Memoirs of a Railway Volunteer - Part 4

The early Years at Darley Dale – Part II

In fact we came through in remarkably good order. In one respect it was a blessing in disguise, in that we had been forced to take a rapid and realistic view of the Buxton site sale. The volunteers had been kept fully in the picture. We held regular monthly meetings, at which construction (and sometimes other) directors generally attended and everyone could have a say. Building a railway in the middle of a rural community is a very public event, so our problems had been very obvious when tracklaying stopped. Most successful preservation groups have been through one episode like this, these were growing pains, and they did lead to growth.

Telling the complete truth to everyone can be a very effective tactic in a tight corner. It has the shock of the unexpected. We now had a well drilled and united volunteer team, with confidence in the management, and a generous supply of money, now under the very tight control of Bob Grange, who was known as “Mean Git” and was proud of it. This combination does not always occur in railway preservation, but is devastatingly effective when it does.

In February 1990, there was no shortage of work needing to be done, and our construction activities rapidly achieved a remarkable level, with a power and a rhythm that was to be sustained continuously for over two years until the railway to Matlock was open. We not only had the proceeds of the site sale, but the Derelict Land Grant had been sorted out, through some sterling work by Robert Raynor, and though it would not be paid for some time, it would include a major contribution to the bridge repairs as an extra to the original claim.

As an opener, we were short of S1 chairs and I arranged to buy 1500 from the Foxfield Railway, I also bought the ironwork for three sets of C10 turnouts from demolition contractors at Derby works, and 400 brand new wooden sleepers for use between the platforms and under the level crossing.

Mick was determined to mechanise and bought a petrol rail saw, and also a petrol rail drill. Up to that point we had used an old hand operated drill, which we hated even more than the hand saw. It had no guidance for the hole centre, and the correct position of the hole is very difficult to set accurately from scratch. Occasionally we had to widen bolt holes with a file. I had a sneaking regard for the drill as a museum piece, and said we ought to keep it as a reserve in case something went wrong with the petrol drill, which Mick had bought as scrap and reconditioned. Mick’s view was that if necessary we would buy another drill, and shortly afterwards the hand drill had a tragic accident when Mick dropped a skip of scrap on it with a crane. I thought it was repairable, but had to admit it was beyond repair when the “accident” happened again.

Another very useful arrival was the Muscleman track slewing machine, purchased from the Midland Railway Trust at Butterley. They had two and wanted to keep the best one. “Mutant Recoveries” collected the better of the two by (genuine) mistake, and we had to sooth a few ruffled feathers and send it back. Andy Lynch reconditioned it. Finally we bought a couple of 1” drive air wrenches which could insert chair screws in about ten seconds flat.

We now began a fairly sophisticated series of operations, all of which had to be completed on time and in the correct order.

We began by sorting out the area North of Darley Dale station platform. This had been levelled and ballasted, and then used as a dumping ground for all sorts of odd bits and pieces of rail and hundreds of sleepers and crossing timbers. Most of the sleepers were siding grade only, and were laid out to become the North Carriage siding and headshunt on the Down side, initially 300yards long. Any bunker grade sleepers disappeared, and I think Messrs Wood and Brandon may have had something to do with that. On the proceeds Mick Thomas and Steve Ryszka paid a visit to Scotland and returned with token machines from the West Highland line, muttering something about McMutant International.

There were a lot of odd lengths of rail which had a good quality cross section, and Mick cut and drilled these into matched pairs for use in the Down platform. He didn’t care what length they were as long as it was a multiple of 2’6”, so that they could be replaced without moving the sleepers at a later date. Even then we were planning for two train running in the future. Next, we laid over 100 yards of track in the Down platform, in one weekend, with the aid of a large group of volunteers from the Grimsby and Louth railway who had come to learn basic platelaying.

I had a reputation for hoarding all sorts of miscellaneous ironmongery in case it ever came in handy. Never throw anything away, especially if you don’t know what it is. Mick asked me to produce sufficient check chairs and check blocks for two sixty foot panels of track, which I had in stock, and the panels were then assembled ready to use in the level crossing.

We were just in time for the start of the road closure notice, and Station Road was shut for a fortnight. As soon as the tracks were linked up across the road, as many items of stock as possible were shunted across out of the way.

