Peak Rail, Rowsley, Derbyshire: British Railways D2284

Wandering round the Peak Rail site at Rowsley South in Derbyshire, I came across a gentleman in a shed surrounded by more 1960s and 1970s heavy diesel shunting locomotives than you could shake a stick at.

Peak Rail provides a home and facilities for a number of specialist rail-preservation societies, and I was intrigued by the work of the Heritage Shunters Trust [http://www.heritageshunters.co.uk], who conserve and commemorate an extraordinary episode in the non-development of British Railways.

When the Attlee government nationalised the railways in 1948, the initial policy was to run the railways on steam and coal-fired electricity to make best use of the British coal industry.  Only later did the cheapness of imported oil become economically irresistible.

After British Railways decided in 1955 to phase out steam (having built over 3,500 locomotives since 1948, 999 of them to brand-new designs) there was a rush to obtain sufficient diesel locomotives on a one-for-one replacement basis.  In particular, small, heavy-duty steam shunters were replaced by a great variety of diesel equivalents, some to designs which had not been fully tried and tested.

This policy ignored the fact that single-wagon loads of freight were diminishing, as road transport became more efficient and cost-effective.  By the mid-1960s increasing amounts of rail freight were moving in train-loads not wagon-loads and there was less and less need for shunting locomotives.

This huge, diverse fleet proved to have been a waste of money, and not all of them were capable of doing the job they were intended for.  As pieces of engineering history, however, the different designs are fascinating.

There are over twenty of these engines at Rowsley, some fully restored, others awaiting attention.  I asked my guide what the display policy was – is it an art gallery of locomotive design, or do the workable engines have a practical function?  There is, after all, not much more shunting to do at Rowsley than there was on British Railways after the 1960s.

The major annual jamboree when the working shunters get an outing used to be the Shunter Hunter weekend when the Trust took over the Peak Rail line and worked all the passenger services.  This put up to ten shunting locomotives on the line.

As a means of raising funds to help volunteers preserve the engineering heritage it was a worthwhile enterprise.  And it was entertaining into the bargain.

The Shunter Hunter weekend has now become part of Peak Rail’s Diesel Weekend:  http://www.peakrail.co.uk/dieselweekend. 

Middleton Top Engine, Cromford & High Peak Railway, Derbyshire

The Ecclesbourne Valley Railway runs an excellent ‘Rails and Quarries‘ tour from their Wirksworth station, using their diesel railcar to run up the steepest section of line in use in the UK – 1 in 27 – to Ravenstor, the foot of a slightly mysterious incline that connected with the Cromford & High Peak Railway at Middleton Bottom.

The day I visited, the guide was Vince Morris – informative, professional and endlessly patient with people who struggle with stiles.  His itinerary involved a steep climb through the National Stone Centre [http://www.nationalstonecentre.org.uk] to the High Peak Trail [http://www.derbyshire-peakdistrict.co.uk/thehighpeaktrail.htm], which follows the trackbed of the Cromford & High Peak Railway, up the 1 in 8½ incline to Middleton Top Engine House and then over the fields and through the derelict moonscape of Middle Peak Quarry and back through the centre of Wirksworth.

Middleton Top Winding Engine [http://www.middleton-leawood.org.uk] is an interesting survival, the only remaining example of eight built by the Butterley Company to haul trains up and down the inclines which in 1825 were judged the most effective and economical method of running a railway over the Peak massif.  William Jessop II was a director of both the Butterley Company and the C&HPR:  his younger brother, Josias, had engineered the railway though he died during the construction period.  The total cost of the railway, when it was completed in 1831, was £149,206 16s 8d.  Of this the eight winding engines cost £20,000.

More significantly, the largest single item of expenditure was for cast-iron rails, provided by the Butterley Company for £61,950.  The Butterley Ironworks was incapable at that time of manufacturing wrought-iron rails, so that when the railway wanted to replace horses with locomotives (as Josias Jessop had suggested in his initial specification), the track couldn’t stand the weight and had to be re-laid in wrought iron from end to end.

As the Americans say, do the math.

This unique railway, which was technologically sound when it was promoted in 1825 and an anachronism almost as soon as it opened in 1831, continued to work with periodic modifications on the principle that if it works, don’t fix it.  Middleton Top stopped winding in 1963, but at the Sheep Pasture Incline further down the line a steam engine built in 1883 was replaced with an electric winder in 1965.  The entire line finally closed in 1967.

As the French say, C’est la vie.

Events on the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway can be found at Events 2021 – Ecclesbourne Valley Railway (e-v-r.com).

Ecclesbourne Valley Railway, Derbyshire

There’s a sleepy little branch line up the Ecclesbourne valley in Derbyshire, from the former Midland main line at Duffield to the market town of Wirksworth.  Since 2002 a group of volunteers have been reviving it for tourist traffic.  Its survival is unusual, but nothing like as unusual as its origin.

For complicated reasons of Victorian railway politics, there was a possibility in the 1860s that the Midland Railway’s line from Derby to Manchester might be blocked by its competitor, the London & North Western Railway, when the joint lease on the section between Ambergate and Rowsley ran out in 1871.

In case this happened, or perhaps to prevent the L&NWR making trouble, the Midland built the branch up the Ecclesbourne valley as far as Wirksworth, which is as far as any reasonable railway line would go.  Beyond that, they secured the right to tunnel under the hills, crossing the Via Gellia road on a 280-yard-long viaduct, emerging into daylight above Matlock and dropping down the Derwent Valley to their newly-built line from Rowsley westwards.

