Beautiful narration and wonderful footage. I remember my mum taking me on the Overhead in the 1940s. Thanks foe your painstaking research. All a very enjoyable reminder of another age.
I was an enthusiastic train spotter in the 50s and 60s and this video brought back a lot of good memories. So pleased that I was able to see this. Thank you.
We grew up in a big old Victorian house in Stoneycroft in the 1970's and 80's. I remember the old station on Mill Lane West Derby was a green grocers called, rather prosaically, The Station, it's a fireplace showroom today. Anyway, that rail line, or rather where it was, is now the Liverpool Loop Line footpath. IDK when the rails were lifted from that track, but I have this very distinct memory of taking the dog out for a walk at the walkers playing field and seeing a train come down that line. What's up with that, I hear you ask, well in all my time I'd never seen a train on that track, but the other thing was it was a steam train, this would have been the late 70's so a long time after steam had finished. The thing is in this memory I have it was general election day, looking at the dates it would have been 1979. I'm not too sure if any of this actually happened, as I know your memory starts to play tricks on you as you get older. Maybe it was some steam special connected with the general election, IDK.
Those Dock Board tanks where the major cause of the Overhead Railway closure because of the high sulphur coal and steam both converted to Sulphuric Acid causing vast amounts of metal rot of the overhead metal work. When it came to repairs or scraping the overhead railway the Dock Board kept their hands firmly in their pockets and allowed this Liverpool Jewel to be scraped. Yet another one of Liverpool's powers that be bad decisions,
I'd love to know what happend next, but the film was cut. At 23:25, apparently, after having disgraced itself whilst on Southport shed, the York and Lancaster Regiment had to be rescued by the breakdown train. However at 23:43 we see a driving wheel happily chomping through pieces of wood, followed by the front bogies that took a dislike to the wood and derailed at 23:50. Did they have to send out a second breakdown train? 🤣🤣
That was absolutely amazing. I started my Railway career as a Trainee Signalman at Garston Church Rd which was shown here. The Box was not for me so I moved outside and went Shunting. If I had a pound for every time I have pulled the points at the Edge hill head shunt shown at the beginning I would be a rich man. We used to run round the coal trains there for Fiddlers ferry, as well as other stuff. An old hand Driver who is sadly no longer with us told me that he worked with a young engine cleaner who we all came to know as Billy J Kramer. He started at Bank hall shed but was at Aintree for a Time, that's where this lad knew him from. I also remember the last days of the MD&HC Loco's although I was only a toddler at the time. One of the last shots is one passing the old Grain terminal at the bottom of Hill St. I grew up not a five minuet walk away. Happy days.
Hindley North - Crow Nest Junction beyond the station. Stanier Black 5s, Stanier tanks, a couple of Austerities, a Crab or two, BR Standard (pretty new then) but I could not identify the Jubilee.
Some great footage. Excellent shots with Lister Power Station in the background. A terrific tour of the railways around Liverpool. Great and valuable work.
Did you know, Lister Drive was the 1st place in the UK to have those iconic shaped cooling towers? I happened on the fact randomly when, for whatever reason, I was looking at the website of an old architects, they are a Dutch design apparently, so there, if you feel like boring friends or loved one during a lull in conversation you can hit them with that fact.
Great rare footage. You should get this footage AI enhanced and colourised, would be good to see, some amazing things can be archived and bring out alot of detail. Is Hindley South station in this footage or just Hindley North??. It's such a pity noone has any film of the disused stations that where in the Wigan are like Bamfurlong, Abram, etc, though many of them closed well before the Beeching era, so unlikely anyone would've had a cine camera at the time.
Thank you Steven for this fantastic video of the whelly loop line to see the rabbit rocks and the loco going over the old iron bridge what brilliant memories of my childhood all my family where born not far of the line can you please tell me is it at all possible to buy a copy of the video , kind regards kevin loop line I have not the