The reason for this was that it is strictly forbidden to use a level crossing of any sort without HMRI approval, but a closed road doesn’t count. In turn this freed off the yard for contractors access to bridge 40, where work began on schedule immediately afterwards. We had recruited a small part time staff to work under Mick and speed up progress, and they were responsible for a large slice of the wet and very awkward work, dredging and building coffer dams in the Warney Brook in time to fit the contractors programme.

First the staff and volunteers set to work digging out the stream with a hired mini-digger, which was actually driven through the culvert under the main road. However when it came to deepening the stream bed below the culvert it was not man enough for the job. We hired in a JCB driven by a local character called Joe Brown.

Joe knew us only too well, and on the banks of the muddy stream he hesitated. However Mick Thomas was standing in his wellies in midstream beckoning him in, so Joe took the plunge. Unfortunately he drove right into the spot where the mini digger had dug a large hole before giving up, and the water was a good six feet deep. Mick was standing on a large submerged rock. Plunge it was!

The water came over the door sill and Joe abandoned JCB in a hurry, going in up to his neck. At that point his sandwich box was washed out of the cab, and he gave a despairing cry, “Me butties are floating away!” Nevertheless, he completed the job.


While the contractors were at work we kept out of the way and laid more track in what we had come to call the North Yard. Two of the C10 turnouts were put together to make the North Crossover. C10 turnouts have a relatively large radius, compared with the B8 which we frequently use in sidings, and are suitable for higher speeds. Once again we were planning for the future. Railway equipment is so heavy and hard to alter that temporary work is no good. What you have is generally what you are going to be stuck with. Within reasonable limits, you have to plan for the ideal future design, and make the present fit.

The coaches in the Down platform were receiving attention from the carriage gang which was beginning to form as a separate entity, one vehicle I remember there was the RMB which has given splendid service since. In quiet moments, the permanent staff fitted out the mess coach, which had once been a breakdown vehicle at Buxton.

The quiet periods were short and few. While the contractors finished off the bridges, we were remaking the track, some of which had been built on the basis of “never mind the quality, see the length”. In the dash of the previous year, the temptation had been to leave out such jobs as drilling holes for fishplate bolts after cutting rails, not surprising when you think about the hand drill. The result is known as a fly-plated joint, and these were falling apart under works trains. Some of the rails were substandard, and the concrete sleepered section at the top of Red House cutting was set too high and had to be dug out and lowered, which is always a lot more difficult than lifting it. Mick preached and enforced a rigorous attention to detail, and the rest of us recognised the quality of the finished product and were glad to follow his lead.

One thing we needed was a supply of CS1 chairs for the concrete sleepers, some of which had broken chairs on. One of my contacts reported that the Llangollen Railway had just bought a quantity of flat bottom rail, at which the penny dropped. We had a quantity of fishplates and fittings for flat bottom rail, and I knew the Llangolllen Railway potentially had a supply of CS1 chairs from Connah’s Quay power station. A swap was quickly arranged and I took a party over to Llangollen to get them.

Just as this all this work was getting into full swing, we got news of an auction sale at Stantondale, near Ilkeston. The old hands knew the place well, as we had raided it twice in the early Eighties. Mick and his bodyguards attended with orders from the Board to bid for the track, and to keep bidding until everyone else got tired. The rails were in relatively good condition but many were only 39 feet long. Arthur Dudson told me this meant they had been rolled in America, and brought in as deck cargo in WW2.

I like industrial auctions, which attract a wide range of colourful characters. The sale took place on site in a filthy black foundry building which you used to be able to see from the M1. The auctioneer in his best pinstripe was knocking down lumps of cast iron as smoothly as if it was best bone china. It was a big auction and the track was Lot No 1102.

In the arena there were about a hundred seats in the middle, but very few used them. Most of the bidders were at the back or standing at the sides. On the left were an Irish firm. On the right were some very large men from Birmingham, with arms like legs, legs like tree trunks and dripping with gold wrist chains like lengths of tank track. Prices were quite high for that time, around £100 per ton as far as we could tell. The scrapmen did not like it. An Irishman sprang forwards, shouting “Who’s that dares bid against me”. Then the Brummies joined in. “You’re taking them bids off the ceiling mister”. Both factions advanced on the auctioneer waving their fists, but he took no notice. Bidding continued as before.

