on the scene further east along the line in the distance, and this station was closed. Although the post wasn't in the main area of the shot, it did rather distract the focus of attention and more say in the next but one shot when the HST arrived. Waiting to pull away with a load of spent ballast, is DBS 66113, having arrived just after midnight on the 6T53, Belmont Down Yard to Holmes Junction working, prepared then to enter the possession in the distance. It left at around 12:42, in around 2 hours, on the same working but now, Brightside via reversal at Chesterfield and back north along the 'Old Road, to Belmont Down Yard. At right, with the blue lamp standard, just to the left of the 'waiting shelter', once more cloned out, a much easier job in this 'uncluttered' direction. The driver of the loco is on the platform, the loco is ticking over relatively quietly and a 'STOP' board can be seen attached to the top of the down line rail-head, just left of the back of signal S0190. At upper left, now being crowded out by burgeoning tree growth, the old, now refurbished, ''The Railway' public house which actually has picnic tables on a lawn across from the station site, which would be visible were it not for the greenery; other forms of entertainment are of course available for those wishing not to just sit, stare and drink..

And here is the star of the show. Unexpectedly, for me, a BR green liveried class 37 in charge of the Derby R.T.C. Test Train working back .. to Derby R.T.C. in an 'all over the world' type operation round the Network, ending up at London's Kings Cross station in early evening around 20:30, before setting of 'back oop north'. BR green liveried 37057, ex-D6757, 'Viking' is seen here slowing as it enters the derelict 'Brightside', just about living up to its namesake today, station and with the RHTT already poking its nose out of the junction behind the camera, as it exits the Blackburn Valley line onto the Midland Main Line at WIncobank junction, Meadowhall. This is the 'HST' set, as indicated in the time-table, but as it turned out, far more interesting than that, working the 1Q19 Derby R.T.C via Kings Cross and Sheffield twice, back to Derby R.T.C working. Its path, for anyone interested, and I have confess to being interested in this stuff was as follows-

Derby R.T.C.(Network Rail), Derby Way & Works Sidings, Derby, Ambergate Jn, Clay Cross North Jn, Chesterfield South Jn, Chesterfield, Tapton Jn, Dore Station Jn, Sheffield, Nunnery Main Line Jn, Wincobank Jn., Meadowhall, Holmes Jn, Aldwarke Jn, Thrybergh Jn, Mexborough, Hexthorpe Jn, Doncaster, Shaftholme Jn, Temple Hirst Jn., Selby, Temple Hirst Jn., Shaftholme Jn, Donc. Marshgate Jn., Doncaster, Loversall Carr Jn, Ranskill Loop, Retford, Carlton On Trent Loop, Newark F.C., Newark North Gate, Claypole Loop, Grantham, Highdyke Jn., Stoke Jn., Tallington Jn., Peterborough, Fletton Jn., Connington South Jn, Connington Loop, Huntingdon, Sandy, Hitchin, Stevenage, Woolmer Green Jn., Digswell Jn., Welwyn Garden City, Potters Bar, Alexandra Palace, Finsbury Park, Holloway Sth. Jn., Belle Isle, LONDON KINGS CROSS, Belle Isle, Finsbury Park, Alexandra Palace, Potters Bar, Welwyn Garden City, Digswell Jn., Woolmer Green Jn., Stevenage, Hitchin, Sandy, Huntingdon, Connington South Jn, Holme Jn., Fletton Jn., Peterborough, Helpston Jn., Tallington Jn., Stoke Jn., Grantham, Nottingham Branch Jn, Claypole Loop, Newark North Gate, Newark F.C., Carlton On Trent Loop, Retford, Babworth Loop, Ranskill Loop, Loversall Carr Jn, Decoy Nth Jn, Bridge Jn, Doncaster, Donc. Marshgate Jn., Doncaster, Hexthorpe Jn, Mexborough, Swinton (S.Yorks), Aldwarke Jn, Holmes Jn, Wincobank Jn., Nunnery Main Line Jn, SHEFFIELD (01:15), Dore Station Jn, Tapton Jn, Chesterfield, Chesterfield South Jn, Clay Cross North Jn, Ambergate Jn, Derby, Derby R.T.C.(Network Rail).

Note it was back in Sheffield at just after 1am for any real stalwart enthusiasts... hello Marcus...Sheffield PSB's S190 signal is at green indicating the RHTT set has been given a clear run through the old station, as will be seen next..

* Blackburn Meadows

It was too good an opportunity to miss taking a selection of shots from one of my 'favourite industrial operations'; a sewage works. I'm fascinated by all the various watery 'goings on', though not, necessarily!, by the selection of available smells! With the Colas two-tone orange and yellow class 70 available to include, this wide panorama is only spoiled by the oppressive greenery, especially the tall tree and large bush at lower right; these two features spoil a great opportunity to include an good industrial scene with some rail-borne engineering. The Blackburn Meadows Sewage Works has been in existence for many, many years and has evolved through various stages to now have become part of the large area also occupied by the EoN Templeborough Biomass plant over on the right. It appears a very great shame that neither of these operations, green in themselves, couldn't have utilised the facilities of the local Railways, this are is set between the North Midland here and, at the other side of the site off to the right, the old GCR's Lower Don Valley line from Woodburn Junction, through Rotherham and on to Mexborough; a wasted opportunity? The scale of all this contemporary industry dwarfs what was once a very prominent RAilway infrastructure, now denuded here, to just the two main lines, albeit with a very healthy 'cutting space' atop the bank which runs alongside the Blackburn Meadows Nature Reserve, once the a large expanse of farm land and a quarry. Across this space there was once a railway line running off the Lower Don Valley line at Templeborough and, curving around in this direction, crossed the S&SYN on a skew bridge, just behind the back of 70813's wagons, The line went into the area occupied by the Holmes Potteries and in later times, the line was used for storing wagons, I have researched this extensively as I am sure I may well have walked under the bridge in around 1955/56, but can not remember it, what I do remember is the old version of the Sewage WOrks with its forever rotating arms of the large circular filter beds.. As far as I can tell, the line over the canal was out of use from the late 1950s, with the bridge still in-situ, it was still there in 1967, but had been removed during the period 1968-1970. I have never seen pictures of either the bridge or any locos or wagons either on the bridge or in the surrounding area; one of those over-looked aspects of the nooks and crannies of the industrial railway scene which once existed where the Colas class 70 Ballast train now stands.

Just five minutes latter and with a on-time departure from the east coast resort of Cleethorpes and coming via Scunthorpe and Doncaster, another run of the Hope Valley Empty Coaching Stock/Route Learner which ran a couple of weeks or so ago on 3 days, but due to gauging issues at Masbrough on the, what is now considered, tight curve into the station, was subsequently halted. There were also light engine moves of the same class of loco, T.P.E. class 68, in that instance, 68020, 'Reliance' between the Longsight T.M.D. near Manchester and which terminated in Sheffield and although they also ran a few days, they were also halted, see this shot, taken at Bamford in the Hope Valley, on December 3rd last year-

www.flickr.com/photos/vinc2020/51724341249/

This time around there have been just two runs of the full diagram, from Cleethorpes to Manchester Piccadilly and back again just over an hour later, this was last week on Friday and Saturday, from Cleethorpes on 5Z18 at 09:25 and arriving in Manchester at 12:17 with the return, 5Z19, at 13:18 and arriving back on the east coast at 15:44. Passing through the old station site, with the irritating mingy blue lamp standard in front of the 'waiting shelter', ha!, at left, 'cloned out', is T.P.E. 68027 in Arriva livery, on the 5Z18, Cleethorpes via Sheffield and the Hope Valley to Manchester Piccadilly, 5-coach, E.C.S move. All looks to be in order today, but following one of the runs a couple of weeks ago, there was a weekend possession placed around Masbrough with on-track machines and civils attending to whatever the problem may have been, a gauging issue on the tight curve approaching the station from the south was the reason given..

* A 5 mins 20s sequence, so viewable in 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/TAWLC,_Re-Visit_Part_II.mp4

* Introduction

A long time in the making, as they say, and this it has certainly been. The link access to Adrian's Blog-

www.adrianwynn.co.uk

no longer works, and having contacted Google, who operate the Blogger program/application, and having got nowhere with them to remedy the problems, some one on the online 'Help' team suggested that the URL had been disabled. Not having access to his account meant I couldn't fix this but fortunately, in early September, a month after he died, I using the Google Cache facility to download all 5 sections/chapters of his Blog and stored them on my Workstation PC. Over the last week or so, I have been working on getting the complete set ready to host on my own, 'tightfitz', site and this required some tidying and adapting of the code to make it presentable without all the Google additions which, now he is no longer with us, were rendered useless anyway, e.g. the comments section and his email. This was completed, finally today, Saturday 30th November and his blog at the URL above is now fully available, via simple navigation page, at-

www.adrianwynn.tightfitz.com

I have appended my own e-mail in case anyone wants to contact me or has any comment.. As stated on the gateway page, the blog content is a snapshot from the beginning of September but is of course how Adrian left it when he went into hospital for his heart operation which, although surviving the long operating procedure, resulted in him becoming very ill during the ensuing week. He died in the early hours of Friday August 2nd and was cremated at the Grenoside Crematorium on Wednesday 14th August; he would have been 70 on 23rd October, this year. I put a short, 'In Memoriam' piece on Flickr on the day I heard he had died, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/48440198022/

and since that time I have been working on an idea to present a video, a re-visit of some of the locations, which featured in his Blog but, as mentioned above, this vanished at the beginning of October. Fortunately, I was able to recover the material due to my expedience in making sure I had local copies of the material, this I have now put back on line, hosted by my own web domain, tightfitz.com at the address above.

* The Videos

During the ensuing weeks, the total time spent on the video, it has now turned into two as there is a natural division of the material, is currently around 35 hours and this doesn't include what I now expect to be a lengthy pair of narrative texts to accompany the two 'films'.

This first one, 95Mby/6mimns 9sec long, covers Attercliffe, Wardsend Cemetery, Parkgate & Aldwarke, Waverley & Orgreave and Treeton & Orgreave. The second, 82Mby/5mimns 20sec long, covers Parkwood Springs, Neepsend & Riverside, Meadowhall & Brightside and Tinsley & Atlas. It is another very great shame that just 2 weeks before Adrian went for his operation he was talking about some music he had heard which 'had speaking in it', with little else as a prompt I immediately knew, because I had heard the same material and been a fan for about 6 years, that it was the band, 'Public Service Broadcasting' who mix various aspects of sounds from the Second World War, as background clips to their music, see-

www.publicservicebroadcasting.net/

It was clear, when I commenced doing the two videos, that the music to accompany them would have to be from the 1st album the band produced, 'The War Room E.P.', and the two videos therefore have 'If War Should Come' and the 1st half of 'Spitfire' in Part I and the the 2nd half of 'Spitfire' and 'London Can Take It' for Part II.

