Memoirs of a Railway Volunteer - Part 7

On to Rowsley – II

Life on the Rowsley extension tended to revolve around the mess coach, which we depended on to a greater extent than before. The works train had to be away from Darley Dale before the passenger services started, and didn’t come back till they had finished. There was no other shelter on Rowsley site, which can be pretty bleak in the winter, and the nearest chip shop was a long way away. In the interests of volunteer welfare I began to get into the habit of cooking a Sunday lunch for any volunteers who could be persuaded to eat it. The dishes were pretty basic, generally involving a large vat of something – corned beef hash, chili con carne, sausage stew. Incidentally, the recipe for Peak Rail Sausage Stew went something like this:

Roast 2lbs of good quality sausages at home to get the fat out – Cumberland work well and cheap pork and beef give a poor result. Coarsely chop about 4 onions, and set them going with a little oil in the bottom of a large saucepan, fry gently till they start to look transparent. Add the cooked sausages, 3 or 4 tins of chopped tomatoes, 1lb chopped carrots, about 1lb mushrooms and 2 oxo cubes. A dash of salt and pepper and about half a mugfull of water, as little water as possible. Stick it on Fatso to simmer for at least an hour, balanced on a brick if Fatso is a bit overheated. Meanwhile peel and boil sufficient spuds. Just before serving, stir in a tin of condensed mushroom soup (Derek Ankers contribution to gastronomy). Feeds an army.

After 3 hours shovelling ballast on a frosty morning it tasted marvellous. I haven’t hardly dared cook it since I got married, and now we have a buffet at Rowsley, there isn’t the same need. Fatso was our faithful potbellied coal fired stove, bought by Derby Branch for the mess coach; it was a notable contribution to our comfort, and one Sunday morning it was nearly our undoing.

We were doing some maintenance at Darley Dale on a very cold day. I think we were changing sleepers at the Rowsley end of the Up platform, where the track needed to be upgraded for passenger traffic. The works train had been parked out of the way at the top end of the loop and a nice warm fire left in Fatso. At some point I went back to the mess coach for extra tools, and as I got near I realised it was full of smoke. One look inside was enough – flames were licking up the wall behind the stove. I took a deep breath, went in, opened the stove and threw a pan of water in. It came straight back out as steam and cinders and made no impression on the roaring hot fire. Someone had overloaded fatso and left the bottom vent open.

I ran back to the track gang, and 150yards is a long sprint in work boots. “Fire!” I wheezed it out with some difficulty and went back. Getting the fire under control wasn’t too difficult. The fire was confined to the coach lining at the back of the stove, which appeared to be basically chipboard. I threw on the contents of the kettle and hacked away with the firewood hatchet and the flames stopped. There was still a lot of smoke coming off and I opened a window for ventilation in between dashing outside for lungfulls of air. Rob Davies had joined me and we took turns wielding the axe in between breathers outside, smashing at the tiles on the side of the coach above the sink to get at the seat of the fire behind. Jagged splinters flew everywhere. There was a layer of polystyrene tiles behind the ceramic ones, and this was the real cause of the problem; the heat had ignited them.

Steve Ryszka did the ¼ mile sprint from the station with a fire extinguisher and nearly had a heart attack in the process! He discharged it into Fatso and reeled outside to get his breath back.

The rest of the lads did what they could with buckets, but the stove was so hot that the fire could break out again at any moment. Mick got the works diesel going and shunted the train down to the water supply. He and Andy Wood stuffed the loco hose down the chimney, which solved the problem. We got hold of a sheet of corrugated iron and wedged it behind the stove to make a fireback, then we relit the fire and by lunchtime the coach was more or less dried out and habitable again. An extra layer of soot over the existing grime didn’t really make much difference, and the mess coach stayed like that until it was rebuilt several years later.

Apart from the passenger service, the works train also had to dodge the footplate experience courses, known to the volunteers as “pay and play” which ran on the extension from time to time. Simply running up and down gets boring after a while and occasionally the supervising driver would kick his heels up. The effects of a fully open regulator on a light engine are quite spectacular, you would see a tiny speck of a J94 in the far distance while a tower of exhaust hung over the valley. The general effect was that of a small mobile volcano.

One morning we found something a little more sensitive for the steam engine to do. The works diesels were not available for some reason and the works train had been dropped off by the steam engine early in the morning. We needed to shunt it up to the temporary loading dock to get the JCB off, so Derek Ankers and myself approached Bob Grange who was on the footplate supervising. He was liable to go into potential neck wringing mode and needed just a little diplomacy. Incidentally Bob did not believe in or tolerate mobile volcanoes. Neither of us had sufficient power to stop them.