We retired to the bacon sandwich stall to settle our tactics and spent a few hours wandering around while the bidding for the lower lots went on. Andy Lynch was bidding for lifting tackle. A complete building the size of an ebgine shed went for about £400, which was food for thought. Bidding was very fierce. The Birmingham men were getting everything and clearly did not welcome competiton

As the auction crept towards Lot 1100 we marched up in a body and occupied the centre of the front two rows. Lot 1102. Everything got very tense, someone in our little group was whimpering. Mick was totally relaxed and he was the only one who was.

The bidding was slow to start, and Mick shoved a spare chair in front of him and put his feet on it.

£1000. £2000. Mick was rolling one of his horrible cigarettes. £3000. £4000. He lit it and exhaled luxuriously.

£5000. Mick stuck up his bidders card and made his opening bid. £10,000. There were glares and mutterings from all over the hall, we were the centre of hostile attention. Mick didn’t turn a hair and went on bidding. We closed at about £16,000, so our shock tactics seemed to have worked as we had reckoned the price could have easily gone over £20,000.

Afterwards we became quite friendly with the Birmingham men, who had bought just about everything else. We sold them some of the rails which were worn or bent as apparently they had a customer who would pay well for them. A few years later I went to another auction, at Vic Berry’s yard at Leicester. There was a batch of rails for sale quite cheaply as the price had gone down. I did not bid for them as by then we were up to our ears in track material. They were all marked 1102.

Nevertheless Stantondale was Injun Territory. I learned the rudiments of railway work on the Tanfield Railway in the seventies, and the standard rule there was that anything metallic which two men could carry, must be under lock and key by nightfall. This was a similar sort of place. Mick organised the salvage midweek, and the track was taken out as rapidly as possible, in panels. These were broken down in the yard at Darley Dale, which was now reasonably empty. As soon as the main line had been brought up to scratch we would be ready to extend, but we were still short of steel keys, fishplate bolts, and above all, sleepers. We had rail for about half a mile. Matlock was a mile and a half away. The End of the World, (head of steel) was 500 feet North of Bridge 38.

This is imbalance in components is pretty much inevitable after a series of salvage operations. Disused sidings are bound to have a good proportion of rotten sleepers. Old wooden keys are no good in the main line, and rusted fishplates and bolts need drastic treatment. I was still searching for more salvage contracts. I had already arranged a small one at Cottam Power Station, but I can’t say it solved any problems, the material recovered being less than 40 tons total. Once the crossing and the Stantondale salvage had been sorted out, the 22RB crane was fee to clank its way slowly back to the End of the World.

The system for finding track, was to search a combination of the Industrial Railway Society Handbook and the current and past editions of British Railways Atlas against a selection of ordonance survey maps. The IRS handbook gives the map co-ordinates of all industrial loco sheds, and the trick was to find a record of a siding which had come off the network. This gave a lead to follow up in Yellow Pages or on the ground, to be followed up by phone calls or begging letters. One you are known to be collecting information, all sorts of tips come in. Other railways did this too, and there was considerable competition. These days the emphasis seems to be on donations by the track renewal contractors, which is a different kettle of fish.

I did have a contact from Roger Salt, who edited our monthly newsletter. Something about a few hundred yards of track at a place near Birmingham. This was a long way for a small job and I took some time to follow it up and inspect.

However, as we finished Stantondale I had a piece of paper hidden away in my back pocket, which only I knew about. It went roughly as follows:

“Dear Mr Oaks

Following our discussions and your recent visit to site, I write to confirm that Peak Rail plc has authority to dismantle the disused sidings at our site and to remove all small fittings (chairs, keys, fishplates, sleepers).

Yours Sincerely,

Graham Miles
Manager, Hams Hall Power Station.

Roughly 40 words, worth many thousands of pounds. I had been verbally promised the rails as well in due course. I needed to speak to Bob Grange, in private, urgently.

He went crackers. What did I mean, hiring a van on the plc account for a salvage job where we hadn’t started work? You really didn’t dare waste money with him around. Eventually he agreed to come with me in it, to see what I was up to, and it had better be worthwhile. I didn’t tell him exactly what I was doing. We hadn’t finally got the rails yet, and I do like surprises. On the long drive down he was trying to grill me all the way about the project, peppered with rude remarks about my sanity, parentage and driving. We remain good friends.

I “took the fifth”, and made no comment, and when we got there his language deteriorated as I drove furiously along the rough site tracks. I had been there before and the tracks were covered in fly ash ground powder. I had to drive fast to stay ahead of the dust. Gradually it dawned on him just what I was getting him into. There were three miles of track and twenty sets of turnouts on site.

