Skip to content

Tag: History

Published on Leave a comment on Let’s take a trip to Tyneside on the footplate of an A4 – and back home on an A3!

We've said before that often we don't know where the inspiration for the next new page for Tracks through Grantham will appear from.  We have items 'in the pipeline' all the time but, quite regularly, someone will get in touch with a surprise discovery.  Just a few weeks ago a copy of a magazine titled Locomotive Express revealed a previously unknown (to us) account of a regular day's work for a No. 1 Express Link crew at Grantham Loco in 1950.

So prepare to get grit in your hair, and organise a nice warm bath for when you get home, as we travel 326 miles in one shift with a Grantham crew on our latest page All in a Day's Work.

Published on Leave a comment on Getting Started – Grantham station’s Train Starting Indicator

Our latest page explores a little-known piece of equipment on Grantham station.

1

Published on 1 Comment on ECML O Gauge Layout

Something to hopefully brighten up our days in lockdown! We've just discovered a most interesting and wonderful O Gauge model railway owned by John Ryan who is President of the LNER Society. This fascinating layout is located near 'Over Peover' in Cheshire. Although it's not Grantham based we feel you will still enjoy watching it. There's something for everyone.  Turn up the sound to get the full experience!

 

Published on

It's Sunday 27th June 1971 and Grantham Yard signal box is about to close.  Leaving the box for the last time, someone reached into a drawer or cupboard for an old scrapbook which had been lying there for years.  It contained circulars and memos received by the signalmen at the Yard Box between 1900 and 1945, each carefully pasted into a page for possible future reference.  They would be needed no more but maybe someone, someday, might be interested...

At Tracks through Grantham we have recently seen this remarkable survivor.  It truly is a fascinating archive, with many stories to tell about things that mattered to the railway and to its employees.

A new page on our website draws on this resource for the first time.  Fresh Fish Daily! is an insight into the importance of the Scotch fish traffic to the people who operated the Great Northern section of the East Coast Main Line in the early decades of the 20th century.

Published on Leave a comment on Railway Bylines – July 2019

On Saturday 30th September 1967 there was a rail tour of the Stewarts & Lloyds (Minerals) Ltd. lines at Woolsthorpe and Harlaxton, including the stretch of the BR Woolsthorpe Branch between Denton and Casthorpe Junction.

This tour is described and illustrated in the current issue of Railway Bylines (Vol. 24: Issue 8, July 2019) on pages 356-360 Harston & Harlaxton Ironstone Quarries - Notes by Charles A. Rekab. The event marked the imminent replacement of the fleet of industrial steam locomotives by second-hand diesels puchased from British Rail.

This tour is among several that are noted on our page Rail Tour Rambles round Grantham.

Published on

For nearly 100 years signalmen and telegraph lads at Grantham South signal box kept watch over the running lines, the yards and the sidings which lay south of the passenger station.  The box was staffed round the clock, seven days a week.  What stories it might have told of the characters who worked it, and some of the incidents they dealt with!

Although the building is long gone, former Grantham signalling staff have generously shared their memories and photographs.  We've also researched local newspapers and explored other sources to illustrate the work of signalmen and telegraph lads at Grantham South.

The stories include:

  • an insight from Victorian times into the harsh and, from a modern perspective, negligent attitude of the railway companies to the personal safety of their employees;
  • the tale of a horse which made a bid for freedom by charging along the main line as far as Great Ponton;
  • how, one September night in 1906, two men on duty at the South Box were the first to witness the Scotch mail train emerge from the darkness as it sped towards the station out of control to meet with destruction a few seconds later;
  • a surprising episode in the summer of 1911, during a national dispute over working conditions on the railways, when the South Box was surrounded by a riotous mob which had to be dispersed by police.

Read all of this and more in our latest new page Grantham South signal box - people and incidents .

Published on Leave a comment on Early Railcars (Diesel Multiple Units) in Grantham & Lincolnshire

In our introductory article, that covered the early main line diesel scene at Grantham, we briefly looked at some of the reasons behind the transition from steam to diesel power on Britain's railway system, in particular the main line through Grantham. But what about the cross country secondary lines that linked Grantham with other urban areas, such as Lincoln and Nottingham? Our next article is all about the introduction of 'Railcars' during the diesel era and has just been published.

Can you remember the first generation Railcars? Perhaps you referred to them as Diesel Multiple Units, or maybe DMUs for short? Our new article begins here.

Published on

In February 1980 Doncaster Power Signal Box extended its area of operation to include Grantham.  In our latest new feature Andy Overton provides a unique insight into the work of signalling in a power box, including the vital role of communication with station staff at Grantham.  There's also the frustration of prioritising train movements effectively through an over-rationalised track layout in the era of the privatised railway.  It's a fascinating read.

Published on Leave a comment on More railways rediscovered: the High Dyke Branch

Need to shake off the winter blues?

Why not rediscover the High Dyke Branch!

Surely, following our recent spell of Siberian weather, spring will soon be in the air.  If you fancy getting out and about while rediscovering some railway heritage let our new page, The High Dyke Branch Rediscovered - Part 1, be your guide.

John Pegg will show you the first 3 miles of the former branch line, from Highdyke Junction to the Great North Road near Colsterworth.  There's a great selection of photographs .  Most show scenes taken in summer 2017 but, mixed in, are some 'flashbacks' to the 1960s and the early 1970s when the line was still moving heavy loads of ironstone to the main line, the job it was built for in 1916-19.

So why not find your boots, burn off a few excess calories and clear away the cobwebs?

...and look out for Part 2 soon.

Published on Leave a comment on Stoke signal box

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.