railway people and places
Of great interest to all railway enthusiasts. We would like to let you know that the 'Grantham Railway Society' (GRS) will be holding another meeting in the town on Monday 19th September 2022. Non-members are very welcome! Here are the details of the programme:-
We've been saddened to hear that our contributor Roger Bamber passed away on Sunday 11th September, aged 78.
Roger grew up in Leicester and as a boy he made several visits to Grantham station, usually cycling over the hilly A607 via Melton Mowbray. He became a celebrated professional photographer and photojournalist whose work appeared in many national newspapers and magazines. Roger won dozens of awards, most notably the British Press Photographer of the Year twice and News Photographer of the Year twice also.
Two years ago Roger got in touch with Tracks through Grantham from his home in Brighton to offer some of his earliest memories and photographs. They are on our page Haymarket Rarities - captured with a plastic camera.
Several tributes to Roger and his career have appeared on the internet. In one of them, for the Brighton paper The Argus, his wife Shan says, "Roger loved steam trains, one of the reasons he came to Sussex was for the Bluebell Railway but he ended up in Brighton and decided it was the 'best place in the world' and that's why he stayed."
There's an appreciation of Roger Bamber, illustrating the range of his work, on The Guardian website here.
Just a reminder about this event, which was the subject of a post circulated on Wednesday 31st August. If you intend to join us please don't forget to let us know.
Gonerby Siding Signal Box
A number of people helped, and we soon identified that she was Mrs Carter, the wife of signalman Albert Carter at Grantham South. Then, a few weeks ago, an email arrived from George Watson who, as a boy, used to visit Gonerby box.
To read George's fascinating account go to our Gonerby Siding Signal Box page and scroll down just over halfway, to the heading Bett Carter: signalwoman at Gonerby Siding.
We keep an eye open elsewhere for items of Grantham area railway interest. Here are some we've seen recently.
Please note that the links to Facebook from this section only work if you are logged in to Facebook.
1. Patrick Clay is posting photographs taken in the Grantham area and elsewhere by his father, John F. Clay. Follow this link to find the Grantham area pictures, or go to the group on Facebook here and search ('search this group') for 'Patrick Clay Grantham'.
John F. Clay wrote the Foreword of Rev. A. C. Cawston's book LNER Steam at Grantham, in which he says that as a schoolboy photographer in the 1930s he met Arthur Cawston and Thomas Hepburn on the platforms at Grantham. In his Introduction to the same book Cawston tells us that John Clay was, for many years, a schoolmaster at Grantham. John F. Clay's photographs have appeared in a number of books and periodicals, and he wrote an article about Grantham's railway heritage in The Railway Observer.
2. Our regular contributor Richard Cumming has penned an absorbing account of a visit to his Uncle Arthur on Merseyside in 1955. Written in the same style as his popular articles for Tracks through Grantham (they're in our Spotters' Corner section), there's plenty of railway interest plus such things as his impressions of the docks and of attending Anfield to watch Liverpool FC.
Titled A train spotting holiday in Liverpool in 1955, Richard's essay can be downloaded as a Word document called 'Liverpool Holiday.docx' from here.
In the past 3 months this local history website has published a few items of railway interest:
In the current issue of Steam World is an item which might interest Tracks though Grantham subscribers:
September 2022 (Issue 423):
via the Tracks through Grantham website:
All the best,
John & Mel
Hello all,
We hope this finds everyone well, enjoying some fine summer weather and - depending on where you are of course - coping with the heat.
First, and perhaps most important, we’re very pleased to announce…
We’ve arranged a get-together in Grantham on Wednesday 12th October. If you are already on our Contacts List you should recently have received an email giving additional detail. If you haven't received that email and would be interested in attending please get in touch using the Contact Form on this page, include also a postal address and/or a phone number, and we'll add you to our list of email contacts.
The programme will include a presentation by Chris Nettleton called Steam in and around Grantham. Chris has assembled a really good selection of photographs taken locally by several railway photographers at different periods. Chris edits the Gresley Society’s journal The Gresley Observer and he is also the society’s membership secretary.
So please note the date in your diary; during August we’ll circulate a detailed programme and invitation to people on the Contacts List.
