I was late to pick up the youngster from a sleep over this evening so pressing on a bit, guided by my new yummy sat nav I shot past Croft racing circuit and faced with the gentle uphill right-hander over the East Coast main rail line bridge, I didn't lift. A minor challenge at 60 mph in an MPV full of gardening bric-a-brac. As if I'd been expected, I was enveloped in pulsating clouds of wet coal smoke and felt rather than heard the beat of a steam engine thunder under the bridge. A glimpse of a dozen or so carriages rattling away into the dusk heading south.
That set me thinking. I quite like steam trains and will grab any opportunity to stop and watch. I've had steam squirted on me often enough in Sunderland railway station when I was a nipper, enjoyed a few trips on steam engines since and stood on the foot bridge over the rail line in Pickering deliberately. But driving over a bridge as a steam train passes underneath?
A rare happening, I think. When was the last time it happened to you?
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Never had it happen in quite such a dramatic fashion, but I was heading from Holmes Chapel towards Macclesfield one day three or four years ago when I noticed, in order: several opportunistically-parked cars on either side of the road; a rather magnificent railway viaduct on my left-hand side; a number of people, some with cameras and tripods, looking at said viaduct; and finally the Tornado steam train heading north, travelling faster than I was driving. Quite a sight when I wasn't expecting it.
Last edited by: Dave_TD {P} on Sat 9 Oct 10 at 23:59
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A few weeks ago I was heading home on the A6. Just glimpsed the Chatsworth estate and saw 6 parallel trails of coloured smoke from horizon to horizon. Red Arrows.
A few seconds later the spare zoomed overhead.
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Ahhh Hawkeye that would be Markham (?) Bridge on the Scorton - Blackman Corner Road and the smoke, probably from The Tornado on its way to Shildon Railway Museum.
Tornado doing a few more runs this month so get your anorak out and sit on the bridge???????
dvd
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I'm not a train buff and this is a bit OT but I was recently reading about the 'Strategic Steam Reserve'.
Fascinating stuff/myth, an account here :
www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread217309/pg1
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Here
tinyurl.com/26tp76u
>> The Tornado on its way to Shildon Railway Museum.
On its way away from Shildon; it was going south.
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...to Shildon Railway Museum...
Has anyone been?
I quite enjoyed it, but there seemed to be quite a bit of environmental preaching going on in some of the minor exhibits.
Do I need to be told that walking a short distance is greener and healthier than taking the car?
No.
I suspect the enviro-garbage was a condition of EU grants.
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first time, dunno, Last time, only time I can remember....
We'd just moved from St Helens to Wigan (8 miles close and continents apart) and it was the first trip into Wigan, on a bus. A weird bus in itself, cherry and white instead of red and cream, the upper deck had four seats in a row with the gangway sunk below floor level - the usual design for busses on low bridge routes, but I'd never seen one, and as we passed over the line by Bryn station, it was clouded in steam and that distinctive smell.
Holds a lot of memories - my brother once manned the box down the line, the station was manned by two blokes called Jimmy (Big and Little) who were his mates and were happy for me and my mates to hang around. Then again there were only two trains an hour (one in each direction) and they both arrived within a minute of each other, so the relevant Jimmy had to cross the line by jumping off the platform - always entertaining, Little Jimmy struggled to reach, and Big Jimmy struggled to heave himself on the platform.
School holidays in the 1970's - we used to sit in the station until the Red Star Parcels lorry arrived, then we used to help him with his deliveries - hey ho !!!
who needs museums ?
Last edited by: borasport on Sun 10 Oct 10 at 18:32
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Just in case anyone wants to make a special effort to ingest lungfuls of soot, cinders and lord knows what else the details of dates for most steam specials are here:-
www.uksteam.info/index.htm
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I turned off the A1 near Biggleswade and met a WW2 Hurricane flying at about 100 feet.
Shuttleworth collection I presume.
I always thought the Hurricane was so much prettier than the Spitfire.
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>> But driving over a
>> bridge as a steam train passes underneath?
>>
>> A rare happening, I think. When was the last time it happened to you?
>>
I used to take delight in standing on a footbridge over the lines when I could see a steam train starting off from the nearby station so that I could be enveloped in steam ~ and smoke! Probably the last time was in 1949.
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Caught train from Pickering to whitby and was hanging out of the windows and could taste the staem and coal it was going in my hair down my throat proper nice feeling and would do it again.
Better than the diesel smoke of a 158..................
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Passing through steam train smoke - Dave_