“Tim, how much of this stuff have they given us?”

“All of it”

We loaded the van fully with valuable stuff that was just lying about, thousands of spring steel keys, fishplates and bolts, exactly what we were short of most. Hundreds of sleepers were waiting to be sorted. Back at Darley Dale, quite a crowd gathered as we were throwing the stuff out.

“Gentlemen, we have an operation running.”

It was like throwing a match on gunpowder. Excitement and sparks all over the place. This would far more than make up for the setbacks of the previous year. They had wanted it, desperately. Lord knows they had earned it, and now they had got it. At that moment there was nobody and nowhere we wanted to be except as volunteers on the Peak Railway.

Bob, Mick and myself formed an informal board sub-committee over a cup of tea. Mick would run the construction, which would have priority for labour. I would run the salvage with a few tried and trusted veterans, plus the Lichfield branch. Bob would work with me, and authorise the expenditure.

The Hams Hall story is quite a saga in itself, and I have already written it up in Steam in the Peak. The basic elements of the story are that most of the sleepers were rotten, so we had to dismantle all the sidings to get a mile of sleepers. The fishplate bolts were so seized up by rust and over tightening that many of them had to be taken off with a cold set and sledgehammer. Gas cutting would have been quicker, but you can’t carry the equipment in the boot of a car. Gas is expensive, muscles are cheap. I knew a chap with a brick grab wagon which was just the thing for picking up piles of sleepers, and we sent him down whenever a pile was ready. The recent salvage operation at Matlock was well supported and well organised, and reflects great credit on those involved, but to put matters into perspective, we were carrying out a recovery of that size on average every eight weeks for two years, and building a railway as well.

As soon as Bridge 40 was handed over by the contractors, Messrs Foy’s, it was made fit for works trains, and these began running South. The main line began to extend once more. Graham Miles paid us a visit, and we took him for a run on the works train. Some hundreds of yards before the end of the line, I was able to say that we were now running on Hams Hall sleepers. He was very favourably impressed and gave us authority to take the rail. I gather the accountants had written it down to £500. They would! After it was all over, he asked me what it was really worth. I told him that if there had been an auction, I would have come with at least £100,000, or not come at all. Bought from a merchant, the likely price would have been around £1/4M, at 1992 prices.

I had a few other adventures. Duke was being prepared for service, but we needed at least one other reliable engine available for service in the near future. There were two other o-6-o tanks on site, but both required very expensive repairs. Then I spotted an advertisement for an “austerity” for sale. This turned out to be Warrington. I was immediately interested, as I knew the history of the engine. It had been bought back by Hunslet’s from the MoD and overhauled in 1969. With no commercial buyer, it was sold direct into preservation and was bought by the owner of the Dinting Railway Centre where it had done very little work. He had fallen out with the Society which ran it, and had evicted them. Now he had to sell the engine. Due to access problems and/or contamination, Dinting site remains a derelict memorial to human greed.

Andy Lynch had joined the Board as Mechanical Engineering Director, and was employed on site, having given up his job as a ships engineering officer. He went off to inspect, and we were able to clinch a favourable deal for cash. We were also able to buy a quantity of suitable spares from the Bahamas Locomotive Society. Andy set up a basic workshop in a pair of prefab garage buildings, and began organising a retube and light overhaul, including the fitting of vacuum brakes.

For the time being, the work settled down to the steady slog of lifting track, extending the railway, and attending to drains and fences, and all the other minor works that had to be done. From time to time I would hire a 3 ton tipper, and drop off loads of chairs on the trackbed in advance of the work, closer to Matlock every time. Soon the ballasting would begin. We managed to acquire a scrap tamper and Mick and Andy began working on it ready for this phase of the work.

By the beginning of November, track was edging South of Bridge 36, when suddenly we had the opportunity for something completely different. Engineering works on the line to Tunstead meant we could get at Cheedale Halt overnight. This was a 3 coach wooden platform we had built for the DMU rambler service which operated out of Buxton. There would be no more rambler trains as the signalling had been declared not to be adequate. It had taken ten days to put in, when BR engineers had estimated six weeks. Now we had ten hours to get it out. We needed an army.

