Skip to content

For our latest new page we move to one of the boundaries of the Tracks through Grantham 'sphere of interest' in terms of railway geography and infrastructure.

'Stoke Bank' is a legendary location, comprehensively written into East Coast Main Line history as one of the world's most renowned railway racing stretches where speed records have been made and broken.

But what about the signal box at the start of the descent (or, equally, at the summit of the ascent from both directions)?  Many a train timer's stopwatch has clicked there, but few travellers spared much of a thought for the men on duty at Stoke box as they sped past.  Many a loco crew, short of steam on a poor engine, have been thankful when the gradient changed from adverse to favourable as they exchanged a wave with the signalman at the isolated outpost.

Derek Steptoe's evocative memories of the box introduce a fine selection of photographs by Mike Mather and Noel Ingram.

Above: Roy, on the left, as a fireman with Charlie Hopwood, his regular driver, on 19th June 1959 at Darlington with Class A1 locomotive No. 60142 Edward Fletcher.
Photograph taken by Eric Treacy, lent by Roy Veasey.

We were very sorry to receive the sad news that Roy passed away on 14th January at the age of 89.

I first met Roy in summer 1963 when my father took some photographs of him and other railwaymen on Grantham station and at the Loco.  Little could they have known that their friendship was planting a seed which, some 45 years later, would begin to grow into Tracks through Grantham.

After he retired Roy wrote his memoir, ‘My Railway Life’, and when I visited him in 2008 he gave me a copy.  When Tracks through Grantham took its first tentative steps he kindly consented to its publication, and ‘My Railway Life’ became the first personal account to appear on our website.  There’s no doubt that it has inspired many others to become contributors to our project, and I'm sure it will continue to do so.  You can read Roy's personal story of his working life on the railway here.

Roy lent his support to Tracks through Grantham in many ways.  We are greatly saddened to have lost such a good friend.

Roy's funeral will be held in Grantham on Monday 5th February.  Here is a link to the family announcement.

John Clayson

Fred Harris joined the railway at Grantham in August 1955.  He achieved promotion to driver nearly 30 years later in April 1985, hence the title of the story of his working life on the railway.  Read how a youthful Fred and his driver peered into dense fog one night from the footplate of a slowly advancing 'Tango', looking for signals that were no longer there.  How does a footplate crew respond as a 'Green Arrow' begins to self-destruct at speed on the East Coast Main Line?  Enjoy with Fred a week away at Bridgnorth refreshing his steam skills.  All this and more in our latest new page.

1

In the 1950s and 1960s a Runabout ticket could be the key to expanding your horizons.  Roger Bryant and friends left Mablethorpe one morning and, before the day was done, they had arranged for themselves a high-speed descent of Stoke Bank behind an A1 - in the genteel opulence of a Pullman car.  Read the story on our latest new page.

When talking to people from far and wide about Grantham Loco, if they know anything at all about its history they will often say 'Isn't that the shed where they had a turning triangle?'  The triangle at Grantham made the shed unique, certainly in the UK, even though it was in operation for only the final 12 years of the life of the shed, which reached back more than a century.

We thought the history of turning locomotives at Grantham before 'the angle' was worth exploring, and very interesting it has proved to be.   Our latest new page is called Turntables and Triangles.

What were the main events of October 1973?  Jackie Stewart achieved his third Formula One World Driver's Championship, after which he retired; war was raging in the middle east; U.S. president, Richard Nixon, reluctantly released the first tapes relating to the Watergate enquiry; 'Daydreamer' David Cassidy was in the singles charts, and we were buying LPs by the likes of Rod Stewart, the Stones, Slade, the Quo, David Bowie, Roxy Music, Elton John, Yes and Led Zeppelin, often in gatefold sleeves with amazing artwork.

In the Grantham area there had been a lot of talk about a new scheme which would turn some of the former ironstone mining countryside around Buckminster and Market Overton into a local leisure amenity, including an ironstone mining museum and a railway preservation centre.

Optimism was fuelled when A3 No. 4472 Flying Scotsman arrived at Grantham station for a one night stopover before moving on to a steam depot being established at Market Overton in Rutland.

Humphrey Platts was there, and he has kindly sent us some photographs, which are real gems.  They seem to capture the anticipation of a dream which, sadly, was not to be realised.

Tracks through Grantham aims to promote the use of other websites where there's interesting Grantham-related railway content.  We've just added several new links to our page Links to online Photograph Albums, so why not take a look and see what's to be found elsewhere?

If you find, anywhere on this site, a link that doesn't work please drop us a note via the Contact Form here.  We'll do our best to get it sorted.

The next of our regular twice-a-year get-togethers for people interested in the Tracks through Grantham project will take place in Grantham in mid-October.  These are always very enjoyable occasions, an opportunity for our contributors and supporters to meet while enjoying a varied and, we hope, informative programme.

If you are already on our list of contacts you should have received a preliminary note of the date at the end of May, followed by our Newsletter early in August giving outline details.  We are just beginning to distribute the programme with the usual reply form, so look out for it.  Please remember to let us know if you hope to be with us.

If you're interested in attending but are not currently on our contacts list, please get in touch using the Contact Form here, and we will send you information - date, time, venue and programme - and a reply form.  We need to know how many people to expect, so we cannot publish full details on the website.

Current issues of two of the monthly magazines contain some Grantham interest:

  • Backtrack for August 2017 (Vol. 31, No. 8) has a 4-page feature of photographs by Derek Penney, several of which feature Grantham or locations nearby (pages 480 to 483, plus cover illustration).
  • 'Great Shot!' in Steam World for August 2017 (Issue 362) has a photograph of Grantham's turntable taken in 1958 (pages 34-35).  "... but there wasn't a turntable at Grantham after 1951,"  we hear you say.  And you're right of course, but the photograph wasn't taken at Grantham.  It's at Melton Constable, in Norfolk, where Grantham's 70-foot turntable was moved for further service after its foundation, on the site of the old Victorian workhouse, gave way.