Wigan Album
Springs Branch
8 CommentsPhoto: John Morris
Item #: 30998
My brother worked here and I was allowed on the footplate watching coal being shovelled into the fire. The heat and glare was unbelievable! Health and Safety would have a field-day now but I loved it and I never came to any harm.
I guess you gave the 'rashers on a shovel' a miss, Irene. But I still find it amazing how recorded music of a 'railway beat' can sound so variable . . . Coronation Scot, City of New Orleans, John D Laudermilk's Blue Train . . . Beltin!.
Philip. I have the dvd "Night Mail", and I LOVE the poem contained in it, "This is the night mail crossing the border, bringing the cheque and the postal-order" to the sound "da-da-da-dum, da-da-da-dum" of the train on the track. We used to learn a poem at school to that same beat, "From a Railway Carriage"....."Faster then fairies, Faster than Witches, Bridges and Houses, Hedges and Ditches". I LOVED the clackety-clack of the old steamers on the tracks! xx
This is the view I got from my bedroom window of the turntable in the 1950_60.
Thanks, Irene; I enjoyed reading your 'school poem.'
I'm so glad you enjoyed it, Philip....."each a glimpse and gone forever", xx
I notice the loco has a Fowler tender. Never my cup of tea. I so preferred the Stanier type. Much more modern and in line with the loco's streamlined build.
This must be a different location than the turntable positioned in the 1940s . If you remember owd Wiganer, the turn table was exactly, and in close proximately to the comunial large back yard that Henry Street , and Warrington Road enclosed.