Hi Don. Please do not apologise for discussing and pointing out the real railway. What makes your videos so enjoyable is the wealth of information you impart to us. Thanks for sharing. Cheers, Bob
Thanks Bob. I get a bit worried that my waxing lyrical about the railway and its creators might become boring but thankfully, many watchers appreciate it.
The Driver's eye perspective is something that the average person never got to see until recent years when these types of videos started to appear. The English country scenery is wonderful and the information given is always interesting, especially when it's about engineering or something that is very old. Great video, much appreciated.
You don't have to apologise for 'waxing lyrical' about railway architecture as we often need reminding that the majority of railway infrastructure was built by hand in the Victorian era. Thanks for uploading another informative video.
My local line Don, I've travelled this route for many years and it's great to see it from the cab, it looks so different from the drivers perspective but knowing the local landmarks and stations makes it all the more enjoyable, many thanks for putting this up.
Have to carry on watching the rest of this video as I didn't realise the time, to in grossed in your work, which I really enjoy as not only is the quality superb but the information that come with means I watch them twice! Yep, first time for your info second time sit back and relax enjoy the ride, thank you for all the hard work and effort you put into your productions as I for one really appreciate it
Another great rail trip Don. The snippets of information along the way make it so much more pleasurable. Wish other sites would do the same. The fact that you do it makes you the best. Look forward to your next one. All the very best Mick.
Just popped on this video because it had been showing up regularly in my feed for a while, and I had a bit of time to spare this morning, and I’m glad I did, very informative commentary and a great experience, keep up the good work and I look forward to seeing more like this! I’m not even from the region where this video was made and I wasn’t able to take my eyes off for a second
Don, when I first discovered UK videos, I watched them on my smart tv which had full screen only and no keyboard for comments. The keyboard was extremely awkward. Now I have rediscovered them and I am going back through them. I think this was my third time with this one. Thanks so much. A fan in Maine!
Hi Thomas. Thanks for following and you’ll find that the later ones have evolved and are higher resolution and hi def sound too so probably rather better quality. Glad you are enjoying them and hopefully one day I will visit Maine. I’ve flown over it many times!
Very enjoyable Don, thanks. Back in the 1990s I was a regular Euston to Piccadilly traveller, usually via Stoke on Trent, so it was great to see this route from the driver's perspective
Interesting fact: the stretch of line commencing from the sweeping left hand curve at 04:45 is a deviation route constructed in the early 1960s. The original route was straight and rejoins at 06:31. The line was rerouted to avoid the original (and much longer) Harecastle Tunnel which was not of sufficient dimension to permit electrification. It’s still extant and has been explored and documented, somewhat illegally, in other YT videos.
We are regular visitors to Stoke, Kidsgrove & Congleton on the T&M and Macclesfield Canals on our narrow boat. It's really interesting to see familiar landmarks from the train driver's point of view. Thank you very much indeed for your efforts, much appreciated.
Thank you Peter. I find the canals as interesting as the railways as far as the construction goes. I also once brought a narrow boat from Kidsgrove to Furness Vale for a friend.
Must have been quite a bang as the car was a mangled heap. Glad there were no fatalities. Great video. For someone like myself who doesn't travel by rail very often its great to see different parts of the country.
Another fascinating film. I can’t tell you how much they have helped whilst recovering from pneumonia. Keep up the great work. The ‘commentary’ is really interesting too.
Another excellent video - my family left the Wigan area in 1955 (returning in 1958) and lived near Stoke. The Crewe -Kidsgrove-Stoke line was one of the first (with Cumbria coastal) to use DMUs and as a four year old remember being fascinated by them. As mentioned below, the Nissan incident was similar to the Great Heck crash on the ECML(28/2/2001) and I actually knew one of the passengers on the southbound train. From 1979 to 1982 I lived in Cheadle Hulme - there was vacant land to the right near the junction - I walked my young son there. All built on now! I keep saying this - but must add, the Manchester network really is a fine service and this video demonstrates that clearly. And people wonder why Cheshire is such a popular place to live!
Thanks GL. Blimey, I was born in 1958! It would be something to go back and take a look around. Hopefully, people are saving these videos for future reference and they will be my little contribution to history! I remember the day that Great Heck crash happened and where I was - driving to the Optare Bus Company in Leeds which was one of my customers in my motor industry days. These videos are steadily filling all the gaps in and the whole network around Manchester will be recorded.
Brilliant video as usual Don it brings back memories of when I had the TRT renewal train in 2003 we were there for a month renewing miles between Wedgewood crossing and Macclesfield one of the best times of my railway career.thanks
Brilliant Don, , this is the first time I've seen this video, and excellent is is too,and as a bonus also my garden in Poynton from the Drivers cab .😀👍👍. Thank You very much indeed.