So, the two videos are split as-

1. Attercliffe.

2. Wardsend Cemetery.

3. Parkgate & Aldwarke.

4. Waverley & Orgreave.

5. Treeton & Orgreave.

and

6. Parkwood Springs.

7. Neepsend and Riverside.

8. Meadowhall and Brightside.

9. Tinsley and Atlas.

which match the items, but with some additions of my own in a particular area, in his 5-part Blog, newest to oldest in order at

www.adrianwynn.tightfitz.com/

are-

5. Day Return to Swinton: Railway Edgeland in the Lower Don Valley, 2019

4. Fire & Water: An Upper Don Walk, 2019

3. Broomhall: Slight Return, 2019

2. Kilnsea: Edge of the Land, 2018

1. Orgreave: Landscape & Memory, 2018

Adrian was working on the last part, about a day trip to Swinton in the weeks before he died, which was partly based on a small booklet he and Ruth Midgley had produced in 2011, and was the basis for an exhibition of the photographs and poems at Swinton Library, that year. The Blog page relating to this is unfinished in terms of narrative text and maybe images too and is something I was looking forward to seeing completed; the pictures however stand up for themselves irrespective of all this. I guess re-visiting the sites and taking the pictures for the two videos which subsequently resulted, from my perspective, helped me towards trying to get over his untimely departure; I still had a lot to discuss with him and its a tragedy this now can't happen. The purpose behind the two videos is just to reflect what a good photographer and narrator he was and I greatly enjoyed his text style and flow as demonstrated in the Blog pages above with my introduction on the 'wrapper' page for the 5 pieces.

Taking the second 4 sections listed above for this second video, a description of the shots taken to reflect Adrian's work as it stood at the beginning of August this year, and archived by me, a month later, in early September.

6. Parkwood Springs. This is a return to the Neepsend area but now an over-looked part which runs up from the River Don at the end of Club Mill Lane/Sandbed Road, the latter area is shown in the 1st 3 shots with the gigantic 'Coal Bunkers' prominent. They were designated as such on the 1954 OS map, at which time they were long disused even though at this time the Woodhead line Electrics had just started hauling coal from here, through Woodhead and over to the Fiddlers Ferry Power Station. Neepsend Power Station was a short distance away to the north of here, right next to the railway line and also benefited from a connection with it. Here, a connection over from the Woodhead Line in the background, to the left of the grey/blue building and near the Parkwood Road bridge, to be seen later, was used to bring coal trains along the top of the bunkers, the area now palisaded off, and dump their coal into the bunkers. There are actually aerial photographs of this on 'Britain from Above', see-

britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EPW015486

Showing the Neepsend gas works and to the north of the largest storage tank, a line coming off the Woodhead line, running lower right to centre top, the connection at the road bridge at the top, then passing over Parkwood Road and running along the top of the coal bunkers; a train can just be seen on the line. The next 2 of the three shots shows more detail of the bunkers with some of the 'fittings' still present and the coal line looks to have been present right up until after the war but had gone by 1954. On Parkwood Road, industrial buildings are still and have found new uses, the whole area is festooned with one sort of modern business or another; the coal line bridge over the road would have been just here, but there is no sign of it. A shot into the coal bunker area on Parkwood Road shows the large retaining wall next to the footpath and the new industrial building standing on the old site where once the coal line spayed out in to sidings one running along the top of the bunkers. In the next pair of shots, the scene looks back along Parkwood Road to Neepsend and the city centre with St. Pauls Tower just visible in the June 24th misty weather. Neepsend Station was situated next to where the the line of cars are parked and there's a footbridge, hidden by the tree growth, which takes walkers over to Wallace Road and Parkwood Springs. All the Neepsend gas installations which once dominated this area, as seen at the above link, have now been dismantled and the site cleared. Two shots of the Leaf cleaning 'trains' on duty in two different years, the first is from 2nd November, 2011 and shows a pair of D.R.S. class 20s, 20312 at the front with 20302 at the back, now both defunct, on the 3S13, Sheffield via Neepsend to Stocksbridge Works RHTT train, spraying the line for the benefit of the nightly steel train here, not for passenger benefit! The second, taken after the DRS 20s stopped running up the branch to Stocksbridge, on 31st October last year, 2018, is a new piece of kit based on a Land Rover vehicle and operated out of the Blast Lane Depot near the old Sheffield Victoria site. The vehicle sprays citrus liquid to dissolve the leaf gunk and runs up and down 3 times a week on the old DRS diagrams, but just for this section of track, taking around 2 hours to complete the work. Pictures of this were featured here for 2018, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/44222777445/

and from the SandRover crew last year when paused at Deepcar on reversal-

'...SandRover' vehicle and at last fulfilling the need to see what this set was up to.. Further word had it that next year... wait for it.. this might well be deployed in the Swinton/Mexborough area on the passenger lines, meaning of course it would have to run overnight after the passenger services had finished and presumably slotted in between any over-night freight moves on the the Midland Main line and old GC sections. The Oughtibridge Station building was long derelict but it is now occupied and new housing has also filled out the station site area on this side of the main road and on the access area to the old Brickworks on the other side of the main road...'

and at Oughtibridge when their vehicle had to be removed from the track due to over-heating equipment.

The final shot in this section, for amusement only, as I headed back towards Club Mill Lane and the car, parked on Sandbed Road, by sheer fluke I guess, the driver of a 'DX, Delivered Exactly' has parked with the back of the van right next to a pile of filth which someone has chosen to deposit there, before the van arrived I assume, priceless..

7. Neepsend and Riverside. A large section of the video which relates closely to Adrian's also long section of the Blog, 'Fire & Water: An Upper Don Walk, 2019', the length of which he mentioned to me as if seeking an answer; we discussed splitting it up into two parts, but it was never resolved. Adrian's success with the Blog was borne out of a wish, talked over with me over a year ago, to dispense with the 'Flickr Format' of 'one picture after another' and he hoped to find a way of presenting his material which was more like a 'book about something', rather than the former. He succeeded I thought, but the 'Fire & Water' section wasn't quite how he wanted to present the material, there being too many pictures, 135, for his liking. I am sure there would have been a way to separate these better and nothing was done about it before he moved on to, what was to be, his final section, 'Day Return to Swinton: Railway Edgeland in the Lower Don Valley, 2019' which never got finished, in terms of narrative text but even here, there were 65 items. My 'Re-Visit Part II' for the 'Fire & Water' set has 30 pictures, taken on a bright, warm day in September, and did make me feel a little better about things, to be out thinking about what he originally saw as good material over the last 3 decades. The first 10 or so pictures in the first section of his Blog deals with the Sheffield flooding in 2007 and he was out with the camera photographing the shots which now appear in this section, forming a 'Prosaic', as the title suggests, document of what happened at that time, they fit in very well here, though I am sure he wouldn't have had the word 'Blog' in his mind at that time. The first 8 pictures of mine were all photographed in the same area, at the junction of Neepsend Lane & Rutland Road where there is plenty to see along with the 'Cutlery Works' food hall and the 'Gardeners Rest' pub, both on the north bank of the River Don and the latter name coming from where the men who used to work in Neepsend Engine Shed, close by, could come and relax and have the odd pint. At left is Samuel Osborn & Co. Ltd. Insignia Works on the north bank and the River side here looks splendid. The tall building, ex-Canon Brewery stands out, now graffiti'd and still not re-developed withy the 'Cutlery Works' now an attractive, family-oriented and welcome place to while away a few hours; its a very great surprise that Adrian never suggested coming here as I knew nothing about it until taking these pictures. For this section in particular, I have tried to mimic the views and feel of Adrian's shots which were taken between 2018 and 2019 and in particular, although he didn't photograph a crew of training boatmen on the Don outside the Cutlery Works, I felt when I took this that this is what he would have done; all fortuitous of course. The next 6 shots are around the Love Street/Love Square area and the 1st, with the distinctive 'CRANES' sign on the gate is a bit of a puzzle as the text for his picture indicates the gates were removed, but if they were, they were restored later. In the background, is the court house behind the gate in the background, the tall building was once the old Sheffield Workhouse, then 'The Doss House' and now, 'Mayfair Court', re-developed into flats, a comparison shot is here-

www.flickr.com/photos/imarch2/49582810218/

The road leading past the gates is Love Street, seen in the picture at the link above, and this road leads to Love Square, a little further east at the other end of the road where hoardings picture the area as once it was, the gateway to 'The Valley of Beer', the whole lot situated in a small pleasant area with seats. Two shots of the Riverside area where the Mark Cooper plaque is to be found and relates to his death and the flooding which took place after Dale Dyke Dam burst in March 1864, though he didn't die directly from this event, more details in the 1st section of the 'Fire & Water' Blog. The area at the other side of Corporation Street around 'The Fat Cat' pub area is now festooned with new business and residential premises and the development is still on-going. Kelham Island Industrial Museum is there and respectable amount of eating/drinking establishment. Thankfully, many of the old buildings have or are being renovated for modern purposes so there is still plenty to see, a not complete list would be- 'Canon Brewery', 'Samuel Osborn & Co. Ltd. Insignia Works', 'Woollens for Signs', 'Globe Steel Works', 'Kelham Island Industrial Museum', 'Britannia Works', 'Eagle Works', 'Green Lane Works', 'Cornish Place Works', 'Wharncliffe Works', 'Clarence Works', 'Lion Works', 'Albyn Works', 'Hallamshire Steel Works', 'Old Park Rolling Mill', 'The Farfield Inn' & 'The Cutlery Works', the latter now an excellent eatery. The Canon Brewery, across the road from the 'Cutlery Works', still stands, graffiti'd and ready for development but little is happening at this time. During a visit for food and drink at the 'Cutlery Works' one Sunday, some characters on bicycles passed by cycling towards the 'Canon Brewery' and provided a bit of a show of their cycling expertise... On Bardwell Street across from 'The Gardeners Rest' and 'The Cutlery Works' is the 'Hallamshire Steel Works' on the left and opposite, a re-purposed part of one of the buildings, the ever popular, 'The House Skatepark'. The picture in the video shows a bustling selection of folk at the venue and its a busy place with skate noise and music drifting into the surround area, not for the feint-hearted I guess, or the local residents, but maybe not so... Adrian has an enviable negative collection of Rail-related matters and some of these feature in this 'Fire and Water' Blog, there are also a number of derelict rail building included, especially, for me, the one at Bridgehouses which when photographed in 1984/5 were undergoing demolition. This whole area has changed dramatically and some shots which I took this year were included in the 'Views in Camera 2019 video', see-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/48067544842/

from the point 17m35s t0 19m35s. The others are all from negatives by 'unknown photographers' and represent a valuable addition to this Blog page.

