70's photos - when (almost) everything was blue...

OK, as a result of Netty's tractor thread, I decided as a result of interest - well, his and mine....  to re-invent this thread that ran on GSM.
 
Please feel free to post photos from the 60's, 70's and 80's of the 'big' railway - quality uni,portant.  I say that because most of mine are awful, and that was before they degraded.
 
Euston
 
 
'uddersfield????  Leeds???  Manchester?  It looks like the Newcastle - Liverpool train -on the way to/from Uni I suspect.

 
York?

 

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Toton?
 

 
Grime Street

East Boldon - a 37 for netty! 

 
 

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  Magic   
 

  
 
More please.

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that's familiar.....

More....

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Nice set Neil, I am more for early green myself and for one awful moment I thought it was going to be square Hutchinson images 

Mmmmmmm.  Class 40s.  The Northwest (well near Ordsall Lane and several of Liverpool Lime Street's approaches).  It doesn't get much better in nostalgia! 

So, to add to this excellent exercise in ephemera, early essays from me:
 

A selection of diesels at Newton Heath depot (north Manchester) in August 1975.  The class 47 was rather unusual,  Probably intended for a Glasgow working, previously operated by the class 50s.
 

An archetypal Derby-built DMU on a Manchester-Oldham-Rochdale service.  Modellers will want to note that the headcode is still in use (but incorrect, it should be 2J86: 2H95 is for a Staybridge service) and that the stripe for the first class part of the train is much thinner than on most models.  A prototype for everything!   Alas, no train will ever serve Oldham again.
 

The early morning train to Kyle of Lochalsh awaits departure at Inverness, September 1976.
 

An oil train for Heysham runs round at Morecambe in April 1976.  The class 47 loco has been renumbered for TOPS, but is still in green livery with fll yellow ends.

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Cracking stuff... I doubt I can find mine, but I'll have a look tomorrow. Meanwhile, abiding blue diesel memories for me include the class 50's on the WCML pre electrification services and the top'n'tail service between Edinburgh & Glasgow. Can anyone oblige ?

With the latter but not the former, I think David - I'll have a look tonight!

That green 47 above - sure I have shots of the same loco!

Dtsteam


Cracking stuff... I doubt I can find mine, but I'll have a look tomorrow. Meanwhile, abiding blue diesel memories for me include the class 50's on the WCML pre electrification services and the top'n'tail service between Edinburgh & Glasgow. Can anyone oblige ?

Your wish is my command!
I spent a hellish week in 2008 transferring all my old slides and prints onto the PC.  Glad I did so: quite a few had started to fade.
 

A rather blurry shot of 50010 at Preston on Nov 29th 1975, having just pulled the Manchester portion of a Manchester/Liverpool to Glasgow/Edinburgh train.  Portion working at Preston and Carstairs.  Real train operation!  Look at all those parcels vans on the left....
 

Glasgow-Edinburgh push-pull passes the old Eastfield depot in August 1978.  No idea why the brake coach is at this end: it should be at the rear.   Ruritanian Railways takes great pleasure in emulating this concept: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2W6ogFMS9c
 

There's two stories attached to this shot of Glasgow "blue trains" at Dalmuir, also in August 1978.  The train will work back to the old Bridgeton station where there were stabling sidings.
 
First story: note it's a rush hour working with two 3-car sets joined.  At the time, the trains were always planned (diagrammed in BR speak) around 6-car units.  Say diagram 100.  After the morning rush hour, the 6-car set would be split as halves 'A' and 'B' and 100A and 100B would go about their business independently.  It was Holy Writ that A and B MUST rejoin later in the day to become diagram 100 again.  There were a lot of diagrams with that logic.  Extraordinary manoeuvres with empty stock workings were devised by Glasgow's train planning office to make all the halves come back together again.  When Chris Green became Chief Operating Officer he simply asked why each 3-car set couldn't have its own diagram number and join up with another as required in the rush hours.  Complete incomprehension from the planning office.  Change of personnel in the planning office.....
 
