Steam At The International Garden Festival - Liverpool 1984

A short video filmed on Super 8 sound cine film featuring 'River Irt' and 'Black Prince' in action in 1984 at the International Garden Festival, Liverpool.

 

Ah! Happy days. My 3rd floor lab overlooked the Garden Festival site and if I opened the windows the breeze off the river would carry the aroma of coal smoke into the room - lovely! The kids already knew I was crackers. Thanks for posting the link to the video.
Ray.

 

Glad you enjoyed it Ray, I remember being so amazed at how hard the locos had to work when I made my first visit to the Festival

 

Being only 4 at the time I can not remember it, but I remember reading an article in one of my dad's old Steam railway magazines when I was a teenager. I think it was written by one of the drivers/maintenance engineers, I remember thinking that it would be great to be a paid steam train driver (not that this has ever come to pass for me I as I went for a BA rather than a BSc)

I think the description of the route mentioned that it had some killer gradients on some very sharp curves and that the locos were being worked almost flat-out most of the time.

 

I certainly recall that there was one curve where the locos were working flat out and making quite a racket. The trains were full from morning to night too. I hadn't realised how long ago it was! Weren't there two Garden Festivals a couple of years apart? They both had miniature railways, but I cant recall where the other one was.

 

There were Garden Festivals at Stoke -on -Trent, Gateshead and Glasgow. Looking at Wikipedia it seems that there was a railway at Stoke operated by four diesel locos but 'Robert Heath No.6' operated on a standard gauge track laid at the main entrance. The same source suggests that both Glasgow and Gateshead also had a miniature railway but the locomotives aren't mentioned

 

Gateshead had a 15" railway, and used "River Irt", "Northern Rock" and "Shelagh of Eskdale" from Ravenglass + ex-Liverpool Garden Festival and new-build coaches (the "Maxis" built at Carnforth, subsequently used at Ravenglass). Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway was involved in the planning of the Gateshead line. There was also a standard gauge tram. (Don't know about Glasgow - not 15") .

 

No, Shelagh and Greenbat went home after construction and we had "John Southland" and a rake of "teaks" plus the homebuilt car as well as the maxis.
L'aal Ratty provided a certain amount of technical and practical assistance, but I think the initial design was "in-house".
There were three trams - Sunderland 100 (aka Met 331), Gateshead 5 replaced by Blackpool boat 167, and Newcastle 102.
There was also a short length of track for the Locomotion replica.
And a monorail, the less said about that the better.

I was on the Gateshead Festival Management - and had a significant input to the day to day operations of the on-site transport. The sound of the loco's could be heard over a wide area ...

E2A - I recognise the driver of R Irt in the Liverpool film.

 

Gateshead....that was the one I was remembering. Parents dragged me to both. Dragged is a bit strong. The trains were worth the trip, the gardens, were, gardens.