Category Archives: Sowerby Bridge

Early days…

01 Wednesday Jan 2020

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The new year’s got off to slow start. Not because of hangovers or anything like that but because it was lovely to be able to have a lie-in! The year also started with a beautifully clear, crisp sunny morning which made us decide we needed to go walking. Sadly, by the time we’d had breakfast and got ready mist and hazy cloud had rolled in from the South. It didn’t affect our walk but it was a little frustrating from my perspective I was looking forward to getting some pictures to kick off the year. In the end, this was the best I could get.

New CAF Unit 195121 approaches Milner Royd Junction just outside Sowerby Bridge whilst working a Manchester Victoria – Leeds service. The ‘feathers’ on the signal indicate that the route is set via Halifax rather than Brighouse.

Our walk took us down into the valley floor before we climbed up the opposite side to head on to Norland Moor and before visiting the nearby Moorcock Inn for a drink and to chance to warm up for a while as despite the day being mild, the wind-chill up by the moor really makes a difference. Despite the pub only being open until six and its menu limited to selling their exotic range of bar snacks the place was really busy.

Once we’d torn ourselves away we rolled back downhill via Sowerby Bridge which was surprisingly quiet with most of the pubs and restaurants deserted, albeit it was only 5pm. I suspect many people were still at home in their dressing gowns and nursing an Alaka-Seltzer!

A power-walk back up the hill soon had us back at home, which is where we’ve stayed for the rest of the evening. Having walked a total of seven miles we’d earned our supper and polished off another slice of yesterday’s nut roast, roasted parsnips and potato’s with relish. As much as I love travelling, having quality time at home (especially in winter) is something to savour…

A day of two halves…

05 Thursday Dec 2019

Posted by in Calder Valley, Food and drink, Musings, Sowerby Bridge

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Today started well. We had one of those beautiful sunrises where the sky lights up with an ethereal glow to bless you with some wonderful colours through wispy clouds, heralding the arrival of a new day. It lasted a scant matter of minutes before the light changed to more mundane hues. I managed to grab my camera just in time. Here’s the view from our bedroom window this morning as it was happening.

The day’s also been noticeably milder than of late, making it ideal walking weather. Sadly, that didn’t last long either and this afternoon another weather front moved in, bringing with it gusting winds and rain. Not that it’s mattered to me as I’ve been working from home, ploughing through paperwork and pictures whilst also planning the weekend. Dawn’s off to London to see friends this weekend, leaving me to my own devices, so I’m planning to catch up with some social obligations solo.

This evening we’re off to the Engine in Sowerby Bridge for our second visit in a week. This time it’s to celebrate my Father-in-Law’s 85th birthday, so expect a few food and other pictures to appear later! We’ll be ordering off the ordinary menu this time, rather than having one chosen for us as we did last weekend, which will allow me to illustrate some different dishes. John’s a coeliac and the Engine does a great job of catering for him – as you’ll see from the pictures…

22:24.

We’re now at home and there’s lots of food pictures to add after yet another lovely night at the Engine. All I will say at this point is happy 85th birthday John Platt, and thank you to his wife, Norah. Oh, and well done to the restaurant for not trying to stick 85 candles into that dessert!

Monday's melange…

02 Monday Dec 2019

Posted by in Calder Valley, Community rail, Musings, Mytholmroyd, Politics, Railways, Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire

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Another varied week’s kicked off with sub-zero temperatures here in West Yorkshire, leaving me glad that much of the day’s been spent working from home in the warmth as it’s perishing out there! I do have to venture out this afternoon as it’s the Friends of Mytholmroyd stations annual Christmas carol concert. Children from the local schools have return outing on the train to the Jubilee refreshment rooms at Sowerby Bridge to sing carols on and meet Santa Claus, whilst yours truly volunteers to take the pictures. Here’s one from last year. It’s always a jolly event and afterwards the adults adjourn to the Shoulder of Mutton pub in Mytholmroyd for pie and peas and something to keep the cold out!

