A busy day at March in Cambridgeshire in 1984, with many freight trains seen going in and out of Whitemoor Yard. Original video shot on an early VHS camera.
March was such a strange but unique place! I remember our visits there, usually when it was very warm weather...... A short walk from the station past the rickety houses, like the land that time forgot! And when you got to the depot, it was all open with scores of loco's on she'd. But the biggest surprise was, that you could expect to find almost any class on shed! 20,25,31,37,40,44,45,46,47,56. Just a real melting pot of traction from depot's in Scotland,wales, the midlands etc. I always love visiting March, I'll always have very fond memories of that place!
Great stuff. It was a different era back then and a little earlier. Proper BR. It was all allowed to be run down in readiness for privatisation. Contrary to what many think, privatisation wasn't a tory plan, it's a requirement of the EEC/EU that no member state has state controlled railways. This enables markets to be opened to competitors. Just think what BR and our network could have become with all the subsidies given to the private sector ? Not only that, we'd still have all our BREL and engineering capacity.Thanks for sharing the footage.
brings back of the days i lived in march where the peaks(44/45's) work the daily Toton - Whitemoor working plus 31/4's working the Brmingham - Norwich passenger the class 20's and 25's worked in off the midland region
Timeless classic Roy just how I remember it And March is a shadow of its former self now It was round about this time I made a visit to March brings a lump to the throat just how much the network has changed we’ll done Roy for sharing and I’ve sub you aswell for good measure
Pity they shut the March - Spalding line. Local traffic was of course non-existent but as an east coast avoiding line it was valuable. Bet they are regretting it now with the increase in container traffic. They had to build an avoiding spur at Peterborough to avoid conflicts with the main line as reported recently in Rails.
Don't remember it looking like that. I remember my first time there hauled from Cambridge to March by a 47 named "Red Star". Walked all the way to depot and apart from 50 odd locos it was desolate and quiet. I remember coming down this street and there were some houses on the left and then I looked right and there were about 30 odd locos just sitting there. Was like a dream.
1984!! Fabulous. Total BR gold. Before Thatcher the Public Services Snatcher destroyed it, and this country. 2:50 those Peaks were beasts! Still makes me think of that nuclear waste cask test (although wasn’t that a 46?).
Yes Steve, It will be blurred, that's the way it was in 1984, the camera used VHS-C tapes which were quite expensive at that time and only lasted 30 mins, so they were transferred to another VHS tape and that was of course analogue, so that lost quality which was transferred again onto S-VHS as a master. We did not have HD Digital in those days.
