30th July 2009

Thursday has been a busy day with a number of comings and goings as well as a dash down to the NRM at York for a meeting.

Below: This overhead crane, built by the Grange Iron Company of Durham and used at the famous Philadelphia Engine Works on the Lambton raiwlay system in County Durham, arrived in the morning. It was displaced from the works by a more modern crane, being rescued and placed at the Bowes Railway for safe storage. In recent years it has been rather an obstacle to development at Bowes and it was long hoped it might move to Beamish for safe custodianship. It has now arrived and for now will be kept in the colliery yard.
It is interesting in that it was built as a steam crane, later being converted to electric operation, apparently via a lay-shaft. The carriage (the bit which runs along the bridge) is very much like a traction engine to stand in, the controls being not dis-similar too.

Below: Whilst the crane was arriving from Bowes, No.22 was being readied to go back to Bowes after 26 steamings at Beamish. It is seen below waiting for loading onto Duncan Milner’s low-loader. It arrived safely back at its home shed at lunchtime.

Below: A quick sprint to York and the chance to poke around. I thought a couple of photos of locally interesting objects might be of interest – starting with the very locally made winding engine from Weatherhill (on the Crawley incline) on the Stanhope and Tyne Railway.

Below: Black Hawthorn ‘Bauxite’ – another North East veteran and in beautifully original condition. This loco spent a long period on display in the Science Museum in Kensington.

Below: Aerolite – a real bitza engine and used exclusively throughout its sedate working life as motive power for the director’ saloon. It was an early entrant to the railway museum in York (in 1934) and later moved to current NRM site. It probably has some distinction for length of time in the same place, though I am not sure what the details might be…

Below: And finally a trio of photos of the stunning re-streamlined LMS pacific (4)6229 Duchess of Hamilton. It really is a show-stopper and was immensely popular with NRM visitors, as the length of time to take these three pictures would testify!