In an entirely different vein I came across this crass bit of election stupidity on Twitter earlier, posted by Jane Smith, who’s standing in Congleton on an animal rights ticket. She also opposes HS2 and decided that hanging around standing on a foot crossing across a busy railway line near Alsager to have her picture taken would be a good way to try and score political points. Instead she scored an own goal…

To say that people in the rail industry get annoyed at these pictures would be an understatement – as Ms Smith found out after I retweeted it with a critical comment and many rail staff took to Twitter to express both their annoyance and disgust. The tweet has now been deleted. I expect her political career will be just as short-lived.

I’ll blog some more and add a few pictures from tonight’s festivities later today, so watch this space…

22.28.

It’s been a cracking (if freezing) evening. I headed over to Mytholmroyd in good time to rendezvous with the groups at the station before catching the train. What’s lovely to see with these events is the cross-co-operation between different station friends groups. People from Mytholmroyd, Brighouse and Bentham station friends all turned up on the night as well as staff from Northern Rail. Here’s a few photo’s from the evening.

Children and adults met at the bottom of the ramps to sing a few carols before heading up to the platforms to catch a train to Sowerby Bridge.
Singing carols on the platform…
Entertaining ordinary passengers on a service train with carols before Xmas!
The group outside the Jubilee refreshment rooms before catching the train back to Mytholmroyd.

Rolling blog: it was lovely whilst it lasted!

30 Saturday Nov 2019

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For one short day yesterday, sunshine returned to the Calder Valley. Sadly, for most of it I was stuck indoors working in the office, but I did manage to escape for an all to brief period just before sunset and managed to capture this image looking across the valley from where we live to Norland, high up on the other side.

For the photographers amongst you, this was taken on manual and under exposed to bring out the depth of colour in the skies. I used my Nikon D5 with an 80-400mm lens on 200mm. ISO1250, 1/200th at F8.

When we woke up this morning not only had the temperature dropped well below freezing, leaving the valley covered in frost but the clouds had returned to half-hide the valley bottom and bring back the gloomy half-light we’ve lived under for the past few weeks. But we’re not letting it get to us as we’re having an evening out with friends, so expect a few pictures later. Right now we’re off to do some chores before getting in a Saturday stroll along the canal into Sowerby Bridge to meet up with the gang…

22:39.

Sorry, this rolling blog never got updated because I was too busy having a fantastic time with friends. 16 of us went to the Engine in Sowerby Bridge tonight and had an excellent meal, then a few drinks afterwards. I’ll add more tomorrow, right now it’s time to relax at home…

As promised, here’s a few pictures from last night.

Suckling pig was on the menu last night and the portion sizes were huge!
The sea bass with mussels was divine…
The gang’s all here! So much so we needed both tables.

Where does the time go?

12 Tuesday Nov 2019

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Yesterday was our second wedding anniversary, but it didn’t go entirely to plan due to the fact Dawn’s gone down with the lurgi. Of course, this follows straight on from a fantastic weekend with friends where we (belatedly) celebrated my 60th birthday, which was last month. 15 of us congregated in London at Café Spice Namaste for what was a lovely evening.

On Sunday we made our way back from London to Yorkshire. Sadly, it was all a bit of a rush, but that’s because a few of us had a lie-in after staying up until 02.30. We were staying in a hotel in London’s Eastern Docklands and the weather was so good on the Sunday Morning we couldn’t resist taking a minor detour on the Emirates Airlines cable-car across the Thames to North Greenwich. This left us with little time to get the train our friends had booked from Kings Cross to Yorkshire, so I ended up doing my best London travel guide impression, using my knowledge as a former Londoner to navigate our way across the city’s public transport system. Here’s how things looked from the cable car.

