MRS Journal No. 47 (Autumn 2011)

Table of Contents

• Selside: Belpaire No. 800 on a Scotch express, 1906
• Early Accidents on the Midland Railway: July to September 1850 / By Chris Rouse
• Addingham Station
• “A Very Objectionable and Long Continued Practice”: The Propelling of Passenger Trains on the Midland / By Roger Brettle
• Centre Spread: Goods Train at Stamford / By Robin Cullup, Ian Howard & Peter Witts
• Colourful Midland Railway Tickets / By Roy Burrows
• Totley Tunnel Robbery
• Locomotive Aesthetics / By Jack Braithwaite
• Midland Railway Coal Containers / By Ian Howard & Adrian Prescott
• Foreigners / By Ian Howard
• Query Corner
• Comments on Items in Previous Journals
• Barrows, Hand Carts, etc. : Selection 3

• Front cover
  Kevin Law was the photographer of this lovely wintry scene at Selside in March 2001. We see No. 156479 in the now defunct Northern Spirit livery as it passed a snow-covered Penyghent on the 14.45 Leeds to Carlisle working. Since 2001 was the year when foot and mouth restrictions throughout the countryside closed all public footpaths, photographs such as this had to be taken from the side of the roads. This put Kevin in the same position as the photographer a century earlier who took the picture we publish on page 1. Another set of former railway cottages can be seen in the distance on the right.
  Note how the abutments of the occupation bridge in this image are asymmetrical, just as in the MR period photograph. This is then clearly the location of the MR photograph.
  [Kevin Law collection]
• Rear cover
  We hear a lot these days about metal (mainly copper) thefts from the railways. However, the disappearance of tonnage quantities of metal from the railway system was not unknown in Midland Railway days, as the notice reproduced on our back cover shows. It is not clear from the wording whether or not the pig iron disappeared at York, or wagon No. 11548 was booked out of York as an empty (but actually contained the iron), and the iron disappeared somewhere between York and Burton. If it were the latter, the likely place for the iron to have ended up would have been in one of the scrap dealers of Sheffield. I suppose that we will never know if the Midland ever traced this consignment.
  [Roy F. Burrows Midland Collection Trust, Nos. 23689. MR Study Centre]