Now for some updates and news…
Tracks through Grantham continues to develop in size and scope, and our website has gained some more photographs and memories including:
The 2022 Lincolnshire Railways Conference organised by the Industrial Archaeology Team of the Society for Lincolnshire History & Archaeology (SLHA) will take place at the Guildhall Arts Centre in Grantham on Saturday 19th November. The programme will include a series of talks on various aspects of railways in Lincolnshire. Mel and I have been invited to present a talk in which we will explore the role of the railway in the story of Grantham since 1850 and describe how, with the support and encouragement of many people, Tracks through Grantham is gathering and presenting this history.
For more information about the conference, including the other talks, go to this page on the SLHA website, scroll down to November and download the booking form.
Grantham’s Cottage Hospital has played an important role in the town’s railway history on several occasions, most notably following the high speed accident of September 1906 and the disastrous collision between Peascliffe Tunnel and Barkston South Junction in January 1936. So it was good to read recently that, following concern raised by local groups about the currently disused building’s future, its value has been officially recognised, as announced in The Grantham Journal:
There’s a link here to an account of the hospital’s role caring for accident casualties in the autumn of 1906 which was publicised far beyond the town.
On 2nd July Talisman Railwayana Auctions of Nottingham sold 515 lots of railway relics, mostly of Lincolnshire origin, at Navenby. If you’d like to see what went under the hammer and the prices realised, visit their website:
July 2022 Lots 1 – 50 | Talisman Railwayana (talismanauctions.co.uk) and following pages.
Items of Grantham area interest were spread through the sale in lots 10, 25, 73, 81, 128, 134, 234, 302, 317, 415, 432, 462, 465 and 502.
As part of its latest plan to reform the railways the government proposes to establish an organisation to be called Great British Railways (GBR). Last October they announced a competition to identify a location for the organisation’s HQ. Grantham was one of 42 places to submit a bid, but when the shortlist of six was announced on 5th July the town was not among the successful candidates:
There’s more about GBR and the process for selection the location of its HQ at National Headquarters Competition for Great British Railways | Great British Railways Transition Team (gbrtt.co.uk)
When you have a few minutes - or even an hour or two - to spare, try putting ‘Grantham’, ‘Barkston’, ‘Ponton’, ‘High Dyke’ / ‘Highdyke’ or other location of your choice into ‘SEARCH’ on these archive websites and see what comes up:
via the Tracks through Grantham website:
All the best,
John & Mel
Owing to personal circumstances we've postponed the meeting scheduled for 20th April. We hope to hold it in the late spring or early summer.
As we announced in the previous News item we've published a new page:
If you have information or photographs you can share with us about the railway in the vicinity of Gonerby please get in touch.
However, several people have reported difficulty with slow loading of pages, and we're thankful for this feedback too. The problem may be associated, to some extent, with the migration of the website to https:// which we carried out a few days after the launch of the new page. It could also be connected with this page, as first published, being very long with multiple images. We have therefore divided the content into three consecutive pages, with links to enable easy progress from the 'introduction' to 'part 1' (midnight to noon) and then on to 'part 2' (noon to midnight).
This latest issue of Steam World magazine has recently arrived and in it there’s a four-page photo feature (pages 24-27) titled Essendine to Grantham in 1960/61 in which ‘Nigel Harris dips into the superb East Coast Main Line photo-archive of the late Noel Ingram…’
This is ‘Part 1’ and the photos are all black and white; Part 2 will feature some of Noel Ingram's transparencies, but the author isn't specific about when that will appear.
Also on page 60 (lower photo), in an item called Pick’n’Mix, there’s another of Noel’s photos taken at Little Bytham – a colour one this time.
In its own words, Rail-Online is a comprehensive online library of high quality railway photographs, from the 1900s to the present day.
Tony and the team are continually adding new pictures from some important collections among which are, for example, the superb photographs of TG (Gordon) Hepburn of Nottingham who made frequent visits to the Grantham area.
Below are links to 17 Grantham area photographs which appear in Rail-Online's ‘recently added’ folder:
In the past 3 months this local history website has published a few items of railway interest:
Cheers,
John & Mel
Hello all,
A very Happy New Year and all the best to everyone for 2022!
Below is an update on our activity during the last few months of 2021. We hope everyone will find something new and of interest.
First, though, we’d like to thank everyone who attended our get-together at the Grantham Railway Club on Wednesday 13th October, our first since October 2019. There were over 40 people and we especially welcome everyone who joined us for the first time. Our friends at the Club pulled out all the stops to ensure that all appropriate guidance was followed so that everyone could feel comfortable in the room. Our special thanks go to Richard Cumming for his presentation Steam on the Elizabethan 1953–1961, several times delayed but certainly well worth waiting for.
