Railway ramblings

My father gained Ph.D. from Sheffield University for a thesis on turnpikes and canals in North Derbyshire and the adjoining area of the West Riding of Yorkshire.  His research took him to many locations to pore over archives.

It is easy to forget that in those days there was no internet, nor e-mails and subscriber trunk dialing of telephone numbers was in its infancy.  Hence the need for visits to Manchester, York, Leeds and London.

Manchester was visited frequently and I was taken on the visits and left to fend for myself on arrival. Travel was by rail and we would catch a train at Chesterfield Central.  The train originated at Leicester Central and would take us to Manchester London Road (now named Piccadilly).

At Sheffield Victoria the steam locomotive (usually an A3) came off to be replaced by an electric locomotive.  The first stop after Sheffield was Penistone, a windswept place where the line from Wath joined.  The main reason the line had been electrified after the Second World War was to  improve the haulage of coal trains between the Yorkshire coalfield and Fiddlers Ferry power station.  At Penistone a line branches off on a massive viaduct for Huddersfield.  This was the route taken by The South Yorkshireman express as it travelled between Bradford Exchange and London Marylebone.

Our train continued via the Woodhead Tunnel into Lancashire and then on to Manchester. Manchester London Road had four platforms designated 'A', 'B', 'C' and 'D' for trains from the route we had travelled.  The remainder of the platforms were numbered and were used by trains heading south for Crewe and London Euston. Although the railways had been nationalised for a decade the platform arrangements harked back to the days of the London and North Eastern Railway and the London Midland and Scottish railway, indeed back to the pre-grouping of 1923 when Great Central and London and North Western trains used the station. On the LMS side of the station trains came from and departed to London, Birmingham and Bristol.

However, change was in the air, and our later visits coincided with the redevelopment  of London Road and the electrification of the route to London Euston.

Within a few years the train we caught from Chesterfield went no further than Sheffield.  In the early 1960s it was decided to run down the services on the former Great Central line. Passengers for Manchester had to endure an hour's wait at Sheffield for their onward train. At first staff at Sheffield would 'hold' a Manchester bound train for passengers from the Leicester train, but it was decreed that the train from Leicester had to arrive at the place vacated by the Manchester bound train.

It was not long before the Great Central line through Chesterfield was closed, closely followed by the closure of the Woodhead route, despite it being by far the fastest route between Sheffield and Manchester.

It is still possible to travel by train from Sheffield to Penistone, but the journey commences at Sheffield Midland and is routed via Barnsley.  From Penistone trains continue to run to Huddersfield.