The Woodhead route.
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- Опубликовано: 17 фев 2024
- Linking Sheffield and Manchester, this 40 mile route penetrated the Pennine barrier at Woodhead, before descending to Manchester.
It was Britain's first main line to use overhead electric power when opened in 1954.
Primary motive power was the 1500V D.C. EM1 (Class 76) and EM2 (Class 77) electric locomotives.
The EM2s were sold to the Netherlands Railways, but the EM1s continued until the line's closure in 1981.
Scenes recorded at many locations between 1954 and 1984 are shown, some with original sound. Locations include:
Sheffield (Victoria)
Rotherwood
Wath
Worsborough Bank
Penistone
Dunford Bridge
Woodhead
Torside
Guide Bridge
Manchester (Piccadilly)
Plus other locations
Sadly missed,all together now,bring back the Woodhead Route!
I'm obsessed with looking up all these locations on google earth, and seeing how much it has changed. It takes me hours to watch these episodes because I keep pausing it lol.
You too? 😜
Sign of a great mind. Check out martin zero on RUclips. He does an episode on woodhead tunnels in their current abandoned state.
It’s hard to believe that a railway like this ever existed….. shame it’s all gone
There was something very special about this line when I was young. Victoria to Piccadilly behind an EM1 then on to Crewe behind an AL6, stopwatch in hand.. The speed behind the 25kV AC fed AL6's was breath-taking on a relatively flat road but the stars were the single EM1's over the rugged Pennines. Happy Saturdays looked back on longingly. Thanks for the upload.
I grew up with this line in the sixties it ran alongside my primary school and Reddish depot was a couple of minutes walk away.When we were kids me and my mates used to go to the foreman's office at the depot and ask if we could have a look around and he'd say"go on then lads" and we'd wander all around this place inside and outside,climbing up on the locos and even getting inside them sometimes without any supervision other than from the kindly workers who seemed to be quite fond of us mithering urchins.Health and Safety would have a fit about this nowadays but we spent many happy hours at this place
Fantastic video on a railway that should of survived 🤔 I was lucky enough to have seen a lot of class 76 action as I was a Manchester lad lol 🤣 I lived in Urmston so a trip out on my Honda CB 250 in the 70s was always great catching the 76s at all the different locations especially Reddish depot 😊 I also walked the tunnel before it was fenced up 👍🏻How short sited closing this mail line. Just imagine a AC class 86 or 87 making light work of this once magnificent line 😢
Went to school (Penistone Grammar Sch, when it was a grammar school) from52 to 59, and saw the change from steam to electric, the withdrawal of passenger service to stations like Oughtibridge, Deepcar and Wortley, so we had to get the bus in 58. There was a train each way every 20 minutes through OB, and I would watch them from our house with binoculars on rainy summer days. Had my Ian Allen train spotters books constantly with me.
What a fantastic production. You do wonder if the railways missed a trick when they permanently closed the route.
Thank you for a very important historical record of the Woodhead Route, its motive power, operations and stations. This is a gem of a film.
Awesome video - Brings me to tears remembering my rail trips from Manchester to Norwich via this route and how the line was thoughtlessly closed because the politicians of the day figured road haulage was better .. they should be stuck in stationary on the Woodhead Pass for a few hours or maybe days.🤔
A fine video this day. A definite ride in the past. Thank you for the view! Cheers mates! 🇬🇧🙂👍🇺🇸
Big bad bob ,remembers,Woodhed.line bin there.done that,never to forget,
I was lucky enough to travel this route several times back in the 70s and early 80s.
Frankly it's a disgrace what happened to this line, all the way to Sheffield and to Sheffield Victoria too.
I'd grab a few hundred mill from HS2 and reopen it all as soon as possible.
Seeing places like Guide Bridge completely gone, bar a platform or two is heart breaking. It used to be a great place to visit for me and my friends all the way from near Gatwick Airport on the southern region.
Doubleheaded 76s on coal and later MGR, was great. 20s, 40s and even the old EMUs were great to see.
Wonderful footage, thanks for the upload and gratz on so many views in 3 days !
Liked and subbed.
"I'd grab a few hundred mill from HS2 and reopen it all as soon as possible."
Reopening Woodhead would cost many billions. A few hundred mill from HS2 wouldn't get you anywhere. The National Grid have converted the Woodhead tunnels to transport power cables so they are no longer available for a railway. That would mean a new tunnel either for the trains or the cables. At the Sheffield end you would somehow have to build a curve cutting across the city to get the line into Midland station. Almost all the freight that used this line doesn't exist any more on either rail or road. The coal industry is gone and a large part of the steel industry as well. Your few hundred mill would be better used properly upgrading the Hope Valley line IMO.