I'm very struck by the strong acceleration of this class 323. Your shots of the speedometer showed that the needle sweeps all around the dial evenly. There seems to be no struggle to make the last 10 mph. Thanks, as always.
Watching this video was a great joy; most especially the fact that you explained with notes along the way what the guest could view! Your notes, whether technical, historical, etc., were really appreciated, for example, the fact about the town with pottery factories that had their pots and pans damaged on account of the horse-drawn carriages and therefore were please about the new (railway) transportation is precious. Interesting too was the explanation of the Tudor mansion along the way. It all amounts to great value. I sincerely thank you and wish you the best of lucks!
Thank you Jacob, much appreciated. The information are just snippets that you pick up when travelling over the route or things that interest me (and I hope everyone else) about historical things. I love the architecture and trying to work out what a task it must have been without automation computers to construct it. I have to spend a lot of time on each one trying to verify any comments I make! It doesn’t always work but I try and keep errors to a minimum.
Another top notch video, thanks Don. The line from Colwich to Cheadle via Stoke is a very important main line that does not get much mention, so this run redresses the balance. Many thanks
This was a very educational trip wit a Massive amount of modern engineering advancements and it is reassuring to know that so much effort and finance is being invested in Rail travel. It must be getting very close to Driverless Trains. So the magic of Trains to us growing upo will have shifted a long way from the Old Polluting Steam Engine with its own sound imitation (Puff Puff) . I have been wathing train journeys almost world wide and been dumfounded at the magnifiant workmanship of well over 120 years with little or no machienary to do the heavy work..Thank you for the massive amount of information and I felt I could actually hear you speak Don it was so personalized. Keep safe, John from Ireland.
That’s the kind of relationship I like to think I get from the viewers Sean, it’s a kind of personal narrative where I invite you into the cab. I’m glad you enjoy them.
Hi Don, Brilliant video but just for completeness I would add comments on the Potteries loop line which started southbound off the main line just North of Kidsgrove Central and called at Kidsgrove Liverpool Road and then on via Tunstall, Burslem and Hanley rejoining the main line just before Etruria. Additionally there was also a single line which went from the loop line at Tunstall Junction to Pinnox Junction just North of Longport. During the electrification of the main line the “loop” line was used extensively to divert weekend trains to allow modernisation work to progress. Similarly sometimes the single line was also used. So trains like the Comet, London Euston to Manchester London Road, became double headed sometimes with 2 old Fowler class 4’s from somewhere before the loop line started and in the case of Southbound changed at Stoke for the more usual Patriots and Jubilees, even the occasional Royal Scot. I don’t recall ever seeing Black 5’s doing this so it may be they were also over the load limits. (There was a single track tunnel between Kidsgrove Liverpool Road and Goldenhill with load limits less than the usual locos on the mainline trains.) As you said in a previous reply about Etruria station being closed one wonders if they would have closed the loop line today. My uncle was signalman at Tunstall and I spent many happy hours trainspotting there. Fond memories of the 50’s in the Potteries. Thanks for rekindlng them.
I struggle to time the captions so there’s a limit to what I can include. When we filmed, the camera crashed on the way to Stoke otherwise I might have got more in. However, I might convince my mate that it’s time for a rerun 😉
Great to watch, I traveled this line as a kid and in my teens from Prestbury to Macclesfield for school and sometimes into Manchester for shopping. I remember seeing them erecting the overhead catenary in the 60s with DMUs and class 37s running the line then later Class 86s hauling the London trains. Points of interest, the south approach to Macclesfield had a retaining wall landslip block the line and pull the catenary down in the late 60s, the track layout has remained the same for 50 years including that little siding as you come in and the signal gantry is the same one I used to love looking at waiting for my train (signals now mono LED fixtures). Local trains used to terminate at Macc then leave southbound crossover the points then come back in on the northbound. As you leave Macclesfield just past the signal box you can still see the Marple line branch bed which used to go along arches past the gas works (all closed 1970) and just before the tunnel on the right were carriage sidings (now Tesco). BTW Cheadle Hulme station did have a bad train accident in the 60s at that junction. Prestbury used to have its own signal box and crossover points, that signal again has been in situ for 50+ years I remember when it was a semaphore and a Classs 37 or an 86 hurtling out of that tunnel through the station was pretty exciting! Thanks for the memories.