8. Meadowhall and Brightside. Moving on and a shift now eastwards towards Meadowhall & Brightside, followed by Tinsley and Atlas. The very first picture in this section, of mine, was taken as it so aptly reflected, again, on the type of shot I know Adrian would have been interested in taking. I am not sure what the yellow-spotted brown elephant represents, doesn't appear to be anything to do with the outfit at the back but, you never know... Serendipitously, as I prepared to get the next shot, to match the second one on the, 'Day Return to Swinton: Railway Edgeland in the Lower Don Valley, 2019', Blog page, this guy appeared on cue and was happy to be included in the shot. Unfortunately, tree and shrubbery growth have prevented an exact match for the point-of-view compared to the one Adrian used, further up the bank above Meadowhall Station, but even so! The Tinsley Cooling Towers, such iconic buildings right next to the M1, the 250 feet(76m) towers were demolished at 03:00 BST, on 24th August 2008 and their absence changes the background of the shot markedly.. In recent months, the area around the Blackburn Valley line just north of Meadowhall Interchange, has had green palisade fencing erected at the top of the steep bank and it, along with burgeoning vegetation, has mad it difficult to get shots here, other than the one shown. Heading towards the interchange is a Northern Rail class 158, 158792, on the 2N10 Leeds via the Blackburn Valley Line to to Sheffield Midland. The elephant's backside appears to be a match for the 'Brocklebank Ltd' HGV which is full of aggregate material heading towards the north end of Meadowhall. The GCR's old line up the Blackburn Valley, now a walking track all the way up to Chapeltown, is off to the left behind the camera, starting at the top of what is now the large 'Travelodge' car park, built on the remaining trackbed which connected the line to the GCR's Woodburn to Mexborough line along the Lower Don Valley, which still exists of course. Moving further east to Brightside in the area close to the River Don and the large bridge connection the Sheffield District Railway's line from Treeton Junction to Brightside Junction. The first show the large girder bridge of their old track-bed crossing the road having just traversed the River Don and passing behind the large Sheffield Forgemasters River Don Works over on the left. Two views of the works, with a window onto the site shows their emblem and from the front of the works, on Attercliffe Road, Adrian took a picture of the same emblem, in white, sometime in the last few years. Various parts of the old Brightside Steelworks remain, and the arches feature here, and elsewhere, this first one a remnant of the merged works of William Jessop & Sons and J.J. Saville & Co, which became Jessop Saville and subsequently taken over by Firth Vickers; all very well known names in this area. The Riverside view through the arch looks towards Brightside Lane where the works of Sheffield Forgemasters continue to operate are are the largest of such businesses in the area. Across the river, yet another animal can be spotted, stood looking over the River Don on the frontage of 'Gripple Wire Ltd' though, again, not sure why they have a multi-coloured, spotted, cow outside the back of the building looking over the river. More scenes of the new-build businesses at the side of Hadfields Weir, Hadfields East Hecla Works being demolished in the 1990s to make way, ultimately, for the Meadowhall Shopping Centre, next to the 'Gripple Ltd' building and finally the substantial S.D.R's, Sheffield District Railway, bridge over the River Don along Weedon Street. Only some of Adrian's shots feature in this section, there are others in the 'Attercliffe' section of Part I, published on Flickr yesterday. It was tricky in some respects knowing which pictures to put where as this, the 'Day Return to Swinton' Blog covers such a long, but narrow, area of landscape from Sheffield to Swinton itself.

9. Tinsley and Atlas. Further east still and the other side of the River Don at Tinsley, before turning finally back west to the area of Atlas, just outside Sheffield, the last section of this long, 2-part video set. The first shot looks west over the Tinsley Viaduct with the local, A631, road on the lower deck and the M1 on the upper deck with a clutch of bright HGV goods lorries brightening things up. Heading over Blackburn Meadows Way is a 'First Bus' en-route from Sheffield to Maltby, Quilter Road, and advertising 'Judy - A Star is Born' on the side... not heard of the road or the film.. The side of the new road has already been graffiti'd and the Sheffield Tram/Train runs just to the left of the tree poking into the picture at left. Recent heavy rain has already made a small canal out of the low ground between the road bridge wall and the edge of the railway embankment carrying the Lower Don Valley line between Woodburn Junction and Mexborough; the Tram Train uses the Tinsley-Meadowhall to Parkgate Retail, electrified section of the line. Recent developments here, after the demise of the Tinsley Cooling Towers in August 2008, has seen the site being redeveloped by EoN into a dramatic looking Biomass facility, a combined heat and power plant at Blackburn Meadows which uses recycled waste wood from the surrounding area to power 40,000 homes. The last shots here reflect aspects of the new site and one of them matches Adrian's shot taken in 2018, with no traffic on the new 'Blackburn Meadows Way'. Opened in December, 2016 to ease traffic congestion on the southern Tinsley Roundabout and provide better passenger transport links between Sheffield and the east; traffic density however is still very light. At the eastern end of the site, the Blackburn Meadows Sewage Works continues with its cleaning operation, as it has done for decades, the clean water finding its way into the River Don. The Sewage Works site extends across both sides of the River Don, access being made across the river using the old Jordan, single track railway bridge which saw some refurbishment when the works expanded its operation back onto its old site. Moving back west now towards Sheffield and a look at two of the interesting 'artifacts' which were spotted whilst photographing all the other material and must have passed by these son many times without actually 'seeing' them. The first 3 are shots of another archway, removed from the Brightside Works area to here at Atlas, and is the 'Thomas Firth & Sons Ltd., Siemens Dept' gateway arch. It has been cleaned, thankfully, and looks rather splendid now set amidst local new-build businesses. In usual 'Wynn fashion' there was even a shot I am sure he would have taken, with an advertising board on the side of the red-brick building next door, 'President Buildings', another good example of the quality of the building which used to be erected here in the past. And finally, the last shot, 'Don Valley House' which has undergone some refurbishment in the past and is now used by the local council as offices. At the rear, the long stretch of the Norfolk Railway Arches can be seen whilst atop, heading towards Sheffield, a Northern Rail class 170, 'Turbostar', 170478, on the now regular Bridlington to Sheffield service, this one 1J45; they now appear also to have extended the service at the weekends to go as far as Scarborough. This last shot is a multi-par, 4, composite, to include all the aspects of the scene which were going on during the half hour or so I was here and is meant to reflect the people, place and type of local infrastructure which, like elsewhere, has been carefully retained. Although, it has to be said, some of it wasn't retained at all but wantonly destroyed in the mayhem and frenzy which occured in the 1980s when the industrial heart of the place was stripped away and new meaning and work had to be found for the folk who had lived and worked here for a hundred years or more...

'FIN'

* Brightside

Bringing up the rear of the 24 MBA wagons consist, though the use of this extra loco is unknown, maybe just using the diagram to get a spare loco back to Immingham, 66199 still in the old EWS livery on this Peak Forest Cemex Sidings along the Hope Valley via Sheffield to Killingholme near Immingham; the 6Z63 working. The loop line and main line signals, S0197 and S0199 are both at red, the loop signal having been at this aspect for a while now, the main line aspect having changed when the leading DBC 66, 66010, passed over the safety overlap detector between the lines. This was quite a busy time before and after this working went through, though in this picture, there aren't any passenger DMUs about. Both lines here show evidence of the recent line re-ballasting and rail-head replacement; though this didn't apply to the Brightside down goods loop on the left.

* Brightside Station

* A preamble to the Weekend's Events

Day One.

To describe last weekend's 'Branch Line Society' charters, 'The Sinfin Syphons' on Saturday, followed by 'The Primary Colours' on Sunday, as exciting, would be a bit of an understatement; the weekend jaunts kicking off on Friday the 2nd July with the south-bound start from Carlisle getting into trouble around an hour after leaving. In that instance, one of the two class 37s, 37419 and 37423, on the haul, had a problem, with 419 producing a cloud of blue smoke and the engine stopping close to Kirkby Thore, where the unit was interchanged for 423, in the consist were also D.B.C. class 66s, 66053 and 66044. The order of traction was 37419 leading with 37423 behind it and behind that, 66053 and 66044 rear; it transpired that 37419 had failed in the Culgaith area with smoking from the engine, it having overheated due to a failed radiator fan. The set then ran south towards Wakefield, on its circuitous route to York and, at Engine Shed Junction, ran to Wakefield Europort, missing out Leeds and Wakefield Westgate. 37423 was detached and the Wakefield Kirkgate Goods Loop and ran, with the failed 37419, as 0Z38 to Knottingley T.M.D. to be inspected and repaired. (This information available on the RailCam 'OpenRail' page for 1Z39). The set then continued to York and arrived as the original 1Z39, over two hours late at 22:14; though the weekend events had only just begun!

Day Two, 2nd July.

Due to other commitments and inclement weather on Saturday 3rd July, I didn't go out for the events which took place on that day which included a reversal back to Doncaster en-route from York to the East Midlands Gateway, due to the driver not having the route knowledge for the section of the journey from Retford, west to Sheffield; the person who had had such knowledge was the driver of the failed 37419! The Charter name, 'The Sinfin Syphons' was partly taken from the fact the the Sinfin Oil Sidings are in the East Midlands Gateway Distribution Centre area, the sidings now being on land owned by Rolls Royce who had given permission for their use on this day. However, the jaunt back to Doncaster caused another delay, this time around 48 minutes and, later in the day, to make up some of the almost 1 hour delay, the planned jaunts on the freight lines in the Doncaster area were abandoned and the set ran up from the south along the South Yorkshire Joint Railway at around 19:30 and headed straight back to York, arriving 3 minutes early at 22:23.

Day Three, 4th July.

The day I ventured out, though even this day was already disrupted early on, by a derailment which had taken place overnight in Holgate Sidings in York, before the Charter had even started out on its day's outings. Fortunately this had been dealt with overnight and the charter train pulled into the station, as the two earlier 'RailCam' videos show, just an hour late. It meant the early start for the 08:40 departure, for me anyway, was deferred for an hour and that a leisurely breakfast could be had, though I already felt slightly stressed by what may happen before the set arrived in my two chosen locations, shown here, Brightside and then, further north at Penistone.

So, this first set of mosaic pictures and a not-too-good phone video show the scene as Saturdays leg of 'The Sinfin Syphons', 'The Primary Colours' comes into view along the Midland Main Line, the Charter having just paused for two minutes or so, to pick up the last of the passengers, at Meadowhall Interchange in the background. The locos and workings for the whole charter are here, separated into the 4 days-

Traction

---------

D.R.S. 37419 ex-D6991 'Carl Haviland 1954-2012', 37423, ex-D6996, 'Spirit of the Lakes', 37422/266 ex-D6966 'Victorious'

D.B.C. 66053 66044 66066 66041 60065 (allocated)

Friday, 2nd July

-----------------

1Z37 37419+37423+66053+66044 Carlisle via Wakefield Kirkgate to York

0Z38 37423+37419 Wakefield Kirkgate Goods Loop to Knottingley L.I.P.