“You expect these guys to operate the railway and pay for the privilege?”

“Just for a minute or two, honest Bob. It’ll be something different for them.”

Now, at this point the unloading dock was a temporary affair, made out of the wooden decks obtained by Brian Oliver stacked up at the side of the run round loop. It was a lot shorter than the current dock, and the weltrol had to be positioned with some care if the JCB was to be driven off. For the benefit of the guest driver, we drew one chalk line on the dock and another on the wagon, and asked him to line them up. This was quite a challenge, and he really had to work to get the feel of the regulator. After several ups and downs he got within a few inches, and said it had been one of the most interesting parts of his morning.

This gave me the germ of an idea, which I hope to see realised one day, of a footplate shunting experience working up and down the sidings. It would bring in money and entertain the visitors between trains. The idea has been used for some years by the Ffestiniog, where it is called “the Slate Shunt”, and it has paid, among other things for the construction of the replica L & B engine.

During 2005, if we did not open the extension we certainly tightened our grip. Over 2500 tons of ballast had been used on the track on Rowsley site alone, and a further 2000 tons of good quality hardcore had been spread on what was to become the car park. The hardcore came free of charge from the railway car park at Matlock Bath which was being dug up and re-surfaced. Mick was particularly careful to ensure that what was delivered was the correct grade hardcore and not rubbish which would retain water and just slump into mud. We tried various dodges to raise money on the site during the year, but the site was not really finished enough for these to be seriously successful. The best of these was a transport weekend, and if we did not make any money, we at least got the car park rolled by a steam roller.

During the year we also began a limited amount of clearance on the shed approach. We were looking forward beyond the opening of the extension, when development of the site would become a priority. We also needed hardcore to fill in behind the platform when built. The clearance ran reasonably smoothly with only a little input from ourselves. Local people cut down trees for firewood and removed the large logs. The Daycare Services Team gathered up the remaining small branches and burnt them, the Territorial Army came back once in a while and grubbed up the stumps. Visiting enthusiasts were very impressed; Rowsley shed was originally a very spacious four tracks wide and about 140 yards long, but lost in the corner of the site. Today there are at least sixteen lines of siding and about two miles of internal lines, and there is room for plenty more.

Towards the end of the year, the contract for construction of the platform face was finally let. This was a major work. A deep trench had to be dug alongside the railway, and a double skinned retaining wall built, brick on the outside face, blocks to the rear, and an enormous quantity of reinforced concrete in the middle. The finished structure had to be strong enough to retain the vast mass of loose fill to be tipped behind it and support the overhanging coping slabs.

About this time we had to tackle a major relaying project on the existing railway. We had a serious problem with dipped joints between bridges 37 and 38. Here the rails were short 39 ft lengths from Stantondale. The odd lengths indicates that they were rolled in America, and brought over as deck cargo in the second world war, apparently this was the maximum length that could be handled. At any rate they had become badly hogged, which means bent into a vertical curve with a steeper dip at the ends. All the jacking packing and tamping in the world couldn’t cure it, and really the rails were too short to cut down further. Mick managed to obtain a supply of good second hand bullhead from Trackwork Ltd who were demolishing Coventry Colliery, but at commercial prices, 40 lengths at £200 per 60 foot rail. The cost of the job, including new sleepers and fishplates was about £10,000.

Mick went to enormous trouble to ensure the best possible results. Each rail, and each pair of fishplates, was numbered up in sequence before lifting to ensure the best possible match on re-assembly. Every rail was thoroughly checked and straightened with a jim crow where necessary. New sleepers were to go in at each side of every joint to give the best possible support. The fishplates were deep skirted below the bottom of the rail for additional strength, of which Mick particularly approved. We had suffered a number of broken fishplates, especially when heavy diesels were used, and Mick swore he would change every fishplate between Darley Dale and Matlock if he ever had the chance. This would have taken about 400 pairs of plates, and at £12 per pair there was no way we could afford it.