If it had been built it would have been even more heavy-duty than the “flute” line through Monsal Dale, Miller’s Dale and Chee Dale.  It would have been a stiff challenge to drive expresses and – even more – coal trains up the grade, through a series of lengthy tunnels and round tight curves under the Heights of Abraham.

The Wirksworth-Rowsley extension was never built, and instead trains pottered up and down the Wirksworth branch, carrying limestone, milk and passengers.  The milk and passengers went over to road transport before and during the Second World War, but the huge Middle Peak Quarry kept the railway running until 1989.

Then, when the quarry was mothballed, the railway was left intact but utterly neglected, so that by the time the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway crews had the go-ahead to bring it back to life it was an 8½-mile-long jungle.  Whereas most railway-preservation groups have to lay fresh track, as did the EVR’s neighbours at Peak Rail, here the heavy work has been clearing out blocked culverts and replacing rotten sleepers.

The line is  open from the existing main line at Duffield so that passengers can connect with East Midlands trains’ hourly Derby-Matlock service. 

The main-line connection has been severed and, so I’m told, there’s only a minimal chance of it being reinstalled.  The EVR can provide a worthwhile passenger service with steam locomotives and diesel railcars, and Wirksworth is a pleasant market town with a fascinating history.  The future looks promising for this once derelict survivor of a time when railway companies would build their lines almost anywhere.

Details of the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway services are at http://www.e-v-r.com.

Miller’s Dale Station, Derbyshire (1970)

Miller’s Dale Station was one of the sites on the Waterways & Railways across the Derbyshire Peak tour in June 2010.  It’s a parking place on the Monsal Trail which utilises the trackbed from just west of Bakewell through to Blackwell Mill, a couple of miles from Buxton town centre.

The whole line is an astonishing piece of engineering, carved through the dales of the River Wye in the 1860s to the fury of John Ruskin, who complained that it destroyed an idyllic landscape so that “every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton”.  The rapid succession of viaducts, cuttings and tunnels led the railwaymen to call this line “the flute”.

Travellers gaze at the huge expanse of the former station, and wonder why the Midland Railway built a five-platform station on a shelf halfway up a remote cliff-face.  The reason was to provide a connection between the dead-end branch line to Buxton and the fast trains between Derby and Manchester, and – from 1905 – to allow expresses to overtake the heavy goods trains that struggled up the grade from Rowsley.

Ironically, when the line closed in 1968, there was uproar at a plan to demolish the Monsal Dale Viaduct, and in the 1980s the Peak Park Planning Board concluded that it was far cheaper to repaint the magnificent iron and steel Miller’s Dale Viaducts than to dismantle them.

This means that it remains possible for PeakRail to bring train services back to Miller’s Dale, one day.  When this plan becomes a reality, I suspect there will be an outcry from nature-lovers at the destruction of wildlife on the trail, and once again every fool in Buxton can swap places with every fool in Bakewell if they wish.

There’s a detailed account with a collection of images of Miller’s Dale Station at ttp://www.disused-stations.org.uk/m/millers_dale/index.shtml, and Graeme Bickerdike provides an informative update on the physical condition of the engineering structures along the line at http://www.forgottenrelics.co.uk/bridges/monsal.html.

At present, Miller’s Dale Station has nothing to offer but public lavatories.  The nearby café, known as the Wriggly Tin, is now a house.  But according to a recent press report, this situation may shortly improve:  http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/localnews/3m-visitor-centres-hopes-for.6349207.jp.

Peak Rail, Rowsley South Station

Peak Rail is a steam-railway project with a huge future.

The present is relatively modest.  Trains operate along a four-mile stretch of the Derbyshire Derwent valley.  Most of the resident locomotives are diesel, though trains are often steam-hauled.  The catering staff do an excellent line in Sunday lunch, afternoon tea and cream tea.  There is a regular roster of events to bring in special-interest groups.

The next major development will be running trains into the Network Rail station at Matlock.  For a long time the Peak Rail line terminated at a temporary station, Matlock Riverside, which is within walking distance of the town centre.  Now that Peak Rail trains stand on the adjacent track to the railcars from Nottingham and Derby, it’s easier for passengers to make use of the line, and a restored direct rail link enables steam tours from afar to travel up to Rowsley, and for Peak Rail excursions to head south on to the national network.

But the big agenda is the vision that started the whole project in 1975.  When the main line through Matlock to Manchester closed in 1968 the trackbed remained largely intact and much of it eventually passed to the respective local authorities, Derbyshire County Council and the Peak Park Planning Board.  The Peak Railway Association exists to support Peak Rail with proposals to restore train services up the Wye valley west of Rowsley, bringing visitors to Bakewell, Monsal Dale, Miller’s Dale and eventually Buxton.

The practical impediments are, apparently, replacement of an overbridge at Rowsley and “difficulties” with Haddon Tunnel  [http://www.forgottenrelics.co.uk/tunnels/haddon.html].  Otherwise the obstacles are primarily economic:  http://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/images/derby-mancester-rail_main_report_full_tcm44-21359.pdf.  Repeated examinations of the plan have so far ruled out reinstatement, though the attractions of routing freight by rail across Derbyshire, relieving the heavily-used Hope Valley line from Dore to Chinley, may become more attractive in the years to come.

Details of Peak Rail’s services and events are at http://www.peakrail.co.uk/index.htm.