Our next gathering is planned for April 2022 – provisionally on Wednesday 20th April. Confirmation of the date and the programme will be circulated late in February or early in March.
We’re sorry not to have published our bi-annual Newsletter during 2021. As with many things, the Covid situation has upset normal routines and it’s not been possible to bring everything together, but we do hope to start again with another issue next summer.
1. Some New Pages on our website
Signalling and Signal Boxes
Rob Clipsham remembers a unique experience - travelling from Highdyke to Skillington Road Crossing in 1973 while standing in the tender of the preserved locomotive Pendennis Castle:
Railway People and Places
Other recent additions are aimed at developing the Tracks through Grantham sub-theme Railway People and Places. Grantham is a town where the railway has been influential in many ways, and we’re glad to demonstrate this by illustrating connections that may not always be immediately apparent:
Trade Unions, Social Life and Sport
Railway Festivals and The Railway Queen
The Grantham High Speed Accident of September 1906: the passenger casualties
On the morning of Sunday 21st November I visited Grantham cemetery to look for the grave of Georgiana Baguley, the only victim of the accident who was buried in Grantham. It wasn’t too hard to identify because it was repaired and cleaned in 2006 to mark the centenary of the disaster:
How did the town’s emergency services cope when an express train was wrecked and ablaze on an embankment near the station at 11pm at the end of what had, until then, been just another ordinary day? We discovered a write-up in a respected weekly medical journal describing hospital’s response:
2. Some Updated Pages
The following pages have benefitted thanks to new photographs becoming available:
3. Some recent magazine articles
Steam World
The editor, Chris Leigh, has featured more selections of colour photographs taken by Noel Ingram on the East Coast Main Line in the early 1960s, mainly south of Stoke summit:
November 2021 (Issue 413):
December 2021 (Issue 414):
Steam Days, January 2022
Beginning on page 40: Travelling from Walsall to Grantham: 1958-62 by Mike Page
4. A recently published book
A Pictorial History of the B12s by Richard Anderson and Dennis Greeno includes many photographs of the former Great Eastern section locomotives which were based at Grantham in the 1950s. They were used on local services on lines radiating from the town, covering the period between the withdrawal of many 4-4-0s and 4-4-2s of GNR origin and the introduction of diesel multiple units (see, for example, the photograph below). The section ‘From Grantham’ is on pages 126 to 135. Published by The Midland and Great Northern (M&GN) Joint Railway Society, price £23.25.
5. For the future
24 hours at Grantham station in 1961
We're continuing to gather information for an upcoming article that will describe events at Grantham station over a 24-hour period. This is set against the background of the Summer 1961 Working Time Table. We hope that the new page will be published early in 2022, so if you have any memories, spotting notes, or even photographs from 1961 there's still time to contribute. Of particular interest is information relating to the practice of engine changes during this period.
Tracks through Grantham Photographic Archive
On another front we have now created and continue to add to a 'Tracks through Grantham Photographic Archive'. This is to ensure that we always have a sufficient library of suitable Grantham related images to call on when needed for future articles. If you have anything that you think could be included in our archive, no matter how insignificant it might seem to be, again please do contact us.
We leave you with two images selected from the archive, one below and another at the head of this post.
6. Keep In Touch
Something for everyone, we hope. We’ll look forward to receiving your comments and feedback either via the Comment Form which appears at the bottom of most pages or, for more general feedback, use the Contact Form form on this page.
(Comments are responses to the content of a page or to previous comments on that page. If approved, a comment may be published and become part of the page. On the other hand messages left using the Contact Form are direct communications to the Tracks through Grantham team, and they will not normally appear on the site.)
Best wishes,
John & Mel
Our next get-together for people interested in Tracks through Grantham takes place in Grantham in mid-October. These events are an opportunity to meet for a few hours to enjoy a varied and, we hope, enjoyable and informative programme. Our meetings are usually held twice a year but, inevitably, they have been 'on hold'. The last was nearly two years back, in October 2019.
If you are already on our list of email and postal contacts you should recently have received the programme and invitation. Please remember to let us know if you hope to be with us.
If you're interested in attending but have not received a programme please get in touch, using the Contact Form here, and we will send you information - date, time, venue and programme. We don't publish these details on the website because we and our host venue need to know how many people to expect.
