Volume five of my late father's 8mm silent cine films - this one is something of a gem, showing the last weeks of the Cromford and High Peak Railway in Derbyshire, in 1967.
Goodness! My fifteen year old self is amongst the small crowd of onlookers at the top of the incline. Never thought that I'd see a film of the event. *It's interesting to remember that there were no TV cameras there - as there would, most certainly, be today: not even a photographer from the local newspaper.
Many thanks. I've always disliked what is normally very badly added sound, but I did toy with the idea of going fully in the other direction and adding the Benny Hill music as a joke!
A very historic piece of film. We walked past there on a holiday to the Peak Distict. You can now walk up the incline. It is very steep. I think it had been dangerous when it was in operation and shouldn't really have been built like that. A OO gauge model of this line was featured in Model Rail Magazine. Thanks for uploading.
The line was built in the very early days of steam haulage, when it was thought that locomotives couldn't manage gradients. Consequently it was laid out as a series of near level stretches where the trains were pulled by horses or locos, with stationary engines hauling them up steep inclines between. Hopton Incline was originally one of those chain-hauled inclines. If the line had been envisaged for locomotive hauling throughout it would have been built very differently.
So nice to see colour footage. But those young walkers walking alongside the tracks with the incline cable whizzing along.. And the workers on their knees also inches away from the running cable... It's interesting to see the jack shaft coupling rods have been removed on the 03
I remember reading the accounts and seeing the photographs in The Railway World at the time. Later on I had a similar experience on the now vanished Loddington ironworks branch of the Midland Railway from Kettering (past the Geo. Cohen's scrapyard). Our Cl.2 tender engine could not manage the gradient with 12 brakevans and stalled. We tried again with 6 vans and successfully breasted the summit, not going far after that. I later on bought a Cl.5 chimney from that scrapyard and there is no trace of the site or the line now. It was very sharply curved away from the main line and the chairs were old - MR 1880s. There was no Health and Safety then and I doubt whether such a train on such old track with people standing on brakevan platforms whacked by hanging branches would be allowed these days.
The brakevans weigh about 20 tons each (they are ballasted to increase brake force) and were crammed with people, so about 130 tons in all. I imagine a loaded mineral wagon weighed about 15-20 tons so one loco should have been adequate for two.
@@iandocwra1169 Thanks for that information, I didn't realise brake vans were so heavy but obvious when you think about it. Nice film, interesting to see.
