The Gricer

  The Last Steam Enginemen A fireman finishing his day's work having just cleaned his fire and emptied the ash pans   The possibility for a life on the footplate began when, in 1804, Richard Trevithick’s first locomotive was built. However, the first man to be ‘officially’ employed as an engine driver was James Hewitt who, in 1812, was a pitman at Charles Brandling’s Colliery Railway in Leeds. Today, Brandlings Colliery Railway is the heritage Middleton Railway. Driver Hewitt’s railway career was, sadly, cut short when, in 1832, the boiler of his engine exploded – unfortunately he wasn’t the first engine driver to be killed in this gruesome fashion. On the 28 th February 1818 George Hutchinson, another of the drivers on Brandlings Colliery Railway, died when the boiler of his engine exploded – though it has to be said he was, in part, responsible for his own demise due to his habit of ‘weighting’ the safety valves – a way to increase boiler pressure and gain more power from...

Clogs & Mufflers Damp, cobbled streets, stone walls and buildings, a member of the station staff in cloth cap and a frock coat – no not a still from some old movie, but a modern day recreation of an imaginary past.  ‘The ‘good old days’ weren’t ‘the good old days’ if you were living in them. It would be highly unlikely that any of the people on the platform, back then, had a vote, a bank account, or proper health and medical care. They didn’t have paid holidays, sick pay, or maternity leave either. This 'preserved' colliery railway, whose engine shed dates back to 1855, was once part of an even older wagonway built, in 1725, to carry coal, in horse drawn wagons, to the banks of the Tyne - the original 'Coals to Newcastle'. Line, mines, and workers were the property of the mine owners, the bankers and the aristocracy known collectively, at the time, as the Grand Allies. One of the ‘Grand Allies’ was George Bowes, ...

  Rural Rustic On a branch line, far, far, away there’s a hole in the fabric of space and time. Engines from the 1890s , coaches from the 1930s, technologies of a different age, rub shoulders with digital SLRs Sat Nav and the ‘social media network’. The alchemical magic of 19 th & 20 th century, film, developer, fixative, and the dark arts of the dark room, dodging and shading have vanished into pixel counts and photoshoppery – digital manipulation. That’s the thing today there’s a great deal too much manipulation, of all kinds, public perceptions, the price of milk, banking interest rates, and let’s not leave out those dreaded statistics, which all sides claim to be manipulated. When the engine in this photograph was built, the company that owned it was, to all intents and purpose, the largest in the World – the London & North Western Railway. The Chairman of Directors was Lord Stalbridge, other Board members have included, the II Earl of Iveagh, Rupert G...

The Gricer   The 6.05 Special and its connections   In February 1957 the BBC began to broadcast the “Six-five special” – it was the first ‘rock and roll’ TV show on British Television. The show opened to the tune of the Bob Cort Skiffle Group playing the "The Six-Five Special's comin' down the line, The Six-Five Special's right on time ..." while on the screen the viewer saw a streamlined ‘Coronation’ Class 4-6-2 from the air, a footplateman on the footplate and a Class A2 4-6-2 crossing the Forth Bridge as the Titles scrolled up the screen. Culture, albeit pop-culture is but one connection in the vast network of ties between the railway and almost every aspect of daily life. Painting, Pigeon Racing, Poetry and Trainspotting, a social past-time only made possible by the railway’s very existence, even the travelling circus has a railway connection. The coming of the railway made possible the seaside holiday and commuting, it also became a target and a vital cog in ...