I do so enjoy these cab-view videos and I do thank you for uploading them. I was rather pleasantly surprised to learn (from reading the chat replay) that there is video for a service that goes by my neck of the woods planned; Man' Piccadilly to Holyhead, I live and work in the North Wales area, and not only that but the railway line goes by and is visible from my work place. I will also admit that I didn't initially realise that there even is a Holyhead-Manchester service, I just thought that all services to Manchester went from Llandudno, you learn something new every day. Looking forward to what's planned and once again, thanks for the videos (and the little history lessons too).
Aboultely love this video you bring Drivers eye view to life you don't just make them interesting also very educational fabulous upload a massive thumbs up
Oh yes. Day off tomorrow, so I can stay up and watch this as it premiers. For some reason I'm looking forward to this one. Although I only traveled as far as Macclesfield in those heady days of using a £20 North West day Rover.
I live near the Birmingham Cross City Line run by the class 323’s in WMR livery. These trains are reliable stop and starters between the stations as you say, which compared to this route are far closer together (3 mins apart)! They also do the Lickey incline (those that run to Bromsgrove) and they zip up that faster than the 170’s, 172’s and dare I say even the 220/221’s especially in terms of acceleration, no problem. Great to see one working a different line. Thanks for this video.
Thanks Don for yet another entertaining cabride. That was one horrific accident with the trains and that too due to a car rolling onto the tracks as its handbrake was left unattended too. Who on earth would leave their hand brakes on. Thank God that there were no casualties reported. I suppose you will upload a return journey.
I guess what happened with the handbrake was investigated and acted upon. There is a little story with the return journey. The GoPro camera hung just 4 minutes from Stoke and we lost the footage. It did it with the outward bound Buxton video too. We may revisit them one day but there is still plenty of captured footage to work on and new routes too.
Fantastic Don. Thanks very much for a great video. Passing through many of the areas where I grew up, and worked, many years ago. Your films just get better and better. All the best.
the Bridge after the one at Cliffe Vale is the site of the old Etruria Station where the platform was in the middle tracks either side and access was down concrete stairs from the road passing over. long gone but not forgotten
Another great video. Interesting what you said about the embankment. It even more amazing when you consider they were being built to precise gradient specified by a designer and the engineers on site only had the most rudimentary measuring equipment to work with.
Absolutely, we take it for granted but most journeys take us through shallow cuttings and modest embankments. I once dug a little pond out in my back garden and I’ve dug for footings and a driveway. It’s a mauling task that seems endless for little result. But these guys dug in the rain when you can’t walk with mud on your feet and through the winter when the ground was rock hard or baking hot days in summer. They had little safety gear and if one got injured they were out in the middle of nowhere with a hospital a cart ride away. A septic finger might starve a family - if you didn’t work you didn’t get paid and there were no holidays in Spain. You worked when it was available.
@@doncoffey5820 btw...your signal video was very informative...now I understand them better...watching other videos I can now predict what the drivers going to do....lol as im typing this theres a squealing 66 on track behind my house...well nearly...its about 600 yards away,one other thing...what are the blue topped boxes trackside...in some videos...is it inspection covers for cables and wiring ? like these at 16:19 on left trackside ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0ZB80736iVY.html
Really enjoying the videos and the commentary. When I lived in Stafford in the 1980's, we would often take the train from Stafford to the north Wales coast resorts, and on the odd occasion, it would be a DMU, with a glass cab so you could get a glimpse of a driver's view of the journey ... long before GoPros unfortunately but thanks to your work Don, I have the opportunity to see the "driver's eye" view once more!
Thanks Paul. There isn’t anybody with more than the slightest interest in the railway that doesn’t appreciate a look out front. It is interesting and I’m lucky I get the permission to let you have a look.
Excellent footage, enjoyable to watch, and also educational. I wasn't aware of the "wheelchex" and "panchex" systems, a smart idea and I will be looking out for them now!
Another gem, Don. Glad to see the little 153s are still doing the Nottingham-Crewe route.. I used to get that in the 80s on my regular Grantham-Bangor run.... I think they were new stock then :-)
The flatted wheel comment reminds me of being on a rail tour to Dundee from west Yorkshire, we had to jettison a loco at Ferryhill. Thankfully no need to stop for fuel!
Really enjoy your videos with all the extra information. Not noticed the tilt of the OHLE before, interesting. I remember reading about the car on the track. A combination of good luck and design saved many lives. I would say the car was a right off. I didn't know about the ballastless track in tunnels. I learn so much from your videos. That was a fine mess regarding the signalling. Those flat spots act like a hammer blow to the track, depending on severity.
Thanks “Walt”. You always say nice things! There’s lots of interesting “stuff” on the railway. I’m sure we’ve only scratched the surface. I’ll try to keep bringing these factoids as we go along.