Saturday, 3rd July

-------------------

1Z38 37422/266+37423(1) York to East Midlands Gateway

1Z39 37423+37422/266(1) East Midlands Gateway to Stanton Gate P.L.C, 'Rolls Royce Sinfin Sidings'

1Z40 37422/266+37423(2) 60065 Stanton Gate P.L.C. via S.Y.J.R. & Doncaster to York

Sunday, 4th July

------------------

1Z41 37422/266+37423(3) York via reversal at Brightside Sidings & Penistone to Rose Hill Marple

1Z42 37423+37422/266(2) 70011 70019 allocated as well Rose Hill Marple to Crewe Electric Traction Maintenance Depot

1Z43 37423+37422/266(3) DBC 66066 VT90039? allocated as well Crewe E.T.M.D. via Hope Valley & Sheffield to York

Monday 5th July

----------------

1Z44 66041+66066 York via Leeds & Darlington to Hartlepool Docks Area

On the left, in this first of the 'triads' DRS class 37, 37422, 'Victorious', once numbered 37266, heads briskly south towards the Brightside Sidings where there will be a change-of-end for the driver, to allow the set to reverse and head back to the north. There are 10 coaches in the stock, consisting of S.R.P.S. Railtours brown coaches and 2, 'Blood and Custard' type, the 'British Railways', 'Crimson Lake and Cream', CLC livery of the 1950’s. At the back now, 37419 having been carted off to the Knottingley L.I.P. yesterday to be repaired, is 37423, 'Spirit of the Lakes'. The centre shot is an overall view of the old Brightside Station site with the footbridge in the right background and surprisingly for this event only a handful of 'enthusiasts looking on. The coaches in the set were, behind 37422, in maroon livery, 4831, 4856, 1859, 5028, 35185, 13229, SC3150(CLC livery), 3096, SC1730(CLC livery) & 3115 behind 37423 at the back. In the right distance, the regular regulars, at left, the end of the Forgemasters building, looming black above the railway, and in the far distance, St. Puls Tower near the centre of Sheffield. The Brightside goods loop on the right looks well cared for, it having been re-ballasted in recent years and at upper left, the local school. At right and bringing up the rear, class 37, 37423, ex-D6996, now named 'Spirit of the Lakes' and was the loco which hauled 37419 from Wakefield to Knottingley L.I.P. yesterday when the latter's fan cooling fan failed and resulted in he engine over-heating. The emblems on the front of the loco are those of the 'Martin House Hospice' for children with 'life-limiting' conditions and are being supported from donations from the Charter, see-

www.martinhouse.org.uk/

A handful of enthusiasts can be seen peeping over the top of the footbridge side and I was surprised the bridge wasn't full of folk watching the unfolding story go past to the Brightside Sidings for its reversal back through here in a matter of 15 minutes... This is today's charter outing, 1Z41 from York to Rose Hill Marple via reversal here, then along the Blackburn Valley Line north to Penistone and Huddersfield, Guide Bridge and Marple.

* Brightside Station

Not been out lineside for a good while, in fact the last time was for the last run of the R.H.T.T. and, as usual, being the last, it went up the Stocksbridge branch line to Deepcar, me only catching it on the way back from a reversal a t Barrow Hill, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/vinc2020/52563396679/in/photostream

Today a special, attempting to make up for the way a bit many of us feel, between Xmas and New Years eve, today in fact, though family celebrations over 4 days or so have kept me well and truly occupied and the 1st Xmas in our new home. The charter tour, jam packed as far as I could tell as it slowly passed beneath us under the old footbridge at Brightside Station, was operated by 'U.K. Railtours', see-

www.ukrailtours.com/product/the-awkward-week-adventurer/

with 2 class 66 locos, 66019 in D.B. Cargo red livery and at the back, with similar livery, class 67, 67013; a further class 66, 66623, appeared in the roster on the way back from the Brightside Sidings, at 14:45, it apparently went on at Milford Junction during the 20 minute stop, but the loco was then removed at Leeds West Junction. On the UK Railtours website, given above, on the morning of the charter, a notice appeared-

'...Please note that due to capacity constraints in the Rotherham Central Area on Friday 30th December we will be visiting Aldwarke before the Meadowhall break rather than afterwards as advertised...'

All of which made me think that the Charter would be a half-hour late heading this way through Meadowhall and Brightside for its reversal move. So, although making a sprightly traverse over, it seemed obvious there was no rush but, watching the charter's progress on RailCam, it was obvious as it headed from Mexborough and took the GC line though Kilnhurst. It was immediately evident there could be no accessing of the U.E.S. Steelworks, there being no connection from that direction into the works; the access being from the Rotherham Central side only. So the charter ran through and arrived her, passing straight through Meadowhall, and now ambling at low speed, straight through the old Brightside Station site, not much more dishevelled looking at this time of year, at around 12:12. The 1st picture on the set of 5 mosaic pieces, shows the leading class 66 loco, in D.B.C. red livery, 66019, at the head of a 'pack' of 12, B.R blue, Mark I coaching stock with, 3 coaches along, a maroon/cream variant, the 'Kitchen Car'; towards the front here of course and followed by a further grey/blue Mark.I varieties with class 67, 67013 at the back. This is the 'U.K. Railtours', 'The Awkward Week Adventurer' hauled by D.B.C. "D.B. Schenker Cargo" locomotives tope-and-tail fashion, on the 1Z79, Finsbury Park via Doncaster & Swinton to Brightside No.2 Reception/Attercliffe Sidings. The Coaching set is, from the front, M17105(Guard), W3364(1st), W3386(1st), W80042, the Kitchen Car, M3390(1st), M3314(1st), M3333, M1212, the Buffet Car, M5998, M6054, M6158, M6067 and M6051. The austere looking building on the right is Brightside School and in the background, the bi-direction goods loop on the left with 2 red lights, S0197 on the left for exit from the loop and on the right on the Midland Up Main Line, S0199, with feather for the Blackburn Valley line. In the right-hand picture, the train now heads along to the Brightside Sidings, No.2, passing the works of Sheffield Forgemasters on the left. Not a particularly good day-weather-wise but the scene well represent the feeling of the place on this day. Two examples of how the place looked from July, 2021, with traction on the Brightside goods line, in fine weather here-

www.flickr.com/photos/vinc2020/51297371460/

and a HST set heading south along that line, in June the previous year, 2020-

www.flickr.com/photos/vinc2020/50011771988/

A different angle of shot as the set passes the now derelict Brightside Station and for once it is living up to the name of Brightside. This station was closed during the large-scale changes to the railway scene around here, though this not occuring until the Meadowhall site was cleared of its old Industrial past and the now infamous Meadowhall Retail World built on the vacant industrial land. With the shopping centre came a much more conveniently located Interchange Station for bus, tram and rail and this new station accommodates passengers from off the Midland Main line, platforms 1 & 2 and from the Blackburn Valley line, platforms 3 & 4. Have to say I prefer the rear class 67, 67029, 'Royal Diamond' to the maroon and dull EWS colours of the other nit at the front. 67029 was named 'Royal Diamond' and I quote from the small nameplate under the loco's name on the side, seen in this picture-

'To Celebrate their Diamond Wedding Anniversary

Her Majesty the Queen

and

His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh

Named this Locomotive at Rugeley Station on

12th October 2007'

So that's all right then... towering above the old, rusting footbridge, I wonder how long all this lot is going to last now, is a side view of the 'Railway Hotel' and it looks to be still in business with a new advertising awning hanging off the side, as I will have absolutely nothing to do with this organisation and its leader, I leave the name 'un-writ' .. As I left after the passage of this working, another service, a Cross Country 220, had come through, slowly evidently as it was signal checked at S199, on the down line ahead awaiting passage along the line after the pair of 67s and the Test Train set had gone through.. looks like it was going to be an afternoon of stopping and starting for services, until after the rush hour period..

* Brightside Station

The Charter set has now decamped in the Brightside Sidings and the driver hasn't changed ends yet, the rear loco's red lights are still illuminated, but in 10 minutes the front white lights will be on and the set will be ready to depart back along here, crossing over, fortunately, onto the Brightside Station back line. In the distance, just beyond the Charter train, was the location of the large Grimesthorpe Engine Shed, coded 25 originally, then changed to 19A by the L.M.S. and finally it gained the shed code of 41B after transfer to British Railways Eastern Region, in 1958. Now the whole area at either side of the racks is full of industrial concerns of one sort or another but at least the old S.D.R.'s access is still extant over on the left, this provides access to both the European Metal Recyclers and the Cemex Cement Works on the old Attercliffe Goods Yard site. Both businesses now making regular freight moves in and out of the area, the former to various locations involved in scrap metal recycling and the latter to and from the Peak Forest quarries. The Sheffield District Railway itself, left the main line and turned left to head along to the Tinsley Yard area, Brightside Junction providing the connection and was situated just in front of the small grey graffiti'd relay cabin between the tall trees at left and the end of the Forgemasters building. In the centre shot,

T.P.E., TransPennine ex[press class 185 units, 185138 & 185103 head towards Sheffield on the 1B71, Doncaster to Manchester Piccadilly service. Approaching on the main line to the right of the waiting Charter tour, is a Northern Rail class 150, 150222, which has been halted for the imminent departure of the Charter working, the passenger train is the 2B85, Retford via Sheffield to Meadowhall terminating service and will provide a return service a little later. As may be seen, D.R.S. 37423's headlight are now illuminated white and its ready for the off to cross over the lines, ahead of the Northern DMU. At 10:08, in the far right shot, the Charter set has left the Brightside Sidings and has crossed over in front of the waiting DMU, 150222, and is heading along the old Brightside Station back line, getting out of the way of passenger moves, and providing extra interest for the Charter passenger's benefit in travelling along a little used line. 37423 is now leading of course and its making its way along to Wincobank Junction and the turn off along the Blackburn Valley through Chapeltown, Barnsley and on to Penistone, the next port-of-call for me, once the set has passed by. This is today's charter outing, 1Z41 from York to Rose Hill Marple via reversal here, then along the Blackburn Valley Line north to Penistone and Huddersfield, Guide Bridge and Marple.

* Brightside, revisited after over a year.

I did these colour subtracted renditions shortly after the Autumn 2020 R.H.T.T. passed through here on October 10th, mid-season, so to speak. This manipulation was partly done to both 'try it out' once more and to get rid of the irritating, old, and non-working blue lamp-standard which appeared right across the class 37 in the centre picture. A similar one was removed at the other side of the old station just 4 months earlier when a class 43, went south along the goods line at the right in the first two shots and, at the same time approximately, that a red, DBS class 66 also went south on a scrap freight working, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/vinc2020/50011771988/

the result there was very good and so, thought it worthwhile to apply the same process here, to remove the one at the other side.

