From the guard's van

On the western approach to Northwich station we see a Manchester to Chester DMU in the mid 1980s The station can be seen in the background. Looking the other way from the same footbridge we see a train of empty hoppers from Oakleigh returning to the quarry at Tunstead in Derbyshire.

Class 47 arrives at Oakleigh sidings adjacent to the Brunner Mond plant at Northwich (Winnington) with a train of limestone from Tunstead in the Peak District. The date is c.1985. The train draws down to the end of the reception sidings. The loco runs round its train passing a train of coal which is waiting for the plant shunt engine to collect it and take it into the works. The shunter checks the wagons of an empty train. These wagons were built by Charles Roberts Co. between 1936 and 1953 and ran into the 1990s.  A general view of the outward end of the yard with the loco now on the end of a train of empty hoppers about to return to Tunstead.  Here the coupling and vacuum brake equipment can be seen. 

One of five GECT built diesel electric locos used to ferry coal from Littleton Colliery near Cannock to the exchange sidings at Penkridge (on the main Stafford to Wolverhampton line). They were built in 1977 and the colliery, and the branch-line closed in 1993 These three pictures were taken at the point where the branch crossed the Penkridge to Huntington B road.  The following was taken from a website called "Working Life" - "In 1992 Littleton Colliery in Cannock, Staffordshire, was deemed a 'core' pit by the then Tory Government and would therefore escape the fate of hundreds of other doomed mines up and down the country. A year later, on 10th December 1993, Littleton was closed and 800 people lost their jobs." (http://workinglife.org.uk/littletoncollier.html). This website has a good selection of images relating to this colliery and the people who worked there along with a history of the pit. Here the train of empties head towards t