Such a shame passengers don't get this view of the line, absorbed in their smart phones etc and seldom looking out of the window. My favourite part of this journey was just after Kidsgrove when you see Mow Cop "Castle" to the right (a 19th Century folly), and the hills thereabouts. North Rode was where the line to Leek and Uttoxeter once joined the main line to Manchester. Where the containers are now situated in Ardwick, was once the disposal yard of Manchester Corporation Transport Department, where in the 1960's you could see lines of withdrawn Crossley buses and BUT trolleybuses.
MarmiteCrumpets I agree about the view. Of course that was one benefit (perhaps the only one) of travelling on the original DMUs, which gave you a front end view, unless the driver had put the window blind behind him down or the orientation of the unit was such that the first class accommodation was directly behind the driver.
What can you say other than Fantastic video and a Train with its horn singing perfect . Thanks once again for posting it and supplying so much information.
i do like to see the old blue brick at some of the stations reminds me of old New St Bham when i was a kid sadly disappearing now.Excellent video as always thanks Don
I know. Sometimes stone but even when brick was used they really knew how to show off. There are some blue brick walls round Manchester that are just sensational and not even connected to the railway any longer. Recognising the craftsmanship is easy though.
Wow Good story about the Accident Bloody lucky no one was killed Great video too they are so interesting especially for me and I'm sure for others who know some of the area very well a new perspective we rarely see thanks again and keep them coming
I really like this Don. So far I have watched all your videos. It's probably the only thing I watch on RU-vid and it looks very good on the tv in the living room. I find it very relaxing, and I really appreciate the extra info and effort you put in it. I'm not from the Manchester area. In fact, I live in The Netherlands. But I like to visit this part of the UK. So for me this is a really good combination of a bit of education about the railways and sightseeing :-) Love to see more video's in spring and summertime!
Thanks Biem. There are a growing number of viewers from the NL. I used to work in the Benelux countries a lot in my motor industry days. Glad you like the videos and yes, seeing the changing seasons is one of my favourite aspects of driving trains.
Another excellent one Don. Particularly interesting for me as I usually travel from Stoke to Euston on a Pendolino out of Piccadilly, so it's nice to see the rest of the line that I always miss out on!!
Excellent as usual. Used to work out of an office just next to Bramhall station untill 1979, northern office of Ductile Steels Ltd. Another steel company long gone.
Excellent and informative cab ride. Just an aside after reading the terrifying story about the Nissan. Here in the USA, there are road/rail crossing with signs that read ' trains pass here at 60mph whether you are on the crossing or not'... kind of drills it home!
Thanks Andy. Yes, trains seldom offer a compromise. We tend to have far less crossings than the USA and all of our railways are closed to trespass (fenced off).
Great video. Nice to see you mention Woodford Airfield (the site of my employment for nearly 20 years) and I've lived and travelled this route for over 35 years and never knew about Mayfield station !! You learn something new every day. Thanks again Don!
I would like to compliment you on the descriptions given during the journey as i have never been to UK or anywhere on the top side of the World and it makes me realise how how great it is to live in NZ.
You offered at one point an explanation as to why the wires don't melt, I can perhaps clarify that a bit. It's the current(=Amps) in the wire that would cause heating and ultimately melting. The stock needs power(=Watts), more volts deliver more power for less current (Volts x Amps = Watts), so that the wires can be small enough to do the job and be placed overhead, the power is supplied at high voltage and the rolling stock has a transformer to change the high voltage to a lower one for the traction motors, rather like a model railway transformer/controller changes your domestic 240v into 12v. The pylons of the national grid carry 400,000 volts and not 240v for the same reason (and also it reduces transmission losses). I hope that helps.
As usual, absolutely stunning and a superb credit to your profession, thank you. The notes on bits and pieces really make it a 'trip', not the usual comment to make for a Stoke to Manchester run. Just having been on bang-up-to-the-minute double-decker trains in the S of France, your on coming stock really make me nostalgic what with Leyland buses dating from Harold Wilson days! Also went on a new Hitachi of GWR straight after an HST, the new kid on the block without being biased is a pale comparison, hard ride and gutless acceleration but you could say I'm subjective? Thanks again.
Thank you. The 142s are not popular but they have done a vast amount of work in the North and it would have been a nightmare without them. The new Hitachi units are different from company to company. Ours (TransPennine Express) get 3 of the Mercedes V12 low emission engines (badged Rolls Royce) per set and are said to be quite capable of keeping time over the Pennines. We get them next year so we’ll see.
