Tag: June 2019

Stephenson Heritage Railway – June 2019 – Part 3

Posted in Adventures, B&W, FujiX-T2, industry, landscape, museum, people, photographyTagged , , , , , , , , 30 Comments

Part 1 HERE  Part 2 HERE

After we finally gave up going for rides, we got to look around in the workshops,with the lovely gentlemen explaining things to us.

Painting
Explaining what’s to be done
Mr.Fixer
work in progress – This steam locomotive was built for the Ashington Coal Company in Northumberland in 1939 by Peckett & Sons, Bristol. The Ashington Coal Company had one of Britain’s most extensive colliery railways. For 30 years it hauled wagons of coal from the company’s pits, and also passenger trains for the miners.  In 1991 it was acquired by Stephenson Railway Museum and was given the additional name of Jackie Milburn in honour of the great Newcastle United footballer who grew up in Ashington.

Some fab old tool boxes in use

??? 🙂

They had had some Thomas the Tank faces made for the front of the big steam engines to make the kids smile, but the people who own Thomas the Tank wouldn’t let them use them, so they just hang in the workshop. I mean, what harm would it do really?

No bodies

‘Bait’ up here is Geordie for lunch

Lunch timer
Our lovely workshop guide.

They let you drive a train up and down a bit for £2 which was a bargain, and Sophie was definitely up for that!

Driving Instructions
choo-choo

We also had a look in the museum and around the outside.

 

Billy

Billy is one of the oldest locomotives in the world, built and designed by George Stephenson in 1816 and one of the most innovative transport systems of it’s day and was used for over 50 years.

The 401 – Thomas Burt

This locomotive is named after Thomas Burt, a miners’ leader from Northumberland who in 1874 became the first working man to be elected as an MP. Also known as Vulcan, the 401 was one of three built in 1951 at Stafford by W.G. Bagnall Ltd for the Steel Company of Wales.

So that ends our visit to Stephenson Heritage Museum.

All pictures are by me and embiggenable with a click.

There is an album with more pictures of it HERE

and their excellent website is HERE

Stay tooned for our next adventure, a revisit to Cragside to see the rhododendrons

 

Stephenson Heritage Railway – June 2019 – Part 2

Posted in Adventures, B&W, Fuji, FujiX-T2, landscape, people, people, photographyTagged , , , , , , , , 25 Comments

Part 1 HERE

Sophie and I enjoyed the train ride so much we went on it twice 🙂 as the ticket covered you for as many goes as you liked.

Shabby chic

They are still renovating the carriages, so they do look a bit shabby, but it didn’t matter to us, it was easy to ignore that and imagine being in Brief Encounter 🙂

Of course we and all the other kids ignored that!

On the return journey we were just in normal class as someone got to our first class carriage before us (gits 😀 )

Good job we didn’t need to ‘go’

second class carriage
Tempting…..but didn’t 🙂

Scenes from the windows

Veritable Vegetation
Pizza thataway
Boy racer

Back at the station we said our thanks to the guard

and to the Station Master who was happy to pose for a photograph

and I couldn’t resist a sneaky shot of this little lad waiting his turn to go on the train

The wonder years

That’s it for today, but we haven’t finished with the railway, as we got to look around the work shop, and Sophie got to drive a train, so stay tooned for next time:)