The O2 arena in the foreground with Canary Wharf behind it. To the right in the background you can see the City of London and skyscrapers like the ‘Walkie-Talkie’ and the ‘Gherkin’.
The ever changing face of East London and the area around Bow Creek, with Stratford in the background.
Where Bow Creek joins the Thames is another hive of construction activity with the skyline dominated by tower cranes.

Our trip back home was made easy by a straight-through trip on Grand Central to Halifax, where we caught up with our friends for a last drink in the Big 6 before home. Yesterday was far more relaxed as, apart from slipping out to get some shopping, we stayed in all day. Dawn wasn’t feeling 100% and the weather was filthy, so there was no incentive to venture out apart from me having a dental appointment to pick up a shield. It seems I’ve started grinding my teeth in my sleep. After nearly four years of the shambles that is Brexit I can’t say that I’m entirely surprised. Biting my tongue during the day and grinding my teeth at night seems entirely normal behaviour under the circumstances! To prevent excessive wear and tear I’ve now got a shield for my lower teeth which is to be worn at night. If only a solution to the Brexitshambles was that simple…

So, instead of the pair of us venturing out we spent the evening cooking. Dawn prepared a Flemish beef stew with beer before retiring to her sick bed, leaving me to take over and prepare all the veg and finish the cooking. I have to say, the stew was delicious!

We fell in love with this rich dish when we were in Bruges last month. With the weather being so miserable it seemed like the ideal comforting food to prepare, although we eschewed the traditional chips for a mixture of roast potato’s and red cabbage as an accompaniment.

Today I’ve been on nursing and shopping duties as well as working from home. There’s been plenty of news to catch up on, hence this blog on HS2 I penned this morning. I even managed to venture out for an afternoon constitutional, although I’ve not been breaking any records today! Hopefully tomorrow the weather (and Dawn) will begin to pick up…

Rain, rain, go away…

07 Thursday Nov 2019

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It’s been a wet and miserable day here in the Calder Valley, the leaden skies have been unloading on us since early this morning. If I had plans for an Ark I’d be tempted to dust them off, but then we live high up on the valley side, so if the flood waters ever reached us an ark is exactly what we’d need!

Earlier, I donned my waterproofs and took a stroll down into Sowerby Bridge in order to pick up some shopping and also to get some exercise. I try and walk 5 miles most days in order to keep fit and get away from staring at a computer screen. Today it gave me the excuse to check on the River Calder which runs through the centre of the town. It’s not at Boxing Day 2015 flood levels but it’s way above normal. Here’s the view from the bridge across the river looking East.

This is a still from 2014 showing how this stretch of river normally looks like!

Here’s another view taken from the left hand side of the first video clip, looking towards the railway. The river that joins the Calder under the railway bridge is the Ryburn. It was just the other side of the railway that the 2015 floods happened due to the sheer volume of water being pushed back from the Ryburn by a flooded Calder – just where Sowerby Bridge is at its lowest level.

Apparently, the railway line is closed due to flooding at a familiar weakpoint today, Walsden, to the West of Todmorden, where a culvert passes under the line, so the pair of Pacers you see in the video were the last train to make it through. I also hear that the road between Sowerby Bridge and Todmorden is closed due to flooding!

I’m now back at home in the warm, hoping that the Amber flood warning the Met Office has issued won’t cause us any more problems, but more rain is something we certainly don’t need.

Easy Sunday…

03 Sunday Nov 2019

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– well, sort of! I was actually up early as our cat insists that on a weekend it has the right to sleep on the bed. How it knows it’s the weekend we’ve never been able to work out, but the moggy can. This meant I was given an early morning alarm call when Jet decided he needed to be fed. As I’d given in to him and Dawn was happily sleeping I sloped off into the office to scan some more old slides I’d prepped.

With such an early Sunday start we both decided to ‘carpe diem’ and make the most of the day by having an early breakfast and going for a long walk through along the canal into Sowerby Bridge, then up through our local woodland (Scarr woods) which is looking superb at this time of year. What was lovely to see was the way some people place Halloween pumpkins in the woods, which can either delight – or scare the shit out of you!

