railway people and places
It's time for our second selection of photographs taken exactly 60 years ago on one of a series of visits to Grantham station by my father and me.
The Tracks through Grantham time machine takes us back to Thursday 16th August 1962. Go to the Sixty Years and Counting header page and scroll down to the link.
John Clayson
We're publishing some new pages of photographs taken at Grantham in the early 1960s. Each group of pictures was taken on a visit made to the station by my father and me on a Thursday afternoon, and it will appear in a new page on or around the 60th anniversary of the trip. The time span is between August 1961 and July 1964. Our visits took place between spring and autumn, on 19 occasions in total.
The photos will be added to the Grantham Railway Galleries section of our website. To find the first group, from Thursday 12th July 1962, go to the header page and scroll down to the link.
On the header page, with the note of each new group of pictures, there will be an invitation to look out for the next group.
We hope you enjoy the photos as they appear.
John Clayson
We've just added a new page to the website describing a marathon 24 hour period spent on the platforms at Grantham. It's based around the 1961 Summer Working Time Table (WTT) and includes a selection of suitable photographs to illustrate some of the 300+ workings and movements taking place between midnight and midnight. You can step back in time and watch the action here.
Early in August a website contact form arrived from David Page who enquired, "If you would like some reminiscences of a lifelong steam enthusiast from c.1950 onwards, including a few photos from the early 1960s to the present day, please feel free to contact me."
The very pleasing result is our latest new page, simply titled Grantham!, which connects David's earliest experiences of the railway at Grantham, in the early 1950s, with his enjoyment of 21st century main line steam.
The story begins with the memories of a young lad who in the early 1950s travelled by train from Nottingham to stay with an aunt and uncle. Recollections include an A1, Kittiwake, in BR blue livery speeding north with a Pullman service; David also records his disappointment when the aunt and uncle moved away and he could, at least for the time being, no longer visit and enjoy the excitement of east coast expresses.
We look back at some local news items which illuminate the wavering relationship between loco spotters and the railway authorities at Grantham during the 1950s.
Happily, in the early 1960s David's relatives moved back to the town and he describes his reacquaintance with the Grantham railway scene. Now he had a camera and a growing interest in photography, and also a feeling that he should try to make his own personal record of the last few years of east coast steam. His endeavours extended to taking photographs from the windswept and chilly station platforms early in February 1963, in the midst of the UK's record-breaking arctic winter.
The early 1960s may have been the finale, but there has been a curtain call. The narrative and photographs extend into the age of digital imaging. The page concludes with three superb pictures of northbound specials taken by David at Belton Lane. They are hauled by A3 No. 60103 Flying Scotsman, A4 No. 4464 Bittern and A1 No. 60163 Tornado …and the A1 was in early BR blue, just as Kittiwake had been bedecked some six decades before.
The new page is in our Spotters' Corner section; the link above will take you directly to it.
Let's forget today's bothersome restrictions on travel for a while and get out and about again in the Tracks through Grantham Tardis.
Richard's Cumming's latest highly entertaining article describes how, in 1956, the arrival of his new bike stimulated an eagerness to push the boundaries of youthful exploration well beyond the horizon of his home town of Grantham.
His first ventures were to the relatively close-at-hand surroundings of local towns and countryside, exploring rumours of unfamiliar breeds of locomotive to be seen on their native territory. Ultimately, though, the call of far-away engines with strange-sounding names (and numbers) led Richard to the uncharted lands of the West Midlands and Shropshire.
We're sure you'll enjoy travelling with Richard on trips that were inspired by an interest which took root during his earlier enjoyment of the railway scene around Grantham.
If, by way of introduction, you'd first like to read (or to re-read) Richard's previous accounts of Grantham-based spotting adventures, they are here:
There's a link at the end of the first page to take you forward to the next, and then on to the new article.
Or you can go straight to the new page, in which case why not dust off that old bike and get pedalling out of lockdown to share the excitement of Richard and his friends in Train Spotting Bicycle Trips away from Grantham.
(…and don't worry, he'll wait for us to catch up on the hills.)
Edinburgh Haymarket-based A3 60100 Spearmint was a bit of a rare sight as far south as our Tracks through Grantham territory, so when the locomotive turned up in two separate stories recently sent in by Alan Wilce and Roger Bamber we were tempted to rename 60100 as Doublemint! However, having chewed it over, we decided to keep things as they were, so hopefully our two new pages in 'Spotters’ Corner' from Roger and Alan will bring a breath of fresh air for our readers.
So join 13-year-old Roger Bamber on Grantham station in 1958, having travelled by bike over the hilly A607 from Leicester. When opportunities arise to capture some Haymarket Rarities on film, Roger is ready with his camera. One of the images is a photograph that helped to determine his career.
Then join Alan Wilce in 1960. Alan arrived from Melton Mowbray in his parents' car. His records were taken with pencil and notepad rather than film and now, with his Ian Allan ABC 'Combined Volume', his memories and some archive timetables, Alan re-creates for us the excitement of a 3-hour Summer Evening Visit to Grantham in 1960 during which 60100 Spearmint made another rare appearance at the station.
Brian Maddison recently sent us three photographs he took during the construction of the extension at the south end of Grantham's Platform 4, about 30 years ago. You can find them on a new page here.
Tom Boustead's journey in photographs between Highdyke and Hougham has proved to be one of the most popular launches of a new page in the history of Tracks through Grantham. We're grateful to everyone who has left a comment on the site or has been in touch by email with feedback - it's all been very positive. Tom is responding to comments on the page individually as time allows, so please look back at the page from time to time.
We've also been busy updating and revising some of our older pages to improve or add detail, or to add new information and images that have come to light. One that's been through the shops for an intermediate overhaul and a freshen up is Turntables and Triangles, the story of locomotive turning at Grantham - now revised and improved!
Even the fairly recently published Fresh Fish Daily! page has been 'in works' for an upgrade, including links to two great photographs of Aberdeen to London express fish trains in the Edinburgh area.
If you've time on your hands waiting for 'the new normal' to kick in, here's a suggestion. To browse, and maybe purchase, photographs taken at Grantham, or at any other location, the following may interest you (listed in alphabetical order):
Try using 'Grantham', 'Barkston', 'Highdyke', 'Honnington' etc. in the search box.
(We have no commercial association with any of the above.)
Please stay safe everyone.
Mel and John
Bob has recently been in touch with an enquiry.
I know I am clutching at straws but here goes! In the early '60s my friend and I used to travel from Leicester to Grantham trainspotting. They are fondly remembered days. We used to walk to a road bridge, climb up the slope at the side and sit on the fence at the top. The sheds were close by on our left with the main line in front. I think the road was the route through Grantham to the east coast.
Is it possible that one of your members may have a photo showing either the bridge with a loco beyond or above, or maybe a picture of spotters at the location?
Any help much appreciated.
Exchanging a few emails, and with clues picked up from Mike Bacon's page in Spotters' Corner, we worked out that the bridge over Springfield Road was a perfect match. Bob kindly filled in a little more background, and we had the nucleus of our latest page: How we discovered Springfield Road Bridge.
One of the pleasures of developing the content of Tracks through Grantham is that sometimes we don't know where the material for our next new page is going to come from ... but we can be sure that something will always show up! So if you have a memory or a query and have been thinking about sending it, don't hold back any longer!
