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Tag: History

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We hope everyone's keeping well.  This update will keep you up to speed with the most recent news on the Tracks through Grantham front as we wait for warmer, longer days and the prospect of some kind of normality returning.

New and Updated Website Pages

New Pages:

  • the Grantham Railway Disaster of 19th September 1906 had calamitous consequences for the Robertson family as they travelled home to Scotland.  There's a new page about how the fateful journey unfolded and its dreadful outcome here.

An Updated Page:

About halfway down the above page we have a report from the front page of The Grantham Journal of 17th July 1942 about the retirement of one of the signalmen:

Arthur Chalkley retires, 32 years a South Box Signalman

The report outlines Arthur's very active working and home life, leading us to ponder "What wouldn't we give to have an opportunity to talk to men like Arthur Chalkley, born in Great Ponton, railway signalman, NUR local branch secretary, Town Councillor, and much more besides."

Thanks to 'Google' the page was discovered recently by one of Arthur Chalkley's granddaughters.  She has been in touch and sent us a wonderful family photograph which we have added beneath the newspaper report.

Further research has revealed that Rosamond Chalkley, Arthur's wife, was also active in local circles and in the mid-1930s she was president of the Grantham Branch of the NUR Women’s Guild (for the wives and daughters of railwaymen).  We hope to have more in future.

A New Page in Preparation

On another front, our quest to encourage former Grantham spotters to tell us about their personal stories of visits to the station and other local railway locations has resulted in another set of nostalgic memories being passed over to us.  This time Phil Wilson has sent over some of his notes and photographs that were taken by himself in and around the Grantham area during the early 1960s.  These notes are currently being pieced together in readiness for a new article that will appear in ‘Spotters' Corner’ so please do look out for it.

Here's a taster...

A3 No. 60062 'Minoru' stationary on the Up Slow line near Springfield Road Bridge with southbound parcels at 6.14pm on Saturday 16th May 1964. This was one of six ex-Grantham A3s which had been transferred to New England shed at Peterborough in September 1963.
Photograph taken by Phil Wilson.
Phil's notes made at Grantham on Saturday 16th May 1964, beginning nearly half-way down the left column. In addition to No. 60062 two of the other five New England A3s made appearances on the day: No. 60112 'St. Simon' at 10.50am and No. 60054 'Prince of Wales' at 6.24pm.

If you have not already done so, make sure you get an early personal notification from us when it is published, by subscribing.  It’s free and very easy to do from the Contact Us or Subscribe page.

LNER and BR(E) Staff Magazines

A few years ago, as part of our ongoing research, we purchased two very useful DVDs from the Great Eastern Railway Society.  The first DVD covers The LNER Magazine from 1927 to 1947, with the second one covering The British Railways (Eastern Region) Magazine from 1948 to 1963. These magazines contain an absolute wealth of information and after many months of painstaking work going through the numerous pages, we have now managed to extract all references to people and incidents that have a connection with Grantham.  This also includes the other local stations that are situated within the boundaries of our Tracks through Grantham territory. To hopefully aid future research when developing new pages for the website, this information has been successfully transferred to a comprehensive searchable spreadsheet.

Grantham Station Buildings in Commercial Use

Various rooms in Grantham's station buildings are being used for commercial purposes these days. 

Back in April 2016 the former First Class Waiting Room was converted into an estate agent’s office.  It's been out of use again for a while, but there's currently a move to change it into a café .

The Whistle Stop micro pub opened in the old Parcels Office in November 2019.  Currently it's closed on account of government restrictions, but we gather they hope to reopen their 'Platform Beer Garden' on 12th April.

Perhaps more unused areas of the station will find new roles in the future.

A Recent Magazine Article

If you've seen Steam World Issue 405, March 2021, you may have seen that there's some local interest:

  • the cover photo is of Grantham's A3 No. 60056 Centenary at York in 1959;
  • on pages 24-29 there's a feature by Nigel Harris titled Around Stoke Bank...   It's a selection of black and white photos from the late 1950s and the mid-1960s, all taken by Philip Wells at a variety of locations between Essendine and Grantham.

Something you may be able to do for us...

