LarryG's general album

[LarryG]

The visit below to the Cambrian coast line was in 1960. A smartly turned out 2251 Class No. 2255 was rolling into Afon Wen when a bloke walked right in front of me. Isn't it always the way....


A shot out the window of the blood & custard Collett brake Composite as we passed Black Rock. I remember there was a Small Prairie on shed when we reached Portmadoc...

 

[LarryG]

I spent two days on the Cambrian coast. BR.Cl.4 no,. 75018 (green) was busying itself shunting coaches for the 'Welshman' in Portmadoc station on 21st August 1964...


On board the 6.57pm from Portmadoc to Bangor awaiting a signal into Afon Wen station. The signal was caught lowering before it regained its normal lowered position...

 

[daifly]

Big trouble I'd say Dia. Wrong line working or doing a shunt movement out of Barmouth Junction?

Looks like sinking sands at Barmouth, very uncomfortable and unstable.

I'm no expert but I suspect that it was running tender first right-line. The lamp on the smokebox may be a tail red. In these photos
from t'other side, there's a lamp on the ground near the tender which I'll postulate was on the tender. The crew would presumably have had reduced visibility of the state of the track ahead too.
Dave

 

[LarryG]

Looks to have gone through the buffers beyond the crossover onto the single line section to Barmouth. The loco carries BR lined black and red-back number plates so I'm guessing very early 1950's.

 

[LarryG]

My 1964 North Wales runabout ticket was the dearer version that extended travel eastbound beyond Shotton to Chester and Wrexham. Mary and I also took in a trip to Amlwch behind or in front of(!) BR No.84001, little knowing it would close 3 months later.


Entering the original Britannia Bridge with the loco pushing en route from Bangor to Amlwch...

 

[Allen M]

It's about 20 years ago now I had a cab ride from Barmouth to Pwliheli. With my wife we had our caravan at Fairbourn and use a Wales travel ticket. First went to Machynilleth. The to the end of the line at Pwliheli and reverse back to Fairbourn. Before starting out from Machynilleth I went to the driver, cap in hand and asked about a cab ride stating I fully understood if the answer was no. He told be to ride next to the cab and he would see. I was called in just after passing the other train at Barmouth. A very pleasant, unofficial ride. It was a 2 car unit, I think a class 150.
No camera with me, you know how it is.
Regards
Allen Morgan

 

[LarryG]

There is a lot to be said for a DMU cabride Allen. Rail Editor Peter Kelly had asked me to do the on-train photoshoot while he did the interview with Regional Rail bosses on green Metro-Camm 'Daisy'. Job done, the accompanying inspector and I spent most of an afternoon in the cab riding the north Wales mainline (1984).

 

[LarryG]

From mid 1961, our holiday base camp became my mothers flat near Abergele & Pensarn station.

I went down to the beach for an early evening stroll and saw this Stanier 5MT 2-6-0 speeding along the coast with live and frozen meat from Holyhead on 22nd August 1963. Behind the train was Abergele golf course; now under the A55 and a housing development...

 

[JasonBz]

There is a lot to be said for a DMU cabride Allen. Rail Editor Peter Kelly had asked me to do the on-train photoshoot while he did the interview with Regional Rail bosses on green Metro-Camm 'Daisy'. Job done, the accompanying inspector and I spent most of an afternoon in the cab riding the north Wales mainline (1984).

It certainly gives you a much better view of what the railway looks like from the sharp end (or the back end in my case of course )

I like to think I made some peoples holiday snaps that little bit better by letting them into the back (on the secondman's side!) for a picture or two of the ride over the Royal Albert or down the line down to wherever.....

 

[simond]

Nice TM did that for me & the kids when Javelins were new...

 

[LarryG]

It was Saturday afternoon in the late summer of 1963 and I went down to the beach with my mothers box camera. 4F No. 44389 had turned up to shunt the yard at Abergele while No.70036 'Boadicea' was on the Down Slow line approaching the station....


A general view of Abergele in 1963. It's an impossible shot by late afternoon when one is looking directly into the sun. How busy it all looked with quadruple tracks, sidings and camping coaches behind the platform on the right...

Further down the beach, the crew of the 4F were wasting no time to get back to Llandudno Junction, and the only way to capture the scene with a box camera was to pan with it...