The new rails were carefully laid and the track tamped, and we returned to the extension. The largest obvious project was the station platform, and several years previously we had bought a large stack of platform edging slabs from the Peak District National Park for £25. The slabs were still stacked up at Millers Dale where one of the platforms had been dismantled, I assume for safety reasons. I arranged to hire Ab Salt’s brick grab wagon, which was a very handy tool for salvage operations, and slipped in one Saturday morning to pick these up. There turned out to be 80 slabs, exactly enough for a six coach platform, as planned. We also made a trip to Sheffield to collect a couple of original Midland Railway gas lamps donated by George Wainwright, but decided in the end to hold them in reserve for Darley Dale. The platform lights at Rowsley would probably have to be re-arranged when the permanent station building came to be built, so second hand street lights on wooden poles would be more sensible – and we had enough of them to do the job.

At about this time, scrap thieves raided Rowsley again and stole a quantity of chairs. It is good to record that they came once too often, and that on a second visit they had to run off into the night and abandon their truck. The thieves were traced to an address in Alfreton – despite having tried to report their truck “stolen” – and much of the stolen material was traced to a scrapyard nearby, where David White and myself recovered it, together with other items of railway origin which the yard could not account for. The scrapyard staff found this deeply painful and said they would never buy railway material again; an enlightened attitude.

The classic makeup of the works train consisted of the JCB on the lowmac, plus the mess coach, pulled by the works diesel, usually either the Ruston 88DS “Cynthia”, or Andy Boddens 03 diesel, neither of which were entirely satisfactory; apart from reliability issues, they were rather lightweight, and we would have preferred something slower and heavier to pull, and in particular to stop, the heavier unbraked loads. Both locomotives needed a certain amount of care when approaching Church Lane.

The winter of 1996 was bitterly cold, and restricted our choice of projects, the ballast was frozen too hard to shovel. Even so, the work went ahead. Down at Darley Dale
Steve Ryszka and his lieutenants – Vince Kay, Richard Hatch, Dominic Beglin, John Philips and others, were reorganising the Signal and Telecoms stores and preparing for the spring push. Steve was preparing a well stocked works train in the ferry vans and compiling lists of missing components which would have to be obtained, and dropping general hints of plotting mayhem to come. Although we had put up the structure of the box, and installed the crossing gates, a lot of skilled work and planning remained to be done. Theoretically it should have been very expensive.

Steve was, and is a senior, and well connected signalling installation engineer with contacts in many places. Railway signal engineering is a small world, and the inhabitants know each other very well. Most of them turned out to be personal friends of Steve who owed him several professional favours, and his influence ran very deep, as we were soon to find out. Used but serviceable signalling equipment began to get rescued from the scrapheap and turned up in the back of Steve’s car. “Its privatisation, they just don’t want it” was all he would say.

I was Steve’s sounding board in a number of planning sessions as he strove to develop a signalling system which would satisfy HMRI, yet be totally idiot proof and within our ability to build and maintain. Regretfully we dropped the idea of installing two train running as a job too far, and decided to leave that to be an early priority after the extension was opened. The system eventually chosen was to be manually worked, electrically detected, and mechanically signalled.

The way it worked, if my memory is correct, ran as follows. The day begins with the gates padlocked across the railway, and being unlocked by the duty signalman. All signals are at danger. The signalman unlocks the frame, and pulls off the main frame release lever, which unlocks the other levers and locks the key in the frame. To pass the train, the signalman must open all four gates, which have bolts dropping into sockets in the road. Accurately made, and very long, locking tongues, run from one gate to another, locking the gates into pairs across the railway. They will only fit when the gates are closed across the road, and when fully home, each tongue operates a microswitch in the opposite gate to complete an electric circuit, which releases an electrically operated lock on the signal levers. Then and only then, can the signals be moved from danger to clear. At the end of the day, the signalman has to return the signals to danger before the interlocking will let him take the key out of the frame.

Up at Rowsley, the Daycare team were working clockwise round the turntable pit, and the uncleared portion stood at “five to twelve”. Clearance continued on the shed site and approach, and 106 (West Riding) Field Squadron, T.A. had just about cut a way through the trees to the piles of rubble at the old shed. We were also laying track on the shed access crossover, headshunt and carriage sidings approach, as we had identified a need to stable a works train clear of the passenger running line.

The volunteers were putting a great deal of effort into the lineside fencing when the weather cleared, and Steve went into action. As a slavedriver he was cheerful, but totally fanatical. One night we were chipping and painting signal poles in Darley Dale yard by the light of car headlights, long after dark. He got Mick Thomas to dig a trench four feet deep from Darley Dale to Rowsley so that the signal cables could be properly buried – he and John Philips had bought several kilometres of new cable for a nominal scrap value, I think from a North Sea oil rig company. Normally that stuff costs about £5 per metre. He made us fill in a lot of the trench by hand to avoid damage to the cable. He and his gang were all over the box area, digging, concreting wiring and installing complicated bits and pieces.

