Matt Ditch Photography Blog

 Event Recap:  Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway 60th Anniversary Gala - 'It's Still A Lot Of Fun' Over the weekend on the 10/11 of July the Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway held a gala to celebrate 60 years of the railway's preservation society. The gala featured a number of trains hauled by locos that don't normally work passenger trains. Such as Katie from the railway museum and Lister "Cyril"  "Katie" climbing Hollin How bank with a train for Dalegarth. Katie is normally displayed inside the railways Museum at Ravenglass. "Perkins" and a short train bound for Dalegarth entering Gilbert's Cutting. Recently overhauled "Black Prince" on display at Ravenglass. "Black Prince" is normally based on the romney hythe and dymchurch railway but has been overhauled at the nearby Old Hall Farm, Bouth. Fowler Road Locomotive 16263, "Talisman" A few minimum gauge steam locomotives were on display near the Museum at...

Andrew Barclay Grey/Glyder  Andrew Barclay 0-4-0WT (well tank) Grey/Glyder was built in 1931 for the Burnhope Reservoir railway near Wearhead. "Grey" was one of 5 well tanks built for use on the line by Andrew Barclay. The railway linked with the Weardale Railway from Darlington at the terminus of the line at Wearhead station. Here items used in the construction of the r eservoir  would have been transferred from the standard gauge trains to the narrow gauge ones. When the railway closed in 1937 many of the locomotives including Grey were sold on to Penrhyn Quarry railway in North Wales. Here the engine was renamed "Glyder". When the PQR closed, the engine and several others were sold onto private collections in the USA. Grey/Glyder returned to the UK in 2012 along with Avonside 0-4-0T "Durham/Ogwen". All the engines that were exported have now returned to the UK. In recent years  Grey/Glyder has returned to steam at Beamish and still carries a lot of its ...

A trip to Lakeside I recently had a trip down to the bottom of lake Windermere to the Lakeside & Haverthwaite Railway. I was fortunate that on the day of my visit, Bagnall "Victor" was in steam. This was a nice change for me as every time I visit it seems to be "Repulse" or "Princess" out.  "Victor" was built in 1951 for Steel Company of Wales and was used at their  Abbey, Margam and Port Talbot works. 3 locos were built, "Victor" (2996), "Vulcan" (2994) and "Valiant" (2995). The 3 were replaced by diesels in 1957 and "Victor" & "Vulcan" were sold to the Austin Motor Company in Birmingham. "Valiant" ended up with the NCB in South Wales, but was sadly scraped in 1967. Both  "Victor" & "Vulcan" worked at Longbridge till 1973 when they were again replaced by diesels. Both engines were preserved and moved to the West Somerset Railway. "Vulcan" was so...

Peckett 1370 Beamish museum aren't running trains at their Rowley station site this year so Peckett 1370 "May", which normally operates these trains, has been moved across to the colliery railway. It was built in 1915 and is an R2 class 0-4-0ST. It worked at  Yates Duxbury & Sons papermill at Heap Bridge in Bury, Lancashire along with 2 other locomotives. Peckett "Annie" now preserved at the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre and an Andrew Barclay 0-4-0ST also named "Annie".  1370 had been relegated to spare loco by the 1970s and was eventually sold into preservation first moving to Wigan with  Bryn Engineering. It later moved to the East Lancashire Railway with its current owners the  Jubilee Locomotive Company who Beamish hire her off. The above shot shows 1370 doing what it usually does at the museum, hauling passenger trains from the rebuilt Rowley station along the short passenger line they have. The below video captures the  Yates Duxbury & S...

  Austerity No.49 returns to steam at the Tanfield Railway Austerity 0-6-0ST No.49 returned to steam for the first time in 14 months at the Tanfield Railway during the late May bank holiday. Here are some shots of the loco at work along the line and a brief history of it. 49 was built in 1943 by Robert Stephenson & Hawthorn in Newcastle for the MOD. It's unclear as to where 49 went immediately after leaving the works. In the winter of 1943 she was put into store at the Melbourne Military Railway in Derbyshire. From here it was moved into WD storage in Essex before returning to the MMR in the Autumn of 1944. The loco was loaned to the Ministry of Fuel and Power's Swannington opencast disposal point in Leicestershire from May 1946 to Bennerley disposal point in Nottinghamshire in February 1947. It had a relatively short stay there and by April of that year it had moved North to Backworth in Northumberland, which would become the locos home. And, where she eventually bec...

 Event Recap:  Statfold Barn Railway  "Trangkil 50" 12/06/21 I was lucky enough to have my first ever visit to Statfold Barn during their "Trankgkil 50" event. I've photographed a number of their extensive loco collection on a number of times when their engines have been loaned to Beamish & Threlkeld Quarry. This post looks at some highlights from the event and gives a brief history on those locomotives. Trangkil No.4 (the birthday girl) returning from the Balloon loop. The engine was the last Commerical made industrial steam locomotive to be built in the UK by Hunslet. The coach behind the No.4 was built for the aborted Kielder Green Dragon railway . Making its debut during the event was Andrew Barclay 0-4-0WT “Cegin”. It built in 1931 for the Burnhope Reservoir railway in Weardale. And originally named “Red”. It was sold in 1936 to the Penrhyn Quarry railway in North Wales. The engine behind, “Marchlyn” was built by Avonside again for the Burnhope Reservoi...

 Askham Hall - The forgotten Avonside. Askham Hall in Whitehaven in 1976.  © George Woods   Anyone who has visited Threlkeld Quarry in recent years may have spotted the unrestored and sad looking 0-4-0 saddle tank sitting in the lower storage area. This is Avonside No.1772 of 1917 “Askham Hall”. Built by Avonside locomotives works, Bristol. The engine was originally named “Sella Park" a name it carried until Hawthorn Leslie rebuilt it during 1935. The engine spent its working life on the Cumbrian coast, spending time working at industrial sites in Workington & Whitehaven. In the early 1970’s it ran over BR metals under its own power moving from Solway colliery Workington where it saw little use, to Whitehaven where it worked coal trains along Whitehaven harbour, transporting coal from Howgill incline to ships that would then take the coal to Ireland and the Isle of Man. Askham Hall finally became surplus and was donated to Copeland Borough Council who transferred the ...