While using the website, if you notice anything that needs putting right (such as a link that no longer goes to its intended destination, or something that's inaccurate or out-of-date) please send us a note.  The site has become so extensive that we aren't able to carry out 'housekeeping checks' on every page as regularly as we used to.  More pairs of eyes will be very welcome.  Please use either the Leave a Reply form, which appears on most pages, or the Contact Form on this page.

With best wishes to everyone as we hopefully all 'spring forward',

John Clayson and Mel Smith

Published on
Above: We couldn't resist this seasonal picture.  Grantham driver Jim Ledger and fireman Benny Kirk were on the footplate of No. 2551 Prince Palatine on Monday 9th March 1931 setting out from London King's Cross.  See below under A Grantham Crew’s Miraculous Escape.
(From The LNER Magazine, with acknowledgement to the LNER as publisher and with kind permission from the Great Eastern Railway Society. The Society has funded and organised the magazine's digitisation.  The digital copy can be ordered as a 2-DVD set here)

Hello all,

With most of us 'confined to barracks' there's never been a better time to extend and update the website!  There's a new page, and several pages have been improved and updated with more information and images.

Click on the titles for direct links.

A New Page

Some Men Who Saw It All: six Grantham drivers of the 1920s

In February 1930 The LNER Magazine published a photograph of six Grantham drivers who had retired during 1929.  The men were proudly posed together at a retirement presentation. 

It seemed to us that behind this photograph there are six stories of working life on the railway.  Potentially, the men's careers on the footplate might span a period from the 'Races to the North' of 1888 and 1895, conducted in relays using locomotives such as the GNR Stirling 'Singles',  to the non-stop Flying Scotsman introduced in 1928 between London and Edinburgh and made possible by the LNER Class A3 'Super Pacifics'.

Using accounts written by authors Harold Bonnett and Rev. Arthur Cawston, who became well acquainted with several of the men, and archives accessible to us on line in modern times, we think we've gained something of an insight into four decades or so of footplate work at Grantham, from the 1880s to the 1920s.

Revised Pages

Highdyke to Westborough in Fifty Pictures: photographs by Tom Boustead

This very popular page was launched in April 2020 as Highdyke to Hougham in Fifty Pictures, when it attracted a record number of appreciative comments.  Tom has worked with Steve Philpott to identify and scan more of his favourite photographs, extending the range north from Hougham to Westborough and featuring a wider variety of views.

Great Ponton Signal Box

Launched in August 2020, we have recently added information about two collisions inside Stoke Tunnel in the 1850s which led to Great Ponton station having a role in signalling through the tunnel.  Jim Chesney has kindly allowed the use of some splendid photographs from the 1930s, and the Saltersford Up main line auto signals receive an overdue write-up.

A Grantham Crew’s Miraculous Escape

Another find in The LNER Magazine is a great photograph of a Grantham crew's departure from King's Cross taken by a photographer from The Times on a snowy March morning in 1931.  The crew were driver Jim Ledger who happened to be a younger brother of Walter Ledger, one of the retiring drivers in the photograph noted above, and fireman Benny Kirk.

Thirty years later, in December 1961, Benny was the driver in charge of one of the trains involved in a disastrous multiple collision near Wood Walton.  We've added the 1931 photograph to our page about that collision, along with a recently discovered LNER circular of 1928 which demonstrates the enduring importance of the Aberdeen meat train which Benny Kirk was driving in 1961.

A quite co-incidental connection is that one of our retiring drivers of 1929, Joe Wright, was born at Wood Walton in 1864.

We always appreciate feedback, so we hope you'll dip further into the site from time to time and let us know what you think, using either the Leave a Reply section, which appears at the bottom of most pages, or our Contact Form.

Published on Leave a comment on Let’s take a trip to Tyneside on the footplate of an A4 – and back home on an A3!

We've said before that often we don't know where the inspiration for the next new page for Tracks through Grantham will appear from.  We have items 'in the pipeline' all the time but, quite regularly, someone will get in touch with a surprise discovery.  Just a few weeks ago a copy of a magazine titled Locomotive Express revealed a previously unknown (to us) account of a regular day's work for a No. 1 Express Link crew at Grantham Loco in 1950.

