Loose_Grip/Pete's photos with the keyword: 1969

A Blast from the Past. A snowy everyday scene in eastern France in 1969. An unidentified SNCF 140C 2-8-0 reversing north away from Verdun railway station is observed from the Avenue de Mort-Homme overbridge. HFF to everyone. Have a great weekend. Best appreciated in large format.

My first visit to the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway 55 years ago! The only engine running was British Railways-built North Eastern Railway design J72 0-6-0T 69023 Joem. Back then the reversal at Keighley was quite long and involved shunting the coach out of the platform and running round south of the station. Presumably because BR wouldn't allow the KWVR to do this alongside the yard to the north. HFF to everyone. Have a great weekend.

Going back over 53 years to my first visit to France for this broadside comparison with the previous post. Between turns on the commuter trains SNCF 141TC 2-8-2 39 lays up in the siding at the platform end at Paris Gare du Nord. Note the hose pipe topping up the sidetanks. Built in 1934 these big ex-Nord 2-8-2 tanks were impressive machines & at this time they were working the very intensive push & pull suburban services smokebox-first out of Paris. All were withdrawn by August 1970 when steam finished in Paris and only one example was preserved.

French commuter steam at Paris Gare du Nord as 141TC39 (ex-ETAT 42.039) departs rapidly northwards. These big 2-8-2 tanks, built by Fives-Lille in 1922, were impressive machines & at this time they were working the very intensive suburban services push & pull, smokebox first, out of Paris. While my then girlfriend had lectures on her year ahead as a French assistant in Verdun I hung around Gare du Nord & Gare de la Bastille taking in the Gallic steam atmosphere. The girlfriend ended up married to a frenchman, steam disappeared & the TGV arrives at these platforms now. C'est la vie!

LNER A3 4472 (60103) runs eastwards through Sheffield Victoria station light engine to wait for the stock of its special train to arrive. It's running with one tender so the engine number is nowhere to be seen, just a LNER crest on the cab-side and the letters LNER on the tender-side. The 1500v DC overhead wires are evidence that the Woodhead route is still open & this ex-Great Central Railway main line is still in business. The station and its passenger services only lasted until January 1970 however.

In honour of Flying Scotsman's rebirth (after a ridiculous £4.2 million rebuild & 10 years of waiting) this is one I took earlier. This was one of the early Open Days - the second one in fact, the first was in October 1968 - at the Great Western Railway shed at Tyseley. Flying Scotsman arrives from the main line with a special train.

SNCF 141TB 2-8-2T 463 departs Paris Gare de la Bastille station with cylinder cocks wide open. Bastille was the terminus of the 54.1 km long line to Vincennes and Verneuil-l'Étang. This was my first visit to Paris or France. No sign of any greenery in those days but today the Promenade Plantée is a major tourist site bustling with walkers who can follow the line eastwards for 4.5km. The station itself is the site of l'Opera de la Bastille. Interestingly when I lived in Paris in the 1980s I told my french co-workers that there had been a station here until 1969 & I was not believed at first! "C'est pas vrai"!!

The fireman of SNCF 141TC6 fails to close the water valve quick enough! Instead of commuter tanks, TGVs arrive & depart from these platforms 45 years later !

Bradford Trolley bus 782, registration CBX912, en route to Clayton Spring 1969. An empty street scene close to Bradford city centre. I have only just noticed that there is a second trolleybus in this view - extreme left. I was walking between Bradford Exchange and Foster Square stations en route from Sheffield to Keighley when I took the photograph. I spy a Ford Corsair taxi tucked in behind the trolleybus. Adams Best Butter is now in a carton pack, you know?

Dinting Railway Centre. LMS Jubilee 4-6-0 5596 Bahamas gives steam footplate rides in the shed yard, Autumn 1969. Dinting station can be seen in the background & the Great Central Railway Woodhead route to Sheffield Victoria runs left to right behind the embankment. The centre closed some years ago and most of the preserved engines & artifacts moved to Ingrow on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway.

Dinting Station British Railways. LNER EM2 electric E26055, Prometheus, on a Sheffield to Manchester passenger train on the Woodhead route waits at the west end of the platform, Autumn 1969. The crew wait for the "rightaway" to Manchester Piccadilly in the weak sunshine. Despite being a modern electrified railway the Woodhead closed completely in 1981. One nameplate from this engine was sold in December 2002 for £10200. The nameplate is not obvious in this view but the small oval 1953 Gorton Works, Manchester, maker's plate can be seen on the cabside. The rail glimpsed in the bottom left is the line to Glossop. The current limit of the truncated Great Central/LNER Woodhead route is to the east of Dinting.

Birmingham Snow Hill's disused signal box from just inside the tunnel. No chance of a King or Castle running me down by this time - through trains had been withdrawn in 1967. In 1969 it was the world's largest unstaffed halt - the only train using the station's 12 platforms was the single car dmu to Wolverhampton Low Level which still ran from the bay platform in the left distance until 1972. The station lingered on in grand decrepitude until June 1977 when it was finally demolished. In 1987 a new station was reopened on exactly the same location. What a waste of effort all round.

Paris Gare du Nord 2-8-2T 141TC12 departs September 1969. A second 141TC simmers in the adjacent platform on the left. All the atmosphere of a main line capital terminus. With the services out of Gare de la Bastille these were the last suburban steam trains in France. Quite a change from the Eurostars that arrive at these platforms today. My girlfriend of the time studied French at Aberystwyth University & was in Paris for an induction course at the Sorbonne to prepare for her year as a teaching assistant in Verdun. While she studied I photographed. She obviously took the course very seriously as she ended up marrying a frenchman! Still I took my photography seriously too & I still have a liking for french steam, paticularly these modern looking tanks.