Once here, the first passage through, which didn't make it into the shots posted originally, is a Northern Rail service, 2B52, getting the same colour treatment but now avoiding the irksome lamp standards, class 150, 150203 on the interval service from Sheffield to Hull. This is 20 minutes to midday and the R.H.T.T. is about to leave Sheffield and come along here in just 10 minutes. Having passed the still extant 'Station Hotel' in the background, the outside having been recently re-furbished, making it stand out more prominently in the background, but unfortunately in the angle of this shot, sans-ladder, that damned tree is in the way, the DMU will turn off shortly and head north the along the Blackburn Valley line via Barnsley to Huddersfield.

At centre, looking south from Jenkin Road, a similar view but now with the lamp standard removed and the frame once again colour-subtracted to just leave the class 37s in glorious colour, and fortunately, the B.R. liveried, class 37, 37419, ex-D6991, 'Carl Haviland 1954-2012' is at the front.On the bridge, I think, is BonsoirBaz and all the 'enthusiasts are maintaining distance as this is the Autumn of the 1st year of Covid-19; we are now at the beginning of the third year and have the new, infectious' 'Omicron' in populations all over the world. 'Direct Rail Services' 'Electro-Diesel Locomotive', Class 37s, 37419, ex-D6991 is at the front 37423, ex-D6996, 'Spirit of the Lakes' is on the back on this day's run back to the north, 3S14, Sheffield via Selby to Hull with the 'Rail Head Treatment Train' and a rake of the blue 'FEA-B RHTT A Tank Wagons'.

On the right, passing through the 'not-so-'Bright'side and, as this is a passenger line, the Sandite units should be in full spray but I see no evidence for this, nor in the approach shots showing the other side, as the set prepares to pass though Meadowhall Interchange; maybe this is the reason as folk can get wet through on the platforms, if they are on. Although the station site looks in need of some T.L.C., I guess there would be no reason for this to have a face lift, given that the then new, Meadowhall Interchange, replaced this station in the mid-1990s. The former being more convenient for main-line and Blackburn Valley services when the area took on the mantle of being a bus, car and train interchange, surrounded by shops instead of steelworks of course. Fortunately, in the grand new schemes, the Brightside 'back line' has been retained and recently re-railed and re-ballasted and finds often use for diversions and moves directly along the Blackburn Valley line, as required, this line looking new, but rusty, in the left corner of the picture. The link given above shows just such an odd-ball move of H.S.T. coaching stock with 43257 leading and 43307 at the back en-route to London St. Pancras. Meadow Hall station is in the distance and the Blackburn Valley line curves off to the left at Wincobank Junction, just along the line ahead of 37419; 37419 has the green on Signal S0199, for moves along the Midland Main Line to the north through platform 2 at Meadowhall Station.

And to business on this day of 'Fire & Water'. With the Fire service just along to the east on Carlisle Street, attending to the last vestiges of a large fire at MHH Contracting Material Suppliers, which started 3 days ago. The result of this is that traffic flow is being affected through this area due to the large diameter water hose which is stretched across both carriageways of the road behind the camera, in the upper two pictures. In the upper left-hand picture, the inside carriageway is closed and I am walking along it to the road over-bridge which carries the Midland Line out of Sheffield and on towards Brightside and Meadowhall. Parked up after coming into the possession earlier, is the now, rear end, of the ballast train with DBC class 66s, 66162, 'Maritime Intermodal Five' seen her and, at the front, seen in the lower two pictures, 66197. The consist, consists of a number of JNA & MLA box wagons and they are awaiting the off at later on on the 6xxx, Brightside Junction to Doncaster Up Decoy return move... The last time I was in this location a little further east at the old Brightside Station site was on June 14th 2020, for the red HST and red DBS sets, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/vinc2020/50011771988/

and for the RHTT towards the end of the year, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/vinc2020/50452113546/

earlier still, on May 5th, 2019, it was here for a steam charter, with Flying Scotsman, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/40820878173/

Today, its a stationary train waiting for the move forward towards Brightside and then back to Doncaster. At upper right, a good contrast in traction as a bright red 'Doing it for Doncaster' 'double-decker' bus passes under the slightly lowered-road bridge, heading for Meadowhall and presumably, back to Doncaster. Both upper two pictures had an irritating lamp-standard right in front of the Maritime loco but the 2 shots were at different angles so it was possible to clone the damn thing out using information from one picture, in the other! The one-way nature of the traffic control, and a bit slow going, can be seen due to the restriction in carriageways due to the large fire-hose stretched across the road behind the camera and seen in the last pictures. Moving a little east along the line after the Engineering train had moved off the over-bridge, the view now looks back westwards towards Sheffield, at Grimesthorpe, then road alongside of which was closed off but ..where there's a will, there's way... and thanks to the site minder for allowing me foot access past the barrier when I told him what was going on. At the front, and in challenging light conditions, an old EWS liveried class 66, 66197, unspectacular, to say the least, heading its rake of JNA & MLA wagons, now full of spent ballast and destined for a return to Doncaster.

THe workings in and out of the site, as far as I can work out, with the scrambled headcodes off RTT and with the times given for their arrival at destination, are-

Friday, 3rd April

669S Doncaster D.D->Nunnery M.L.J. 0:14

670S Doncaster B.D.Y->Mill Race Jn. 01:50

671S Doncaster B.D.Y->Brightside Jn. 01:59

617V Brightside Jn.->Doncaster U.D. 17:57

637W Doncaster B.D.Y->Sheffield 00:17(4th)

Saturday, 4th April

624X Doncaster B.D.Y->Wincobank Jn. 08:33

641X Brightside Jn.->Doncaster U.D. 11:22

696X Brightside Jn.->Doncaster U.D. 14:34, 2hrs early, the one here

Sunday, 5th April

657B Brightside Jn.->Doncaster U.D. 13:30

654C Nunnery M.L.J.->Doncaster B.D.Y 14:12

624C Wincobank Jn.->Doncaster B.D.Y cancelled

66197 has a crane in tow by the looks of things and it sounded as if it was on 'auto-rev' with the engine repeatedly speeding up and slowing down, the former making the site minder think the loco was setting off. In the event, and this is why I left after these shots, I asked what time the set was due out of the site and was informed the return would set off at around 2pm, it was currently 09:52, so decided to go and join the family for the first distanced get together in many months.. In the background of the lower two shots, the old site of the Grimesthorpe sidings and the access into Coopers Scrapyard, now the 'European Metal Recyclers and 'Cemex Cement Ltd', it was also the terminal goods station for the Sheffield District Railway; heady days...

Flashing by and heading towards Meadowhall, the N.M.T. with class 43, H.S.T. 43277 ex-43077, 'Safety Task Force' takes the yellow set north on the 1Q64, Derby R.T.C. via Sheffield to Brough, 15km west of Hull, with, as seen here, class 43, 43290 at the back; its cab 'livery' looking distinctly in need of a re-paint! This picture has been edited to take out the distraction of the large, blue and derelict lamp-standard, in other pictures this has been relatively easy, see 43257 passing south on the Brightside goods line whilst red livery D.B.S. 66113 also heads south on the main line-

www.flickr.com/photos/vinc2020/50011771988/

but in this picture, the cloning out was more difficult, if not impossible, underneath the Jenkin Road bridge at the front of the set, so the blue post has been left in place, the main structure's absence is still very welcome, its top and bottom now vanished! The back, goods, line looks well used and. I was informed, on Sundays there's a DMU service which comes over from Retford to Sheffield, reverses, then comes along here on the main line and takes the turn out at Wincobank Junction, onto the Blackburn Valley line in the distance and so into platform 4 at the station. Here it reverses once more, and comes back south now having to take the goods line on the left, there being no access from the platform 4 line back onto the main line, and so back into Sheffield! Other DMU services occasionally use the line and, as can be seen at the link above, other trains also use it for one reason or another. With the passage of the test train, and a look at the time-table, it became clear that the next working, 0M50, a class 50 from Knottingley to the Severn Valley Railway, was already a half hour late leaving.. Having driven over to Masbrough to get this shot, with the weather deteriorating, and waiting another half hour, it seemed obvious the light engine move was not going to happen, so I left; although it didn't get cancelled until 14:56 over 2 hours after I got back home!

Fortune favours the 'nosey' once more ... so in the right place at the right time and though weather predictions were for the commencement of 'a really hot, sultry week, where temps. may get into the early 30's 'down south'', none of that was happening here, mid morning at the sometimes ill-named 'Brightside'. Sunday mid-morning had me early over in Rotherham for birthday celebrations, mum was 91 and she had suggested I come here first to photograph this odd working coming down from Shipley, small white lie there but no matter! To 'big up' the look of a rather glum Brightside a set of 2 different traction types on both road and rail. On the tracks is a Colas liveried Civil Engineers train with around 800 tonnes in tow, 5 full of new ballast, 3 half full and 4 full old ballast, hauled by smart looking Colas class 56, 56105. Passing along the up line into Sheffield at 11:09, 15 minutes early whilst, on the left and a bit of colourful interest to the background a green 'Kingstown Furniture' truck makes its way towards Brightside, helping to make it live up to its name! On the right and now right in front of the camera and positioned to avoid those bl**** blue lamp standards, wouldn't mind if they worked, is Colas 56105 on the 6C53 Shipley to Toton North Yard move, presumably taking spent ballast back for cleaning and re-use. Now in the background and removing 'brightness' from Brightside is another colourful liveried HGV, this time in the form of the 'Ocado Online Supermarket' unit adding pick-ness to the gloom of the sky towards Meadowhall station, seen under the bridge in the background. The extensive passenger 'platform accommodation' maybe glimpsed here in the form of up and down line, rusty 'bus shelter' type provision; I am sure these were very hand in the midst of cold howling wind and rain, or snow, in the middle of winter!

Sheffield Forgemasters International (commonly called just Forgemasters or Sheffield Forgemasters) is a heavy engineering firm in Carbrook Street, Sheffield, South Yorkshire.

The company was established in 1983 from the merger of Firth Brown and British Steel's River Don Works Forging operations, as a public company. Their buildings now dominate the Brightside area of East Sheffield. The company can trace its heritage back to the start of the steel industry in Sheffield in the 18th century. The firms of Vickers, Cammells, and Armstrong-Whitworth were all nationalised to form British Steel in the 1960s.

Forgemasters specialises in forged and cast parts for suppliers to the engineering, nuclear, oil, petrochemical, and process industries worldwide. The company has the American Society of Mechanical Engineers N-stamp accreditation for critical nuclear components, having produced major components for the Astute class submarines and the civil nuclear industry, including Sizewell B, the UK's only pressurised water reactor.

Sheffield Forgemasters currently has the capacity for pouring the largest single ingot (570 tonnes) in Europe. The two forging presses in use can exert a pressure of 2,500 tonnes and 10,000 tonnes on a billet of steel. The 2,500 ton press dates back to 1897 and was originally steam powered, and after several upgrades is now hydraulically operated.

* Brightside Station

* A 103Mby, 2min 15s, MP4 phone video, so can be watched within the Flickr interface.