So prepare to get grit in your hair, and organise a nice warm bath for when you get home, as we travel 326 miles in one shift with a Grantham crew on our latest page All in a Day's Work.

Published on Leave a comment on Getting Started – Grantham station’s Train Starting Indicator

Our latest page explores a little-known piece of equipment on Grantham station.

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Published on 1 Comment on ECML O Gauge Layout

Something to hopefully brighten up our days in lockdown! We've just discovered a most interesting and wonderful O Gauge model railway owned by John Ryan who is President of the LNER Society. This fascinating layout is located near 'Over Peover' in Cheshire. Although it's not Grantham based we feel you will still enjoy watching it. There's something for everyone.  Turn up the sound to get the full experience!

 

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It's Sunday 27th June 1971 and Grantham Yard signal box is about to close.  Leaving the box for the last time, someone reached into a drawer or cupboard for an old scrapbook which had been lying there for years.  It contained circulars and memos received by the signalmen at the Yard Box between 1900 and 1945, each carefully pasted into a page for possible future reference.  They would be needed no more but maybe someone, someday, might be interested...

At Tracks through Grantham we have recently seen this remarkable survivor.  It truly is a fascinating archive, with many stories to tell about things that mattered to the railway and to its employees.

A new page on our website draws on this resource for the first time.  Fresh Fish Daily! is an insight into the importance of the Scotch fish traffic to the people who operated the Great Northern section of the East Coast Main Line in the early decades of the 20th century.

Published on Leave a comment on Railway Bylines – July 2019

On Saturday 30th September 1967 there was a rail tour of the Stewarts & Lloyds (Minerals) Ltd. lines at Woolsthorpe and Harlaxton, including the stretch of the BR Woolsthorpe Branch between Denton and Casthorpe Junction.

This tour is described and illustrated in the current issue of Railway Bylines (Vol. 24: Issue 8, July 2019) on pages 356-360 Harston & Harlaxton Ironstone Quarries - Notes by Charles A. Rekab. The event marked the imminent replacement of the fleet of industrial steam locomotives by second-hand diesels puchased from British Rail.

This tour is among several that are noted on our page Rail Tour Rambles round Grantham.

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For nearly 100 years signalmen and telegraph lads at Grantham South signal box kept watch over the running lines, the yards and the sidings which lay south of the passenger station.  The box was staffed round the clock, seven days a week.  What stories it might have told of the characters who worked it, and some of the incidents they dealt with!

Although the building is long gone, former Grantham signalling staff have generously shared their memories and photographs.  We've also researched local newspapers and explored other sources to illustrate the work of signalmen and telegraph lads at Grantham South.

The stories include:

  • an insight from Victorian times into the harsh and, from a modern perspective, negligent attitude of the railway companies to the personal safety of their employees;
  • the tale of a horse which made a bid for freedom by charging along the main line as far as Great Ponton;
  • how, one September night in 1906, two men on duty at the South Box were the first to witness the Scotch mail train emerge from the darkness as it sped towards the station out of control to meet with destruction a few seconds later;
  • a surprising episode in the summer of 1911, during a national dispute over working conditions on the railways, when the South Box was surrounded by a riotous mob which had to be dispersed by police.

Read all of this and more in our latest new page Grantham South signal box - people and incidents .

Published on Leave a comment on Early Railcars (Diesel Multiple Units) in Grantham & Lincolnshire

In our introductory article, that covered the early main line diesel scene at Grantham, we briefly looked at some of the reasons behind the transition from steam to diesel power on Britain's railway system, in particular the main line through Grantham. But what about the cross country secondary lines that linked Grantham with other urban areas, such as Lincoln and Nottingham? Our next article is all about the introduction of 'Railcars' during the diesel era and has just been published.

Can you remember the first generation Railcars? Perhaps you referred to them as Diesel Multiple Units, or maybe DMUs for short? Our new article begins here.

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In February 1980 Doncaster Power Signal Box extended its area of operation to include Grantham.  In our latest new feature Andy Overton provides a unique insight into the work of signalling in a power box, including the vital role of communication with station staff at Grantham.  There's also the frustration of prioritising train movements effectively through an over-rationalised track layout in the era of the privatised railway.  It's a fascinating read.