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Sunday 5 February 2012

Interesting Videos

Prevented from cycling today by the winter weather I spent some time checking out YouTube for videos appertaining to the history of the Great Northern Railway and look what I found.

The first one dates from 1989 and shows some footage of the testing of a diesel railway engine; a type 60 apparently, (whatever that is). No doubt our resident railway experts will be able to explain more about that.
Perhaps they will also be able to explain why it makes more smoke than any of our bonfires.
Take a look at this one HERE

The second video is more recent, being a walk along the Greenway from Etwall to Mickleover and on across the buried tunnel at Mackworth, by a railway enthusiast. Some interesting stills showing the tunnel portals and the filling of the cutting.  Inserted are some cine shots taken on one of the last passenger trains to use the line. An enthusiast's special I presume.
R54 Rangers will be interested to see the Sutton Lane Bridge Teddy Bears in position on the more recent footage, although the author makes no mention of them, nor any other feature of the path in it's current state.
See this video HERE AGAIN

And finally a reminder of our 2009 Biking Barbecue at Etwall with John Swan's video of the event
JohnsVID

3 comments:

BirdyRed said...

Your pedantic railway expert says that this is a TYPE 5 or a CLASS 60"Type" was a rough and ready power classification introduced in the early days of diesels - 1 being least powerful, 5 the most. "Class" was introduced when computerisation of various sorts of records began and again, in general, the higher the class number the more power the loco had. Diesel locos which existed before this were renumbered to conform with this system. Class 60s were the last new diesels introduced before privatisation for hauling heavy coal or oil trains and were fitted (if I remember rightly) with a 3250HP English Electric diesel engine supplying power to 6 electric motors, one to each axle. The instrument which was the interest of the camera for a while was almost certainly monitoring the electronic box of tricks which matched generator output to the motors with the power setting of the engine as controlled by the driver.
Clearly the loco had been left idling for a very long time before it was brought out of the shed at Mickleover and the exhaust system was full of half burnt diesel fuel. The dirtier smoke seen later in the film was caused by opening the throttle more quickly than the turboblowers could cope with.
The few bits of film from the train illustrate quite graphically how overgrown the path is now compared with its time as a functioning railway line.

Longranger said...

Another railway pedant writes:
Class 60. Built by Brush (Loughborough) with Mirrlees 3100hp (2300kw) engine.
The video of the special to Derby shows the 'wiggly wire' installed on the down line.
If anyone in the group has a 35mm slide scanner, I will dig out my Mickleover pics ranging from orchids in the tunnel cutting to APT-E on test.
Nick.

Les Sims said...

I have a slide scanner. It is home made (but works) and fits on top of a conventional scanner, back lighting the slide, which then appears on the computer and requires some enhancement with photo editing software such as PhotoShop.
Transparances such as these are priceless, but we have become accustomed to better definition over the years. Nevertheless, such photographs are well worth preserving digitally.