Finally for this section, a video taken of the passage of the Charter set from the reversal point at Brightside Sidings, passing along the back road at the old Brightside Station site and along to Wincobank Junction at Meadowhall to access the Blackburn Valley Line to Barnsley and then Penistone, my next port-of call. This is today's charter outing, 'The Sinfin Syphons', today its 'The Primary Colours' section, 1Z41 from York to Rose Hill Marple via reversal here at Brightside, then along the Blackburn Valley Line north to Penistone and Huddersfield, Guide Bridge and Marple. There are 10 coaches in the train behind 37423 are in maroon livery, 3115, SC1730(CLC livery), 3096 (maroon livery), SC3150(CLC livery), in maroon livery 13229, 35185, 5028, 1859, 4856 & 4831 with 37422 at the back.

Also in the scene, heading this way and passing the Charter set after a station stop at Meadowhall, is Northern Rail unit class 195, 'Civity', 'CAF, Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, S.A.', 195022, on the 1Y17, Leeds via Sheffield to Nottingham service. And, last in the scene, a passenger DMU, a Northern Rail class 150, 150222, can be seen heading north along the main line after the Charter has cleared the coss-overs behind in the distance, the DMU is on the 2B85, Retford via Sheffield to Meadowhall terminating service.

Apologies for the repeated zooming and the somewhat 'wobbly' view at the beginning..

* Brightside Station

PArt of the reason for selecting this location, or indeed along the Blackburn Valley liner to the north of here, was to catch a glimpse of the diverted EMR HST sets of which there were only 4, 3 south-bound at 10:22, 11:04 & 15:04, with one north-bound at 21:44. I had planned to grab a shot of one of these for the last 2 weekends but other matters meant I didn't make it, but with engineering possession on today and with a total of no less than 12 engineering trains in the area up to the early hours of Monday morning, it appeared pertinent to come over and see what was to be seen. I have to say here, that I am grateful to Gavin.B and BonsoirBaz for unravelling all the details of these workings, which has made it somewhat easier to figure what was going where, when and under what circumstances! At left in this pair of shots, a Northern Rail class 158, 158870, has taken the 'goods turn-out' back along the line towards the Brightside Sidings and is cautiously threading its way along to Wincobank Junction and the Blackburn Vally Line on the 2L06, from Sheffield to Leeds; its a very good things that this line wasn't removed in the extensive rationalisation purges in the 1980s! Shame the gardening hasn't been undertaken for this occasion as this would have made the shots far better, this area needs the same work going on it as the old Masbrough Station site has had done in the last year or so. Once the DMU had cleared away to the north, the next working, an EMR HST set could be seen approaching the cross-over to the north of Meadowhall Station where it changed from the south-bound line along platform 3, to the north-bound platform, along platform 4 so that it could access the Brightside 'back line'. This move appeared to take a bit of time as it was 5 minutes late passing this point after clearing Meadowhall where it was not due to stop, just maybe things were being taken cautiously... quite right too. With DBS 66113 on the right, having come in on the 600 tonne, 6T53, Belmont Down Yard to Holmes Junction, it will depart in about 2 hours, hauling 1200 tonnes of spent ballast. Meanwhile the EMR HST set is slowly approaching on the 2nd of this morning's diverted workings, this one the 1C43, Leeds via Brightside Goods Loop to St. Pancras International service. The leading power car is class 43, 43257 and at the rear, 43307.

Yet another weekend of Civil Engineering activity, related to the remodelling of the station lines at Derby. This has been going on now for several weeks, obviously, and will see the removal of redundant goods loops and replaced by new platform faces. Having been otherwise distracted in the previous weeks, thought it may have been worthwhile to get out and see some of the traction pass back along the Midland Main line, either north, towards Doncaster or south, towards Toton. Unfortunately this mornings offerings, 2 moves from the Sheffield to the south and then back through here and only one other, the latter actually running 212 minutes late from St. Mary's Junction, and so missed. This turned out to be a couple of Freightliners, double-headed, 66526 and 66504, of which the latter had seen some problems and was the reason for the long delay; these locos were working the 6B87, St. Mary's South Junction via Brightside Sidings to Toton North Yard and in fact performed the reversal south of here at Mill Race. The 1st of the two offering however, ran to time, and it is seen here heading along the main line having gone all the way south to Chesterfield from Sheffield, to reverse and come back north and it is now heading to Doncaster, this being the 6C52, Sheffield via Chesterfield to Doncaster Up Decoy working. It is operated by Colas Rail with two of their class 56s, in top-and-tail fashion this time, 56078 leads here and 56113 is on the back. The set has just gone past the old S.D.R.'s track-bed at Brightside Junction which took their line over through what became Tinsley Yard, and on south to meet the 'Old Road at Treeton South Junction; the former now all long gone of course. The two 56s have a couple of JNA bogie wagons with what looks like new ballast in the front one and old, recovered material in the rear one. Sandwiched between the JNA's is one of the Swedish RailVacs, possibly, 99709515002-2, made by RailCare and is RAUK-1 On-Track B.V.E.S., Ballast Vacuum Extraction System; a big hoover!

** This is a 1m video, so can be viewed to the full in the Flickr interface, the limit now being 10 minutes ...

Having shot a video of a passenger charter, 'The Luca Pezzulo Express', B.L.S Charter from Lancaster to Hull via Stocksbridge Works which, remarkably, came all the way up the Stocksbridge Branch to the Ellen Wood Sidings for this first ever time, on Saturday 24th July, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/48362959151/

and having had a job holding both the EOS DSLR, focusing, pressing the shutter _and_ attempting to start a video, but selecting he wrong orientation at the last second, on my Samsung S7E whilst pointing it in the same direction, _all_ without dropping the phone and making a mess of the stills, produced only an average result. There was clearly a case for having the phone mounted atop the DSLR so all the above problems could be overcome and today, equipped with a 'hot-shoe' mobile phone holder, the results were much better and I had remembered NOT to attempt to shoot the video in portrait mode, which is what was done on July 24th. No reason to use portrait mode either, other than a concern for being able to keep hold of the phone much more easily in that orientation than in landscape mode but now, this is taken car of by the holder... its well made, small and light and cost 15 quid... much better than risking dropping the phone, over a fence and into goodness know what sort of accessible or not, environment!

So this is the first go at using the holder, and its not bad at all, the 1 minute passage of the Bardon Stone train from Tinsley Yard, heard before it comes into sight, and coming down the Broughton Lane Bank with GBRf class 66, 66775, F231, 'H.M.S. Argyll' on the 6M01, Tinsley Yard to Bardon Hill empties return via Sheffield Midland station; shame no trams came through whilst this was happening, though frequent, a 1 minute view isn't enough for that...

* Brightside

TAn example of the usual turn-out for 'Flying Scotsman' can be seen on the rusting Brightside Station footbridge and its likely they are stood in piles of accumulated rubbish of one sort or another, some of which gets blown onto the bridge and starts the plant rooting process off on its merry way.. Also interesting to note how little protection folk got when using the stairs onto the platforms, the stairs featuring open sided hand-rails and ditto the steps though the wooden steps themselves have long been removed. 60103 is heading past Sheffield PSB's S0190 signal showing a yellow aspect with the feather lit for the turn-out into the sidings, about half a mile along the tracks to the left. The Brightside goods loop, recently re-railed and re-ballasted, can be seen at the back of the charming looking bus-shelter type accommodation for passengers using this station before the early 1990s and the loop is bi-directionally signalled, the one seen here on the right, S0188, also with feather for cross-overs into the Brightside Up/Down East Slow sidings, into which the Charter Tour is about to pull into. The driver is peering out of the cab window and is that a stem leak at the side of the tender? No steam from the chimney and little from the over-pressure valves and plenty of coal left, though the return Tour has only been 'on the road' for 90 minutes, at this time. The W.C.R.C. Steam hauled 'Great Britain XII Charter Tour' is on the return leg, ostensibly to Paddington on the 1Z31 section, with L.N.E.R., 'London & North Eastern Railway', class A3, 4-6-2 Pacific, ex-4472, now 60103, its TOPS number being 98872, 'Flying Scotsman' en-route from Scarborough 2 days ago to York and now York to Paddington Station. The set was delayed a little more south of here due, it turns out to a broken rail, at Dore Station South on the main south-bound line, though the Charter was given authority to pass through and the rail was repaired on Sunday night. There were further delays in Derbyshire further south due to trespass on the line and, according to the time-table, the set didn't go further than Reading, by which time it had gradually accrued my delay and was 3 hours down by the time it got to Reading. The time-table indicated-'This service was cancelled between Reading and London Paddington due to a problem with a steam locomotive (ME)', though can't find any indication what the problem was.. must have been expensive to get all the passengers back from Reading to Paddington and so late...

With passage of the T.P.E. E.C.S. move out of the way, it was in the time-table again for Sunday but was cancelled and again for today, Monday 14th, 'Valentines Day', and it has run on the 5Z18 and 5Z19 diagrams; it is currently heading towards Scunthorpe. Just 7 minutes later and the next non-passenger working was in the area, this time of the 'Heavy Haul' type, a Freightliner class 70, the 1st of its class, 700001, on another regular schedule, this one 6M89, the Dewsbury Blue Circle works and along the Hope Valley to Earles Sidings at Hope. This working was once again slowed due to a restrictive aspect on the signal, S0168, in the Brightside Sidings/Mill Race area ahead along the line towards Sheffield. The slowing of the loco, as it approached the station under-bridge from Meadowhall, caused it to emit a hug pall of smoke once the aspect changed to green and on this picture, the result of 'stepping on the gas' can be seen, and what a noise! Although this is designated as a 'Heavy Haul' move, the 70 had only 20, empty PCA cement tanks on, with a timing load of 600 tonnes so can't see what all the 'fuss' was about.. The class 70s fell out of use a while back around these parts but they were brought out once more a while ago for freight use, but you don't see many of them.. Cement is produced in the Hope Valley at the Castleton Cement Works in Edale and there is a very lively trade to and from there to all points of the compass and the same can be said of the Peak Forest operation further west towards Buxton; it looks as if these lines will be well used for the foreseeable future...

Thinking this working was quite a bit south of Sheffield Station, talks continued with fellow rail 'enthusiast', Keith, a welcome fountain of knowledge who helped me sort out the class 45 pictures I will be uploading soon in the next of the 'Window on the Past' series, from the negative media of Adrian Wynn... So, glancing up towards the south in the a lull in the conversation and the bl**** thing was almost underneath us approaching from the Brightside Sidings in the distance.. With the sky dark with the threat of a downpour, the set turned out to be not the 'Yellow Banana' H.S.T. Test Train, but something a bit more interesting; shame I hadn't given is a bit more due diligence! Still a very worthy contrast in the livery of the set with the surrounding landscape, 'Sheffield Forgemasters' stands in the background at left fully lit by the late morning sun, the centre of Sheffield also stands clear in the background. Operating the N.M.T., 'New Measurement Train' with 4 of the distinctive yellow coaches in tow, is class 43, H.S.T., 43277 ex-43077, named the 'Safety Task Force’, operated by Colas Rail on behalf of Network Rail. Today its the usual 'reporting number', 1Q64, running from Derby Railway Technical Centre, R.T.C., but heading not to Hull Paragon, but for a reversal instead at Brough Station, 15km to the west of Hull, the line between Brough and Hull being under a Sunday Engineering Possession by Network Rail. At the rear is fellow class 43, H.S.T. 43290; make the best of the passage of any H.S.T., class 43s... the passenger locomotives of this type is to be withdrawn by Cross Country in September... the Test TRain sets will continue but elsewhere, their days appear to be numbered..

