Loose_Grip/Pete's photos with the keyword: railroading

View north from Leicester station. Peak class diesels 45159 & 45114 slowly draw a train towards the station although the signals seem to be against them. In fact that's the signalman hurrying back to his box to clear the Inner Home. Meanwhile a dmu is heading northwards under clear signals on the Down Main. 45159 had failed within sight of the station & fortunately 45114 was on hand in the station & was dispatched to retrieve it. The whole episode only took half an hour or so. I wonder how long it would take today if a Midland Mainline train failed here? There are only very few locomotives around, if any, & those would be EWS or Freightliner owned so difficulties with insurance, liabilities, etc would make it a long drawn out procedure I'm sure. Until the 1980s Leicester Midland before modernisation was an interesting place with a definite steam-age atmosphere. Leicester North's Midland Railway signal box, a forest of semaphore signals, the loco stabling point behind the box and, off shot to the left, the LNWR & MR Goods yards all added their bit. Interestingly, the loading gauge post on the extreme left has lost its hanging gauge hoop which could still be seen on a 1975 photo I posted elsewhere. A clear indication of the further loss of freight business in the intervening two years.

GCR Loughborough shed. LNER O4 2-8-0 63601 footplate from the tender while getting steam up. I am trimming the coal forward before going off shed to pull our service train. The cab layout is simplicity itself & the engine steams on a candle. An excellent engine in many ways but perhaps not first choice for cold, wet winter days. Then again in 1912 when the locomotive was built designers didn't really care too much about the welfare of crews. Note the sheet in the tender - hooked onto the cab roof it's our only protection against the weather when running tender-first. She will be running her last trains for a while this coming weekend, 23rd-24th June 2012, as her boiler certificate runs out then. She did make it to 100 years old in steam though so come to the GCR to ride her for one last time.