All the while, Steve had been secretly maturing his other plans, and one day he rang up out of the blue. I was to organise a gang of volunteers with whatever transport I could get, and meet him at the stores depot at Wakefield Kirkgate Station at 9 am sharp on the next Saturday. Something was up. I rang round and organised Sam Cotton and his landrover, Tony Roberts with his works five tonner, and some others. Mick Thomas was understandably unhappy that volunteer efforts were being diverted from the extension, and Steve confided that there were good things to be had, which we would by no means regret.

Vince Kay met me at Darley Dale and we drove up together. Vince knew something about the Kirkgate depot, and we both knew about Steve Ryszka on salvage jobs. As we swung round the traffic system in Wakefield we played the theme from “Where Eagles Dare” on the tape deck to get in the mood.

I think I had better point out that what followed was entirely lawful. It was the aftermath of privatisation, and the accountants were in charge. Any equipment which was obsolete, second hand, missing its paperwork, painted the wrong colour or just considered to be overstocked, had to go. The problem, or the opportunity, depending on your point of view, was that when BR was privatised Railtrack demanded a QA certificate for every piece of equipment that was being installed on their infrastructure (and quite rightly too) and a service history for every piece of plant. Occasionally this caused a rare old panic when the non-standard spares thrown out turned out to be vital for the maintenance of non-standard equipment still in service. The torrent of equipment pouring out of the railway system was beyond imagination, and every railway with the right contacts was scrambling to make the most of it.

Most of the kit at Wakefield had no QA certification having sat around in the stores since God was a lad, some of it being rare or even obsolete BUT being hung onto just in case it became necessary. Engineers like squirrels, hoard nuts and useful bits and pieces for a rainy day. The privatised companies didn’t like that, they saw it as stock sitting on the shelves, or the ground in most case, which was costing them money (if you have spent money on materials and it spends it’s time not being used you are then paying to store it so you can lose money by keeping it! Accountants!)


Now there was to be a new set of rules. The railway was to be tidied. All this surplus tackle was being called back to regional depots to be thrown away. It was costing money to hire and fill rubbish skips, so the accountants reckoned it was cheaper to give the stuff to the first person who asked for it. One regional depot was Wakefield, and Steve was a very early and persistent bird indeed. The manager was a friend of his.

We had never imagined anything like this.

“What can we have?”
“Anything on this side of the yard. They don’t want it. Take it all”
“But, Steve, these facing point locks must be just about brand new. The castings alone cost over a thousand pounds apiece”

Steve smiled at me, and repeated slowly, and with great emphasis, “They have no paperwork, they are not wanted, nobody wants to know. They are scrap. Take them”


Sam Cotton has a photograph of me dancing a war dance on top of a pallet load of fishplates. A lot of them were insulated plates and FB/BH junction plates worth £60 per pair second hand, of which we were incidentally, very short. There were a hundred and one varieties of good things, many of them immediately useful. Nearby were pallet loads of lifting jacks, including the Duff ratchet jacks we preferred. Special turnout chairs, keying hammers, calibrated spirit levels, rail turning bars, sets of Abtus sighting boards, some of this stuff was brand new and still in the makers wrappers. If we made any enquiry, hardly daring to believe our good luck, then Steve or the manager brushed any doubts aside.

“Take it, take it all.”

We had a fairly experienced crew who could spot the valuable stuff among the junk, and the transport was loaded pretty quickly. The depot manager was very pleased and said he would have more stuff for us shortly. For some reason Steve adopted a blank expression and a deep voice. “I’ll be back”

We made our thanks and pulled out. At a conservative guess we had loaded about £20,000 worth of gear in the course of the morning. Myself and the lads went back to unload, Steve to plan his next moves and to confer with the depot managers at Doncaster, Leeds, Retford, Chester, and elsewhere.

On the way home, Sam, Vince and I called on Mick to beg a cup of tea. Sam had the most valuable and fragile stuff in the back of his landrover. Mick’s reactions could be entertaining, and this was no exception.

“You’re a bunch of bloody loonies and you’ll get us all shot! What do you intend to do – give every volunteer his own spirit level?”

Then he spotted the brand new sighting boards, neatly clamped together in sets of three. Our existing ones were cracked and falling to bits. “Oh yum yum – get your hands off. Mine! Mine! What do you want the other eight sets for?

“We’re going to supply the entire preservation movement”.