 

[LarryG]

An unidentified Black Five is signaled away from Abergele on the up slow line. LNWR Camping coaches can just be seen behind the platform


1965 was the beginning of the end for the North Wales line as we knew it. Black Five No. 45263 of Nuneaton Shed craws through Abergele wrong line with an Up frozen meat train from Holyhead. The adjacent down slow track was already out of use and the Up slow track to Rhyl would soon follow. The footbridge was taken down during the following Winter...…


Abergele & Pensarn in all its glory but it wasn't to last. Station staff were no longer attending the gardens between the Up and down lines, and the platform canopies would soon be taken down. A Brush Type 4 passes through with the 1D56, which I think was a Nottingham or Stoke to Rhyl working. So maybe the loco was working through to Llandudno Junction for fuel...

 

[LarryG]

The Railrover ticket took us to Blaenau Ffestiniog North on 19th August 1963. Mary was 7 months pregnant and we had walked down to Tanygrisia Lake and back, so she was glad to see this 4-car DMU arriving to take us home....


Truly awful quality here......Sorry. We had lived in Wales for just over 12 months and this was my last sighting of a Jubilee. No. 45562 'Alberta' was crawling into Abergele with a SO Leeds-Llandudno formed of BR and LNER Thompson stock 13th August 1966...


I photographed the buildings at Abergele soon after the canopies were removed in 1966 with a view to building a model, but never did! An ex.LNWR Cove roof corridor first (Camping Coach) first can be seen on the right...


This 1965 shot is included just to show a train on the Up Slow line east of Penucha Camp level crossing, Abergele. Happy days train-watching from here from 1951 to 1957 while on hols in the paternal grandparents caravans...

 

[LarryG]

A photo feature entitled 'Rushhour at Chinley' in TRAINS ILLUSTRATED sent me dashing off by train to the place in Autumn 1961. Armed with a borrowed folding bellows camera, I knew now't about photography and just fired away. All I have left today is two enprints. 8F No. 48262 is coasting downgrade under Cooperative Bridge at Chinley on the Down Slow tracks that were later removed...


The shot below was taken at the opposite end of Chinley overlooking the station. It wasn't all 8F's, but I no longer have the negatives...

In 1976, I decided at long last to buy a modern SLR camera and one of my first outings away from North Wales was to Chinley in 1977 capturing Class 25's, 40's and 45's. It was different than the days of steam, and yet the 1970's and 80's were pleasant in their own way.

 

[LarryG]

I was born beside the GCR Woodhead line near here in Newton, Hyde, and I think I took this shot in early 1961 while walking back to the station from my cousins home in Godley. Two DC electrics are passing with yet another mineral train. This street had looked like this since I was a small boy (bomb damage?)

 

[john lewsey]

Thank you for Sharing these Larry
John

 

[LarryG]

A short stay with relatives in St.Albans in late 1960 enabled me to visit Kings Cross station. The sight of a Thompson Pacific in the flesh made me a lifelong admirer of these machines. I have no idea which A2/3 it was, as I never took down numbers...


Mary and I visited York on a freezing cold day in 1960 and I decided it was worth another trip on my own seeing as she told anyone who would listen that I left her on a platform barrow near a brazier all afternoon! This shot of A1 No.60125 'Scottish Union' was taken on 30th May 1961...


Another trip was made on 2nd August 1961. This was A1 No. 60159 'Bonnie Dundee' waiting on the middle road for a signal...


I have no liking for the A4's, so I must have wanted to use the film up! It is No.60029 'Woodcock'....


The shot that really got me going was my first sight of a Deltic, No. D9009 'Alycidon'. Magazines in those days hardly gave up to the minute news and 'we' didn't even know they had entered regular traffic. It was working the 1A35 10.10 Edinburgh-Kings Cross on wednesday 2nd August 1961...


The Kodak Brownie 127 (Bakelite version) always produced darker corners and by 1960 had been damaged and was letting in a chink of light. Therefore many of the pictures had to be cropped. It didn't matter to me at the time as my photos were a merely intended as a record of my travels.

 

[LarryG]

Back home in Oldham, I went to a location between Shaw and Newhey (Oldham Loop line) on my rest-day in mid 1961. Newhey church spire is visible on the horizon as a Derby unit approaches with a Manchester bound train via Oldham.....


In the opposite direction was a Rochdale bound unit. Photo taken from Jubilee Crossing...


An LMS 'Jinty' toils up the line from Newhey towards Shaw with a long rake on empty mineral wagons on the same day. Remnants of Jubilee colliery are just visible on the left...

 

[LarryG]

I was bought a Kodak Brownie 127 as a Christmas present in 1955 and the majority of pictures I took were the family type. However, I do remember the very first picture I took of a train. Poking the camera through the footbridge, I captured on film one of the elderly LYR 0-6-0's busying itself in Oldham Clegg Street yard in early 1956. In all innocence, I was pointing the camera almost directly into the low Winter sun ...

 

[Pencarrow]

Enjoying the photos Larry, thanks.