And here is the star of the show. Unexpectedly, for me, a BR green liveried class 37 in charge of the Derby R.T.C. Test Train working back .. to Derby R.T.C. in an 'all over the world' type operation round the Network, ending up at London's Kings Cross station in early evening around 20:30, before setting of 'back oop north'. BR green liveried 37057, ex-D6757, 'Viking' is seen here slowing as it enters the derelict 'Brightside', just about living up to its namesake today, station and with the RHTT already poking its nose out of the junction behind the camera, as it exits the Blackburn Valley line onto the Midland Main Line at WIncobank junction, Meadowhall. This is the 'HST' set, as indicated in the time-table, but as it turned out, far more interesting than that, working the 1Q19 Derby R.T.C via Kings Cross and Sheffield twice, back to Derby R.T.C working. Its path, for anyone interested, and I have confess to being interested in this stuff was as follows-

Derby R.T.C.(Network Rail), Derby Way & Works Sidings, Derby, Ambergate Jn, Clay Cross North Jn, Chesterfield South Jn, Chesterfield, Tapton Jn, Dore Station Jn, Sheffield, Nunnery Main Line Jn, Wincobank Jn., Meadowhall, Holmes Jn, Aldwarke Jn, Thrybergh Jn, Mexborough, Hexthorpe Jn, Doncaster, Shaftholme Jn, Temple Hirst Jn., Selby, Temple Hirst Jn., Shaftholme Jn, Donc. Marshgate Jn., Doncaster, Loversall Carr Jn, Ranskill Loop, Retford, Carlton On Trent Loop, Newark F.C., Newark North Gate, Claypole Loop, Grantham, Highdyke Jn., Stoke Jn., Tallington Jn., Peterborough, Fletton Jn., Connington South Jn, Connington Loop, Huntingdon, Sandy, Hitchin, Stevenage, Woolmer Green Jn., Digswell Jn., Welwyn Garden City, Potters Bar, Alexandra Palace, Finsbury Park, Holloway Sth. Jn., Belle Isle, LONDON KINGS CROSS, Belle Isle, Finsbury Park, Alexandra Palace, Potters Bar, Welwyn Garden City, Digswell Jn., Woolmer Green Jn., Stevenage, Hitchin, Sandy, Huntingdon, Connington South Jn, Holme Jn., Fletton Jn., Peterborough, Helpston Jn., Tallington Jn., Stoke Jn., Grantham, Nottingham Branch Jn, Claypole Loop, Newark North Gate, Newark F.C., Carlton On Trent Loop, Retford, Babworth Loop, Ranskill Loop, Loversall Carr Jn, Decoy Nth Jn, Bridge Jn, Doncaster, Donc. Marshgate Jn., Doncaster, Hexthorpe Jn, Mexborough, Swinton (S.Yorks), Aldwarke Jn, Holmes Jn, Wincobank Jn., Nunnery Main Line Jn, SHEFFIELD (01:15), Dore Station Jn, Tapton Jn, Chesterfield, Chesterfield South Jn, Clay Cross North Jn, Ambergate Jn, Derby, Derby R.T.C.(Network Rail).

Note it was back in Sheffield at just after 1am for any real stalwart enthusiasts... hello Marcus...Sheffield PSB's S190 signal is at green indicating the RHTT set has been given a clear run through the old station, as will be seen next..

It looked like something from 'Dante's Inferno' on arrival at the site and looking north to where the new ballast was being lifted out of the red, MHA, 'lobster' wagons and deposited in the trench where the old down line used to be. The air was full of dust and heat and muck and the guys 'down below' must have been sweltering already even before the daytime temperature there reached 30C. The loco under the bridge is 66021 and I was informed this would come forwards with the ballast in around an hour and a half, too long to hang around really. The train in front needed to back up a little first to allow sand to be dropped into the excavated trench at either side of the footbridge once the remaining spoil further along the line south, had been deposited into the MHA wagons at the front. One the right, stretching away towards Meadowhall, a long line of what I understand are called 'lobster' wagons, for obvious reasons, full of new ballast which is being off-loaded into the prepared trench; sand being deposited first, followed by a white plastic membrane and then the ballast, The dust and commotion all along the line alongside the wagons is clear to see, what isn't so clear is that there is another DBS, EWS liveried class 66, 66092, ballast train waiting in the distance alongside platform 2 at Meadowhall; it is just visible under the blue footbridge across the tracks which connects the Blackburn Valley and main line platforms. Looking at my notes I see the last visit to this location occured some while ago, October 10th, 2016, when a rake of old HEA coal/coke hoppers was brought south from Tees North Yard to the scrap yard, European Metal Recyclers, at Attercliffe sidings, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/29629887173/

As mentioned in the comments below the picture, another sad demise of some old railway wagons which had been stores at the YArd since last being used on the Redcar to Scunthorpe coke trains in 2009, one, 361000, being preserved at Shildon.

And finally, another duo in similar fashion to the earlier T.P.E. class 68, always good to get a good dollop of the surrounding industry into these shots but nowadays its all reducing due to redevelopment and what-not so have to make the best of what still exists. Freightliner, class 70, 'leader of the pack', 70001 is on the regular return empties from the Dewsbury Blue Circle cement works to the Earles Sidings at Hope on the 6M89 working, hauling 25 PCA Cement Tanks, timing load 600 tonnes. Once at Earles Sidings, the wagons will be separated into batches of about 10 and hauled up-grade to the cement works by the resident class 20, #2, which is a H.N.R.C leased class 20, 20168, 'Sir George Earle', it then takes the wagons on the 3km run up to the Castleton Cement Works where they are re-filled. It then brings them back down and takes another empty set back to also be filled after which it brings these back to the original rake and assembles the whole lot into the next cement working out of the sidings... Bit long-winded but this is how its been done for years, the incline and the single-track curvature being too much for a larger loco to deal with. no need to fix it, if it's not broken...

In the right shot, a bit of background enhancement has been applied to show up the sunlit slopes of Sheffield City centre and it looks like the restricted access on signal S1068 ahead is still in place, its 11:30 and passenger traction through the station is probably slowing things up a bit, 70001 wasn't delayed however and it arrived at Earles Sidings 3 minutes early at 12:12, having left the Dewsbury area at 13 minutes early at 09:37..

Walking along the Five Weirs Walk crossing Bailey Bridge as it travels over the River Don, in Sheffield, South Yorkshire.

The Bailey Bridge was invented by Sir Donald Bailey and still in use all over the world wherever an ‘instant bridge’ is needed. The restored bridge, with contemporary lighting and stainless steel parapets, will celebrate this incredibly successful example of South Yorkshire ingenuity.

Bailey Bridging was developed in South Yorkshire during the last war by Sir Donald Bailey to enable ‘instant‘ bridges of varying spans and carrying capacities to be speedily erected, manually, by unskilled labour and without heavy machinery or cranes. Donald Bailey was born in Rotherham and trained as a civil engineer at the University of Sheffield, before joining the Ministry of Supply just before the start of WW2.

Bailey designed the bridge in 1939 and it soon became a major asset to the Allied armies as they began the reconquest of Nazi occupied territory in North Africa, Italy, Normandy and Germany. General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, believed the Bailey Bridge to have been one of the three most important inventions of the war, alongside Radar and the Heavy Bomber.

Thw Bailey Bridge used here dates from 1945, was built probably for the D-Day landings and was chosen deliberately to celebrate the world-beating engineering design. The unique features of the invention were that a bridge capable of carrying tanks could be erected in a matter of hours from standard lightweight modules with little more than human muscle power and hand tools. With military use in mind it could also be erected and launched across a river from one bank.

It has been restored and adapted by Mandall Engineering of Sheffield and erected in the Sheffield Forgemasters River Don Works, the only building large enough to contain it. It was be brought to site in two sections, by road, and craned into place for fixing by main contractor Land and Water Ltd. Who have constructed the rest of the walk and the concrete abutments. Design of the installation and adaptation to modern use had been carried out by the City Council’s Bridges and Structures Section, who also designed the Cobweb Bridge.

The work on the back line at Brightside Station has been going on now for a few weeks and this was the 1st opportunity to go have a look but unfortunately I had left it a bit late to get a photograph of a scrap wagon. i.e. wagons for scrapping, train which was taking the wagons into the scrap yard at Attercliffe, the E.M.R., European Metal Recyclers. The return out of the yard for the light engine move, having deposited the box wagons, back to Belmont Down Yard, was just 30 minutes before my arrival, which was a bit of a pain, to say the least. Anyhow, withing about 15 minutes, the usual traction through here provided a bit of a colourful lift on this cool, glum afternoon. The top left picture shows a Northern Rail class 144 DMU, 144007, having just passed the end of the loop to the south at the Sheffield end, with a couple of Network Rail vans stood off to the left, but nothing much actually going on. 144007 is on the regular 2R71, Sheffield to Scunthorpe service. The picture indicates that the whole section of line, its sleepers and ballast have been removed, some of the former can be seen strewn around on the embankment beyond the wall with old sleepers on the platform end. At top right another DMU, this time 'Sprinter' class 158, 158859, hurtles south on the 'Express' service, 1L85, from Leeds to Sheffield and will have just had a station stop on the Blackburn Valley line at Wincobank. More materials are stored on the old platform next to the rusting bus-shelter type passenger waiting facility! At top left, 'The Railway' pub, still in operation and with a new board advertising its presence with possibly a London & North Western class 4-2-2, #123, with 7 foot driving wheels, at the front of a freight train. At lower left, it looks like the re-ballasting of the sleepers and rails has started at the far end of the loop and it looks as if the renewal work has continued all the way along to Wincobank Junction, in the distance. This loop is hardly ever used but clearly it has enough importance to warrant the renewal, Stem Rail tours use this line if they are taking the Blackburn Valley route, but that's only 2 or 3 times a year and Track Machines also use this for the same reason. Occasionally a DMU will be re-routed in there for some reason such as the main lines or junction at Wincobank, ahead, is being worked on, but again that too doesn't happen very often... meanwhile on the main line in this picture, another DMU service, 2Y82, passes north on the Sheffield to York run with this time, class 142, 142026 in charge of the service. The old sleepers which have been stored on the platform, certainly did look in need of replacement. Finally, looking south towards Sheffield once more, with no sign of the wagons for scrap being parked in the Attercliffe sidings, so the loco must have pushed them straight into the E.M.R. yard, another DMU, 144021, now approaches from Sheffield once more, this time en-route to Huddersfield on the 2B48 service. It is seen having just passed the entrance to the loop line, this end looking distinctly 'wobbly' and unsupported as it snakes towards the camera. The 'STOP' board is in place at the end and there is more detritus lying about the place and piles of new ballast stored just beyond the old Brightside Signal Cabin, now a graffiti'd relay room, as is the building next to it on this side. The junction over to Tinsley Yard curves away where the pile of ballast is being stored, this being Brightside Junction, this material sitting on the trackbed of the old S.D.R. metals. Looks as if someone has chipped through the rendering on the brickwork where the graffiti has been applied on this side of the larger building, or maybe some graffiti wag has just sprayed a brickwork pattern onto the top of the old 'artwork'. Looks like another addition has been made to the buildings as well, the small grey, green 'windowed', cabin with tapered front is a new addition... maybe things are afoot to remove all the old, time-expired facilities in the other two buildings. I would have said however that the large cubic structure with the flat grey roof, is now something of an icon at this location. The large black building on the left is Sheffield Forgemasters and behind that, the Postal Sorting office and beyond that, the E.M.R. and Cemex Cement Yards, both rail connected and in use regularly these days... all to the good.