Back at home we continued our productive time as Dawn got into ‘domestic Goddess’ mode in the kitchen to produce a fiery Thai Green Curry from scratch (no pre-prepared pastes here) plus a gorgeous Lemon Drizzle Cake. I spent my time on household DIY (yes, I know – the bathroom) before ploughing on with the never ending job of mounting and scanning more old slides. I’m currently doing an album from 2003 which contains a lot of stuff from Virgin Trains days. I’m looking forward to having them done now that the franchise is about to come to an end as it will be an appropriate tribute to a company that really did a lot to improve the image of the railways in the publics perception.

In the meantime, here’s one of the other slides I’ve been scanning. This is a view across London Waterloo taken from the London Eye back in 2003. The city’s skyline has changed a bit since then, as have the rail services. In those days the old BR built slam door stock was still in use and Waterloo International would be in use by Eurostar for another 4 years.

Calder Valley rail travails

22 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by in Calder Valley, Northern Rail, Rail Investment, Railways, Sowerby Bridge, Transport, West Yorkshire

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After yesterday’s excitement about the arrival into service of the new trains, today’s been back to business very much as usual with lots of late running, trains terminating short and cancellations. I popped down to Sowerby Bridge for an hour to see what was happening. It wasn’t great. Several Leeds – Southport and Chester services were cancelled with some Southport trains terminated at Wigan Wallgate. Here’s a look at some of the days services.

195119 worked 1E60, the 1124 Chester to
Leeds which was one of the few trains I saw that actually ran to time. The 195s superior braking and acceleration should help when there’s only a few minutes delay involved, as there was on this service earlier in the run.
This service wasn’t so lucky. 195107 passes at speed whilst working 2M14, the 12:18 Leeds to Manchester Victoria. It got as far as Hebden Bridge before being cancelled with a door fault. Door problems appear to be a recurring theme with the new units. This seems to be a mixture of mechanical and human problems. Hopefully, the bugs will be ironed out quickly.
The next 195 to appear was 2-car 195002 which had been allocated to 1D77, the 12:38 Leeds to Chester. It also suffered from late running, arriving at Sowerby Bridge 3 mins down. It dropped another 5 mins before arriving in Manchester.
Another service with problems was 1J10, operated by a pair of 2-car Class 158s, 158859 and 158851. This should have been the 11:24 from Southport to Leeds but it was terminated at Wigan Wallgate on its Westward run, so formed an 11:57 Wigan Wallgate to
Leeds.
Close on the heels of 1J10 was 195007 working non-stop through Sowerby on 2E15, the 12:58 Manchester Victoria to Leeds which was running 10 minutes late. On its return it formed a Chester service.
The last observation of my short stint was 195111 non-stop on 2M16, the 13:18 Leeds to
Manchester Victoria which was only a minute late!

As this is early days and there’s always teething problems with new fleets I’m hoping these issues will be sorted out quickly. What’s harder to sort out is the cancellations and delays that have nothing to do with the new trains. After the heartache and hassle passengers and businesses have suffered over the past few years due to the rail strikes, punctuality needs addressing as a matter of urgency. It’s easy to see how the Northern TOC can become a political football when the service is so unreliable. It could be very tempting to politicians desperate to curry favour and secure a ‘cheap win’ and political plaudits by taking back the franchise. Add in the fact that Sowerby Bridge and Mytholmroyd are due to lose many of their services from the December timetable (I understand they’re due to be cut by a third during the week and by half on Sundays) and you can understand local displeasure.

