The Woodhead rail route over the pennines

[Wacky Racer]

Fascinating archive videos...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8unQ9SJ1ffQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEGq-OGwTwU

[W124Bob]

Two classes of electric loco where built for the line, 6 axle class77 and a very similar 4 axle class76. The 77000's had a steam boiler(on an electric loco!), one survives in the museum of science and industry in Manchester. At the end of passenger service over the line the 77000's where sold to the Dutch railway network. The system operated at 1500v DC, this was it's down fall really as it was just to costly to convert to 25kv ac. The loco's could feed electricity back into the overheads when descending under braking, most of the coal in later years was destined for Fiddlers Ferry power station at Warrington and about half the remaining class 76 fleet had the vacuum brakes removed and airbrakes fitted. A high tension electricity cable now runs through Woodhead tunnel.

[truck71]

Interesting comment about the cost to convert the power from DC to AC. Given the infrastructure was there and the two alternative routes (I think there are two?) across the Pennines are not electrified I wonder if the business case wasn't prepared well enough. If rationalisation was the objective I would have thought closing the route through Totley tunnel would be a better decision? Crying shame to have abandoned such a great civil engineering achievement. What's more it looks like a lot of the route has four tracks providing greater capacity.

[W124Bob]

With Woodhead running there where 4 routes across the Pennines, the Midland Railway route via Dore and Totley to access the midland mainline, the LNWR route now used by Trans Pennine for access to Leeds and Wakefield(Healey Mills yard) and the L&Y route from Manchester Victoria via Todmorden giving access to Bradford,Leeds and connections to Healey Mills. So it was inevitable that the odd one out would be the one for closure despite it being the shortest route. Only the actual gantries would have been resused(the Hadfield, Glossop route was part of the 1500dc system)another problem ironically was lack of road access to the line making maintenance in todays railway very awkward.

[rs1952]

W124Bob said:

The system operated at 1500v DC, this was it's down fall really as it was just to costly to convert to 25kv ac.

And of course the perceived wisdom of the early 1980s, when London Broad Street closed, attempts were made to close the Settle & Carlisle, and there was a plan to convert London Marylebone into a coach station

But one point I'd never thought of before is the commuter service out to Glossop and Hadfield. Was that converted to 25kv, or is it still running on 1500dc?

[W124Bob]

The line was converted to 25kv in the late 70's.

[rs1952]

W124Bob said:

The line was converted to 25kv in the late 70's.

I see I'm not exactly up to speed on recent developments along there then

Here's my excuse - the last time I was at Dinting about to catch a train

http://www.flickr.com/photos/93122458@N08/84659070...

Sorry about the quality - I was 14 at the time

[Wacky Racer]

Used to travel on the line fairly often as a schoolboy in the late sixties, I remember once (around 1968) travelling all the way from Manchester Piccadilly to Sheffield Victoria and being the only person on the (five coach) train.

[rs1952]

Wacky Racer said:

Used to travel on the line fairly often as a schoolboy in the late sixties, I remember once (around 1968) travelling all the way from Manchester Piccadilly to Sheffield Victoria and being the only person on the (five coach) train.

Like many other railways at the time, of course.

Whilst with the current growth in rail traffic the antics of those in charge post-Beeching have come in for much criticism in recent years (and some of which is justified), I also feel that some of the criticism levied is because these people failed to look into a crystal ball.

At the time it appeared that the railways were a dying form of transport, so why bother to keep the lines open and the infrastructure in place.