Second story: a mate of mine used to work at the old Bridgeton depot.  One afternoon a set of two class 303s became "gapped" at the depot (stuck due to a failure of overhead line equipment).  Simple he thought: use another pair of 303s to drag the gapped set out of the way.  Yes, you've guessed it, due to a slight misunderstanding about the location of the wiring sections, the rescuing train got gapped too.  We now have a dead 12 coach train blocking the entrance to Bridgeton depot with about an hour before the evening peak starts.  Eastfield diesel to the rescue.   Much unhappiness!

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Brilliant, more, more!!  This is the sort of stuff I love!

re the parcels vans - I love that traffic, there used to be a lot in the North-east, a daily each evening from Sunderland (a catalogue warehouse, was it Kay's ???) would often have 14 on.  I have a shot somewhere of the inbound working of a Peak with one GUV - I don't know where the rest of the empties came from, must have come up the coast line from the south - Boro/Darlington?? I'll post it tonight if can find it.

love these. I should get mine onto the scanner.

how ever living in the south east and (dare I say it) a smidge younger than the photographers above my class 50's look like toothpaste tubes )

Also I don't think it is just nostalgia... it was so much more interesting before everything was done in under floor engined units.

You're not wrong - I have a few shots of DMU's, but not many!!  We had exclusively Met-Cam units South of the Tyne, I hear people say these were popular - not with us, they weren't!!!

CoggesRailway


Also I don't think it is just nostalgia... it was so much more interesting before everything was done in under floor engined units.

As a former railwayman, I agree, though "interesting" cut both ways.  The 1970's railway had far more permutations to know and work with (air or vacuum fitted locos; unfitted stock; steam or electric heating etc) which made it an intellectual challenge at times.  On the other hand, it was exceptionally frustrating occasionally!
 
However, you can't beat a big blue diesel, so here are some....
 

Class 44 farewell railtour pausing for a photo stop at Tamworth High Level, April 23rd, 1977.
 

Peak 46032 leaving platform 13 at Manchester Victoria on a Liverpool-Newcastle train.  April 1979.  Alas, all gone, replaced by anodyne, uncomfortable, noisy DMUs and a set of platforms only suitable for cave-dwellers.
 

The acme of diesel beauty!  A class 40 passes Astley signalbox (on Chat Moss) with a Manchester Victoria - Llandudno service.  August 1978.
 

Finally, the class 40's direct descendant.  A class 50 arrives at Oxford on a London Paddington-Birmingham New Street train.  July 1978.

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I don't remember class 40's, in fact that 50 was arriving in Oxford not long before I arrived in the world. However I still enjoyed them for 10 years hammering away departing platform 4 at Reading... I like the look of them (being near idenitcal to a 37 - well to someone who has never seen one in the flesh anyway....) I assume they were more powerful did they have the same wheel arrangement....?

Well I suppose I'd better stick my oar in here, plus some which have nothing to do with trains, if you will pardon me. This pair entering Aberdeen from either Glasgow or Edinburgh, this would have been unusual as by now these trains were entrusted to a single loco, usually a 40. Note the recess cut away on the leading 27 where the tablet apparatus would have been

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A Class 29, I think the 21 had all been rebuilt by now, heads out of Corpach on its way from Fort William to Mallaig. There's the great saviour (!) of the unemployment problem to the right, the Lochaber Pulp and Paper Mill. Remind you of Ravenscraig? And in the background Ben Nevis, which I climbed one Easter
 

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A Class 29, I think the 21 had all been rebuilt by now, heads out of Corpach on its way from Fort William to Mallaig. There's the great saviour (!) of the unemployment problem to the right, the Lochaber Pulp and Paper Mill. Remind you of Ravenscraig? And in the background Ben Nevis, which I climbed one Easter

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Sorry about that last cockup. This is at Mallaig, waiting to return to Fort William.

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