Steam age sites around the country

I happened to drive past the site of Cohens scrapyard near Kettering a few days ago, and noticed it appears that it is about to become a housing estate. Though not much work seemed to be going on apart from the basic road network has been laid.

It struck me that a lot of places associated with steam days are disappearing and some of them are now hard to locate. Just for the record here are the coordinates for the location. Google Earth has an aerial view of the area dating from 1945 as an option now. Before the place even became a breakers yard. I think it was originally an iron foundry. If you put the string below into the search box it'll take you straight there.

52°23'22.14"N 0°45'11.18"W

Several notable engines finished up there. I remember 30902 Wellington stood intact for a long time whilst someone tried to persuade Derby to release it. Without success of course. Most of the output ended up at Corby steelworks. It may have been the last site or nearly the last to have intact steam locos from BR. They were quite slow workers there and certainly there were engines still intact well into 1969.

I'd be interested to see pinpoints of other notable sites around the country. Not necessarily scrapyards. But places that are disappearing under redevelopment. It just happens to be one of the ones I knew. If anyone is interested I could pinpoint some more.

 

Found this, seems they scrapped a lot more diesels than steam.

BRDatabase - the Complete British Railways Locomotive Database 1948-1997

Castle 5018, a long time Reading favourite I remember seeing, was amongst them.

 

Think someone has got his figures widely out ! I lived in the area at the time and have listed over 100 steam locos alone. IIRC there were at least 20 Stanier 5s cut up there including 3 Schools (902 / 921 / 935), Q1s(33002/06 at least),a pair of Granges, anumber of 8Fs, a number of Colwick locos once the MR took over the depot and even some of the ex Nine Elms Standard 3s. I can't even think that the numbers have been inter-changed with Cransley scrapping at least 3 Hymeks + 2 Class 14s + the 10 NBL Class 16 + Class 10 shunters to a number greater than 20.

Happy days recalled from the 1960s visiting at weekends to see what new stock had arrived although saddenned to such well-remembered locos end their lives so tragically - sadly I never thought to buy loco parts as a future investment.

 

Just a question Tenwheeler, out of interest why would Derby be involved in the resale of 30902 being a SR engine?
Fred, thinking about it, I think I have seen some pictures of Cohen's Kettering with some S15's in there (30507 for one). Also some old LT underground stock similar to the original IoW ones.

 

Because the scrapping companies never actually owned the locomotives. All the sales were conducted from an office in Derby. They tendered for them, and that was the price they got when the reduced metal was disposed of. At the time the schools were sold, one of the requirements was that the fireboxes were returned to Derby. It was initially a sweetener to encourage the scrap companies to take the work on without having to make a substantial investment. Derby controlled everything in effect, and the scrapping co couldn't sell something that didn't belong to them. Wagons were disposed of in the same way, only in batches. The scrapping companies had to accept a mix, which included undesirable vehicles such as brake vans - which contained a lot of concrete.

That list is not trustworthy. There are loads of steam locos missing, and some of the dates for ones there are wrong. There were indeed quite a few class fives that went there. 44777, 45312 and 45071 for a start. 45071 stood on it's own in the yard for over a year. I also remember 48338 which was having parts recovered for 48773.

The LT cars were 1927 stock from the northern line.

 

Thanks for the explanation.

 

That's okay.

I've just had another look at that locomotives database, and it's hopelessly inaccurate. In a lot of cases the scrapping dates seem to be the sale date. And there are examples of engines recorded at one yard which I know for sure went to another. As has been pointed out, whole classes are missing from some yards in the list.

 

The reason there are hordes of engines missing from this database is because a lot of question marks have been raised about just where steam locomotives were scrapped. I can reiterate what has already been published on the internet, much of which is incorrect, or I can wait for more accurate information that has been substantiated in some way. Sorry if there are inaccuracies on brdatabase but unless people contribute to it, it will remain inaccurate. I have had quite a lot of forums complain about one thing or another on this website, but I never get any constructive help from these people.

 

Morning folks,

Firstly, with regard to steam-age sites, and Kettering, I'm in the process of creating an online map showing the locations of the various breakers that were involved with cutting BR steam . The map is far from complete, any further information will be gladly received! - Bing Maps - Driving Directions, Traffic and Road Conditions

Secondly, the historiclly-published information on steam loco disposals has contained a great many errors, as is commented on here:-
What REALLY Happened To Steam - Now a major project is being launched to set the record straight.

Hopefully, there'll be another update to this project soon.

Very Best Wishes,
Bob.

 

That site promises a lot but it hasn't been updated for a long time - until then, we are going to have to go with what we've got.

 

That looks quite good.

A couple of problems I hope you don't mind me mentioning though. (suggestions for improvement)

The Bing map didn't work very well for me. I tried Woods of Queenborough and ended up in the Hague. It depends how you try to locate, second attempt landed me off the coast but much closer.

I see you put the Lat/Long co-ordinates for some of them. They don't work on Google earth in that format though. You have to fiddle about with the data. The one I put for Kettering just plugs straight in if you copy and paste. It can be a bit fiddly extracting the figures - what I do is place the pointer and just write it down - but one advantage with Google Earth is that it is precise and they are introducing historical overlays e.g. 1945 which can be helpful, not just for scrapyards, but any site that has been re-used. There is one for Kettering.

I've done one for Drapers Sculcoates - 53 45 49.67 n 0 20 19.20 w - no 1945 overlay yet though.

And Cashmore Great Bridge, where there is a 1945 overlay (which seems to be mis-aligned by about 30 metres). Funny thing here is that although the site has been long cleared and is now used for storing caravans, you can still see the tracks within the site - 52 32 23.50 n 02 01 43.52 w

 

Slightly off topic, but still on the same theme. If anyone is interested in the 8F which is still (or at least was a year or two ago) in the middle of Baghdad, here it is - 33 20 43.23 n 44 21 13.76 e - No 1945 overlay here, and no street view either!

 

Sansovino, I believe you are connected with the BRDatabase website. For some reason I cannot get it to work today, unavailable. Can you confirm if there is an issue with it please?
Cheers.

 

Hi. I didn't know it was down - I can't access it or my cpanel front end either, so I have submitted a ticket (marked as urgent) in order to resolve the issue asap. Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

Hi, thanks for the info. Glad to been of help bringing it to your attention.

 

They have contacted me and said that they are running a disk check program on the server on which my website resides and they are very sorry for the inconvenience caused. I wonder if this will affect their claim of 99.9% up time - time for a move maybe ...

 

The site seems to be back, but most of the page seems to be missing, just some text around the edge.
When you type a loco No. in the search box & click "go", you get the same page back with no details.
Sorry to be a pain.

 

They are restoring the disks and said it would be upto 24 hours (I think it has already been that long). Not too impressed with their service - as I said, may consider looking elswhere. Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

No problem.

 

Took much longer than they said it would, but it's back now. Sorry 'bout that!