A holiday blog, featuring railways visited. July 22nd 2024

 A bit different to the Wednesday blog ..... we have just completed a 3 week tour of North East and West England. We started at Crich Tramway museum in Derbyshire.

Included are as many tram rides as you like .....

They have a mezzanine viewing area of the workshops. Here is an amazing reconstruction of what was clearly a very dilapidated vehicle.

You are free to walk around the garaged trams all of which are operational.

Next was a visit to Steeplegrange railway, which is only a few miles away and very close to Matlock.

This little railway is brilliant, and uses mostly electric motive power or this little Ruston. It was formerly a quarry railway, and now provides  a ride to the top of the old line or a short branch into the other quarry accompanied by a talk on fossils which are plentiful in the old workings.

They use ex coalmine man riders, a bit of a squeeze for someone tall like me. but great fun.

This is the old branch line, the driver awaits for us while we are being educated about fossils.

Next, although sadly no track is the famous Monsal trail and of course the Headstone tunnel ....

We were glad of this as it was raining heavily. If you visit please be aware of many cyclists using the trail. of which many fail to announce their presence.

Just a short distance away between Bakewell and Matlock is Peak Rail, not too busy and a lovely trip to Matlock .

Steaming through beautiful Peak countryside.

A little bit further up country in the Lake District ..... at the Haverthwaite and Lakeside Railway.

Next move was to Yorkshire, staying just outside Skipton. Next on the Agenda was the Embsay and Bolton Abbey railway.

it was very busy with a number of coaches full of visitors ....

     

They have this very impressive Electric Autocar .... we were invited to have a look inside.

.... they also have this very nice carriage shed. 

..... with all of our compliments, we were offered a trip around the works ..... how could we refuse?

Just a few miles south is the Keighley and Worth Railway, we were made very welcome and enjoyed a round trip .......

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Doing the run around at Keighley Station ......

.......Inclusive is a visit to the Carriage Museum, some amazing stuff in there.

Next, well the name explains where we are. A delightful narrow gauge railway and very efficiently run by very friendly staff.

An interesting mix of motive power.

They have a turntable at each end of the line, which gives them a very rapid turn around.

This is the other end of the line, where you can alight and walk around the village.

The driver and guard doing a swift manoeuvre .....

Back to Heatherslaw .....

Apart from many others places of interest, we made our last stopover at Goathland which inevitably resulted in a trip on the North Yorks Railway.

Goathland for Whitby ......

Goathland for Pickering......

A goods train ran up and down the line all day ..... no guards van rides though.

The last train of the day from Whitby to Pickering, Diesel hauled until Grosmont (Network Rail), then a swap over to steam

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It is always worth a walk from Goathland to Grosmont along the former horse drawn trackbed, as you get closer views like this abound ......

A walk around the sheds, and look what we found ..... you may remember the TV programme featuring this steam tram belonging to ' Piglet'.

You may think we spent all 3 weeks on Railways, which is true but we did lots of other things.

On the return walk to Goathland we always make a detour to Beck Hole to one of the UKs smallest pubs, well after all that exercise we needed a glass of Lemonade!