* Brightside Station

The final 'triad ' in this first set at Brightside, shows D.R.S. 37423, powering along the back line at Brightside, not all that regular an occurrence, with now the full coach set in view along the line and in the distance, a passenger DMU, Northern class 150, 150222, awaiting the off to get through to Meadowhall where it will terminate. There are 10 coaches in the train behind 37423 are in maroon livery, 3115, SC1730(CLC livery), 3096 (maroon livery), SC3150(CLC livery), in maroon livery 13229, 35185, 5028, 1859, 4856 & 4831 with 37422 now at the back; a very fine set this looks as well passing through this fairly iconic, if somewhat grotty, location. Unfortunately, the old, prominent white 'Railway Public House', standing sentinel over the site, is now shrouded by the usual bloody birch tree growth, a very invasive weed in my view... the old chapel to its right has now been sold and is occupied but it too will soon be obscured. The two locos appear to be performing well know, sadly this wasn't to last as there were more traction problems towards the end of the day. At centre, with tree growth now sprouting out of the bridge supports, 37423 power up and produces the 'clag' as it rattles along the Brightside Up/Down East Slow line heading for Wincobank Junction ahead in the distance. The 1st, and all, coaches looked in very good condition, on view here is 3115 and in 'Blood and Custard', type, the 'British Railways', 'Crimson Lake and Cream', CLC livery of the 1950’s, is carriage SC1730. The lines here have recently been re-ballasted and re-railed and the old metals are still lying about the place as, in the distance, heading this way after at Station stop at Meadowhall, is Northern Rail unit class 195, 'Civity" "CAF, Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, S.A.', 195022, on the 1Y17, Leeds via Sheffield to Nottingham service. The latter and the class 37 are shown to best advantage in the last picture of this series at far right, where the pair are seen passing one another close to the Jenkin Road bridge. As 195022 heads into Sheffield and then on to Nottingham, at left, on the back line, 37423 heads along to turn off north at Meadowhall on the 1Z41 from York to Rose Hill Marple passing along the Blackburn Valley Line north to Penistone and Huddersfield, Guide Bridge and Marple.

The driver has finally got the green on Sheffield's S199 ahead for authority to proceed through the 'Hell that is Meadow' and powers up producing a nice cloud of 'clag' in the Autumn weather with a lot of cheers going on as it gets underway. The 20s are sallying forth through the station as well, no passengers to pick up since this station closed when the new Meadowhall Interchange was built in the 1990s, but the remnants of what the place looked like can still be seen here, the whole lot enhanced by the 2 lots of classic traction on offer. The leading BR green 37 still has its old reporting number showing in the front display boxes, '1E09' and at rear, another gem, a Colas liveried class 37, 37219. Some information relating to 37057, 'Viking'-

Class 37/0 Number 37057

Current Allocation Details

Number: 37057

Class: 37/0

Depot: BH - Barrow Hill Roundhouse Museum

Pool: HNRL - Harry Needle Rail Ltd - Locomotive Fleet for Lease

Livery: GB - Green - B.R. Style

Builder: English Electric Vulcan Foundry

Built: 05/10/1962

Works Number: E3049/D711

37057 Named: 12/11/1989 un-named: 26/04/1996: Viking

37057 Named: 25/04/1996: Viking

37057 Renumbered

From D6757 on 31/12/1973

The RHTT Sandite units are starting to look 'mucky' and we are only into the 2nd week, this being the 4th run of the season... Autumn colours are resplendent and there was a 4-planet alignment in the eastern skies early on Monday morning... Venus, MArs, Jupiter, the Moon waning, and just above the 'rim of the world', close to the sun of course which was still below out high horizon, Mercury glowered like a jewel...

* Meadowhall Station

Moving off to Meadowhall, 'masking up' even though its required by law on this day, better safe than sorry and best to show good intent, including at least 2m distancing. Kind of disappointing in a way as all the traction had moved off further east, or west, as these two shots show. At left, looking towards the Tinsley Viaduct and the passage of an outfit, 'Maritime' who currently had one of their branded locos sat at Masbrough Station, although I didn't get a shot of this, Gavin.B did, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/49068127@N06/50006609282/

which had only arrived about an hour before these shots were taken; should have made the effort to go over and take a look but a 'Click-N-Collect' was imminent followed by a distanced family meeting in the garden at 2pm, so... Underneath the arches, just as the line curves around towards Holmes Junction, the second type of Colas traction in the area today, class 70, 70813 sits having come in on the 1400 tonne, 6C82, Belmont Down Yard to Masbrough Junction working and arriving at 00:25 this morning. It will leave here, at 16:43 this afternoon, on the same working, also with 1400 tonnes, of spent ballast presumably, on the return Brightside to Toton North Yard move. The station was of course bereft of passengers, the NR Line Possession extending from north of the Brightside Sidings, all the way along to Holmes Junction and Masbrough. In the right shot, looking south towards Brightside, on the left, a graffiti'd lineside cabin, and the location of the old Wincobank Signalbox, in the hazy distance, red liveried DBC class 66, 66113 stands ready to depart in a couple of hours on the 6T53, Brightside via Chesterfield and back to Belmont Down Yard. Coming off the Blackburn Valley, wrong-line, another class 158, this time 158784 on the Leeds via the Brightside back line to Sheffield service, 2L03, it snakes its way slowly along, there looks to be 25mph speed restrictions on all the lines affected by the diverted routing. Ahead, in the 'goods loop/back line' the signal, S0197, for moves south back onto the main line crossover into Sheffield, is showing red with therefore, no lit feather; it must have changed fairly quickly as the service went straight through on time. Eerily quiet on the station as it was elsewhere, until the bottom section of the Tinsley was reached, the next stop, where things changed a bit...

* Blackburn Meadows

In the left picture here, having moved along the Tinsley Viaduct road towards Templeborough to grab a dozen or so shots of the workings of the Sewage facility, with gushing brown water, inquisitive gulls and and a lot of weird churning and water movement going on, it was possible to take this shot showing one of the old Blackburn Meadows buildings, at lower right, set amidst the huge, in parts, concrete structures which now exist to deal with all our poo! Rising in the background is the 'Roman Ridge Dyke', to the right, Kimberworth, one of the oldest settlements in the area whilst at lower left in the foreground is one of the big 'poo channels'; though looking rather empty. Sat amidst the green lane of trees on the North Midland, Colas class 70, 70813 is having new ballast off-loaded along the track to the rear of the consist with the old material piled up in the front wagons, the train will be leaving here in a few hours at 16:43 and making its way south to Toton North Yard. At right, having decided to leave the works and its wonderful smells, a final shot over one of solid sections of fence which runs along the viaduct, those sections over-looking any railway formation, this one seeming a long way below. The guys below had just unrolled the white PVC stuff, laying into the excavated track-bed, then only minutes later, rolled it all back up and tossed to the side of the formation, which is where its at now.. Is this a water-proof membrane, one wonders, the canal and river, though lower down, are not far off and in fact at one point, just to the back of the train, near the footbridge which crosses the tracks, the river curves north towards the railway and on the bend where it curves back south out of the loop, is where the separate canal formation starts. The large, wide Don weir is just at this location right next to where the canal branches off, the first of the locks on this section, Jordan Lock, is a few hundred metres from the bend in the river.

A list of some of the major players, including the 3 passenger moves, taking part in the Engineering Possession this last Sunday, gleaned from the information proved as mentioned earlier, the time-table and from my own shots, there were also another 7 which came and went during the course of the 20-odd hours during which the work took place-

Civils.

Colas 56094 56302 6C80 Belmont Down Yard via Brightside to Wincobank Junction

Colas 56094 6C80 Masbrough Junction to Belmont Down Yard

Colas 56302 6C80 Brightside to Toton North Yard

DBC 66113 6T53 Belmont Down Yard to Holmes Junction & Brightside via Chesterfield to Belmont Down Yard

Colas 70813 6C82 Belmont Down Yard to Masbrough Junction & Brightside to Toton North Yard

GBRf 66718 6G41 Belmont Down Yard to Masbrough Junction & Brightside to Toton North Yard

GBRf 66733 7G40 Belmont Down Yard to Holmes Junction & Brightside to Toton North Yard

Passenger.

NR 158870 2L06 Sheffield via Brightside Goods Loop to Leeds

NR 158874 2B11 Huddersfield via Brightside Goods Loop to Sheffield

EMR 43257 43307 1C43 Leeds via Brightside Goods Loop to St. Pancras International

Having left the line possession at Stenson Junction, 29 minutes late at 08:48, the shortish engineer's train then went into Burton West Yard and disappeared for about another 30 minutes ultimately being 64 mins late at Castle Donnington. The route after that was clear all the way through for a straight run, but having arrived in Sheffield was halted for 5-6 minutes on platform 2 at signal S0127, due to passenger stock moves, but having picked up 15 minutes on the journey north to here, was now running 50 late. At the front a Colas Rail class 70, 70801, not seen by me in these parts before and indeed, the down-turn in the use of class 70s has meant the last time one was photographed was a year ago, see-

www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/37423346435/

with 70809 in charge heading south at Woodhouse Mill, to Briton Ferry Yard from Leeds with a rake of empty coal hoppers; though not sure they were being used for coal anymore by this time. Today, its good to see another class 70, heading the 6C77 600 tonne Engineers working from Stenson Junction, now to Belmont Down Yard in Doncaster. The newly re-ballasted and re-railed Brightside loop is over on the right, bi-directionally signalled and in use once more; the RHTT set on Friday afternoon being put in there en-route to the Blackburn Valley due to busy passenger traffic passing through.