We started gathering on site after dark. I arrived first and parked at the end of the track that leads to Blackwell Mill. My job was to set up a base, get a fire going, and ensure a nice crispy bacon butty for Mick Thomas when he arrived. I lit candles in the shelter of the old Blackwell Mill halt, in case it rained, and collected the firewood I had laid in beforehand. In ones and twos the others came up and we sat round the fire, drank tea and talked. Towards midnight I started frying bacon. We were waiting for a light engine to go through to show the possession was on.

“Here they come”. Powerful headlights were coming down the trackbed from Millers dale, tyres scrunching on the loose ballast, trying not to bog down in the dark. Somebody, probably Brian Oliver, had roped in a T.A. Transport Regiment from Liverpool. Mick had got the keys to the tunnels and brought the Army through in a long convoy. Now he dropped out of the leading cab “Ey up Tim, I hope that bacon’s crozzled”. Not to his liking it wasn’t, and he had just finished crisping it up when the light engine went through.

By this time we had over thirty volunteers on site, plus the T.A., at least sixty pairs of hands. Terry Perkins was particularly conspicuous, working down the length of the platform with a sledgehammer, giving underhand swings to the underside of the planks to start them upwards. Others pried them up with crowbars and knocked the nails out. As the main support trestles were unbolted, Roger Horne hauled them backwards down the bank with his landrover winch and the T.A. lads loaded them into the lorries. Individual timbers- the platform was made mainly of sleepers- were carried down by hand. It was a scene of furious activity in the dark, and any rotten bits were thrown on the bonfire. We pulled out at dawn, and the site was totally clear.

By the law of averages, such an intense effort should have been followed by a slack period, but there was nothing of the kind. Mick immediately began work on the ashpit, which was dug, shuttered and concreted in the space of a fortnight. In the same period, the 60’ flat wagon arrived, plus two more ballast hoppers, and the salvage team were back at Hams Hall, where the compressor had failed and all screws were having to be removed by hand. 350 main line quality sleepers were delivered by the end of the month, which allowing for the usual proportion of rotten timbers, probably means 5000 screws had been removed. I had done a deal with the Welsh Highland at Portmadoc that they could have the screws if they would get them out, and now, 17 years later, some of them are holding down rails on the Pont Croesor extension.

The ballast deliveries began in December, 500 tons initially. Between the platforms, the Up trackbed was being given its final scrape ready for tracklaying. I have the feeling that the road must have been lowered after the closure of the railway. We had to clear away quite an amount of the sand below the ballast layer, and in so doing exposed the lack of foundations along much of the platform wall. By 2nd December, the track was halfway across Bridge 35. The following weekend brought heavy snow and I had to cancel a rail collection from Hams Hall at 7 a.m. The weather did not stop Terry Perkins – nothing ever did, and he and Mick made a temporary connection to the Matlock carriage siding on 9th December. The carriage stock was moved up to Darley Dale and safety in the following week. It all made for good news for the shareholders at the AGM on the following Saturday, when a full account of the last 15 months was given. At long last we took something of a break over Christmas, though fencing works were in progress in both the North and South Yards.

The new year began with a track recovery from Hams Hall: 550 yards of rail and 2 ½ sets of points in the course of a Saturday. Back at Darley Dale the North carriage siding was extended by over 100 yards. The Duke was in the last stages of reassembly, and made a test run to Matlock on Wednesday, 9th January. More work was still needed, and the locomotive was steamed again on Sunday 27th January to haul a short train consisting of the mess coach and a brake van, both packed with volunteers. The trees were bare, and there was no platform to block the view. All the cars on the A6 were slowing and pipping their horns. This was definitely one of the brilliant moments in the long hard slog. We had laid a line of rails, and now we had to make it into an operating public railway.

Tim

To be continued.

 

The bacon at Blackwell Mill wasn't crozzled it was more boiled. The other amusing thing to note about this job was that to access the site you had to drive from Millers Dale Station north along the track bed. I took the 7.5t truck from Darley and agreed a meet up at Millers Dale where others had the ride of their life along the trackbed and through the tunnels. As we set off from MD someone remarked that there were still a number of cars with people still in them - "were we going to wait" - as the cars appeared to be steamed up and it would appear to contain naked flesh the answer was "err no! they have got something more interesting to do" If the police could they say they were trainspotting?

 

Duke at Matlock - 1990

Here is a picture of Duke on its test run with the volunteers special at Matlock in 1990

Tim