It’s disappointing on another level too. Network Rail have invested in the route, having spent over £100m on new signalling track upgrades and line-speed improvements in the past few years, but this isn’t reflected in punctuality improvements. Why? What’s the route cause of the problems? I’d love to know…

Rolling blog: new trains enter service in the Calder Valley

21 Monday Oct 2019

Posted by in Calder Valley, New trains, Northern Rail, Photography, Rail Investment, Railways, Rolling blogs, Sowerby Bridge, Transport, Travel, West Yorkshire

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Northern’s new CAF built Class 195s have entered passenger service through the Calder Valley today on the routes from Leeds – Chester and Leeds – Manchester Victoria. Needless to say, I’m out with the camera to capture pictures of this important milestone. It’s the culmination of improvements to the line that have seen the route resignalled, linespeeds increased and platforms lengthened.

I’ll be adding pictures throughout the day. Here’s the first as 195123 picks up passengers at Sowerby Bridge whilst working the 10:22 from Chester to Leeds.


10.35.

I’ve caught a late-running Chester service which is worked by 195110. These trains are certainly a step-change to the old BR built units we’ve been used to since the 1980s! They’ve far superior acceleration and braking, not to mention all the facilities that passengers have come to expect nowadays, such as power sockets and free wifi. They’ve also got far more seating bays with tables.

22:36.

Sorry folks, It didn’t turn out to be much of a rolling blog as I was too busy taking pictures! Since I got home earlier this evening I’ve been busy editing them, so here’s a small selection. You can find the full gallery here on my Zenfolio website.

1J06, the 0957 Wigan Wallgate to
Leeds worked by 150275 and 158901 passes 195002 just outside Todmorden. The 195 was working 2M10, the 1018 Leeds to
Manchester Victoria. 1J06 should have run from Southport but was cancelled due to late running. Sadly, that’s something the new trains are having no impact on!
A few hours later 195002 passes Gauxholme whilst working 2E13, the 1158 Manchester Victoria to Leeds
3-car 195123 arrives at Walsden with 2M12, the 1118 Leeds to
Manchester Victoria.
Another late runner was 195103 on 1E60, the 1124 Chester to
Leeds which was 21 mins late by the time it reached Todmorden at 13.06.
Meanwhile, at Halifax, here’s a couple of shots of 2M20, the 1518 Leeds to
Manchester Victoria, worked by 195110.

For the number crunchers, the list of units seen in passenger service is as follows. Two car 195002 and 195007. Three car 195103. 195110. 195111. 195119. 195121 and 195123.

Sunday thoughts.

08 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in Politics, Rushbearing, Sowerby Bridge, Travel, West Yorkshire

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After the fun of rush-bearing yesterday today’s a bit of a come-down. The procession does continue but its focus is more rural and I’ve got other things to do – like edit the hundreds of pictures I took yesterday, as well as houshold chores, cooking and some DIY. It’s not exactly the rock and roll lifestyle, but it keeps me occupied!

That said, so does trying to keep track of the latest iplosions/resignations/floor crossings in UK politics! Today the headlines are all about the latest Cabinet Minister to abandon Johnson’s sinking government. That would normally be extraordinary enough but we live in such bizarre times we also have news that the Prime Minister is allegedly prepared to break the law to deliver Brexit. Meanwhile, the Lib-Dems gain their third defector in a week in the shape of former Labour MP Angela Smith. Truly, the old political party system is broken. Tribal allegiances have been torn apart. Brexit’s broken everything as both Labour and Tories have drifted to the extremes of left and right but neither have any answers to the mess we’re in. All we have now is voices of reason on both sides who cut through the crap and deal with the realities of the situation. Never in a million years would I have thought I’d be on the side of Michael Heseltine and Ken Clark, but that says it all really.

The depressing thing is seeing how many UK citizens are so ignorant of the trouble we’re in. As long as ‘Eastenders’and ‘Coronation St’ are still being broadcast, all’s well in their world. Apparently, we’re British, so we’re immune to all the world’s normal travails. Shit will never happen to us. Only it is and sticking one’s head in the sand isn’t going to help.

On the bright side, I’ve managed to start uploading yesterday’s pictures to the rush-bearing gallery. You can find them here. For now, here’s a couple of samples. I’ve a lot more to add over the next few days.