@@kevinfowkes2327 The power lines were set in the ground as far as I'm aware. That was a good few years ago though so probably changed. I agree that it's an unlikely possibilty.
Such shortsightedness in industrial strategy and it's happened all across the country.
Shame on those who made the decision to close this fantastic route. Can't even blame Beeching this time. you'd thought we would have learnt from those mistakes in the 60's.
Look no further than evil railway hating Thatcher
Great video. It unfortunately shows how central government waste money. Millions wasted on building new woodhead tunnels ,and lately HS2 where billions have been wasted
Tour de force and very moving!
Extremely interesting video . Great to see such brilliant footage of these electric locomotives . A route that should never have closed . It would have been a useful freight route today . Seems to be a British disease to throw away anything that works or is useful . Short sightedness . The video is a memorial to a much missed railway route .
The Greek names were a nice touch.
My god ! ! !
It is true that you learn something new everyday.
Today I found out that the 'woodhead' locomotives were not built by EMI which for some strange unknown reason I had believed to be true for at least the last 45-50 years.
In reality what I had 'read' as "EMI" was in fact the model number of the Bo-Bo freight locomotive used on the line (EM1), I must try to pay more attention in the future !
Thank you for posting this video 😂
Great video.
Clean, efficient, electric traction through the hilly Pennines, all that was wanted apart from the traffic flows, began to falter, non the less new business could have been sought to make the route pay but alas politics and economics do have the upper hand in the real world.
Thank you for sharing this
one of the biggest letdowns to man
Bit dramatic
Surely the HST was an A4 at each end and a rake of coaches in the middle.
Gresley would have realised steam was finished which is why he built the EM1s.
The EM3 could run at 90 MPH easily on god track so the ecml would be a walk in the park.
No doubt Gresley would be looking at France
There seems to be very little decent film Of this route sadly. Lovely piece of work this film 👍🏼👍🏼
Great video ❤
Superb video of a line that should never have closed ,but i wager it will return one day
Only a fool would wager on this line ever returning. No chance basically. Any slim chance died about 10 years ago when the Woodhead tunnel was repurposed to carry power lines, so a reopened railway would need a completely new tunnel. Problem number 2 is what to do at the Sheffield end. To be of any use for passengers, the line would have to be linked into Sheffield Midland station, requiring a long very expensive curve cutting across the city, if that would even be feasible at all. Third problem is that almost all the freight the line carried doesn't exist any more whether on rail or road. Coal mining is gone, import of coal is mostly gone, the majority of the steel industry is gone. I can't really see Woodhead being a good use of many billions of pounds. You could properly upgrade the existing line from Sheffield to Manchester for a small fraction of that.
@@kevinfowkes2327 Kevin you make very good points but this day and age and with fools running our country anything is possible these days.
The video shows that a fair number of class 76 locos had numbers at both ends after renumbering, something I didn't notice at the time or I forgot about.
Very sad the last 1500dc line disappeared.
BR really shunned 1500Dc in favour of AC and yesI know the benifit of providing high voltage current.
The funny thing is the French have a huge amount of 1500 DC an still run at 200kph
This why it should be the North first high speed severies
@@sglenny001 I think if the LNER survived and especially Gresley they would have electrified to London
@@Steven_Rowe there's alot things that been different is the big 4 stayed
My honest theroy on Gresley high speed train would look more like the Marland
@@Steven_Rowe Sheffield Victoria should reopen so should Manchester Central these shall help form an high speed severies
@@Steven_Rowe there shall also be super tram extension to Huddersfield make Sheffield the centre of a Yorkshire metro
If only this route was open now, it would help both passenger and freight congestion in that part of the world. Such a shame it's all gone.
One thing I was wondering with this excellent video is whether the train sounds are genuine or mostly dubbed over the film? Perhaps somebody can advise how genuine the train sounds seem? Woodhead closed in 1981, a few years before video cameras became commonplace. Hence most of the available footage of the Woodhead line seems to be from cine film with no genuine sound. I was only 5 in 1981 so never heard what a 76 sounds like myself.
Does anybody have any information on the make and specification of the boilers fitted to the class 77 and a few class 76 locomotives?
The very last train ran last year from Stocksbridge behind a 67.
Never did get to Paris, now Gone Completely.
Shocking end to a bold venture but there again,BR had very little imagination in those days.It was a fascinating railway but the strikes of the 1980s didn`t help.What wouldn`t of the Channel tunnel people have given for a ready built line line to the North,most of it(the GC) was built to continental loading gauge.The best book on the railway is by E.M.Johnson "Woodhead,the electric railway".tells yo nearly everything you would like to know.
Why was a major route like this closed I can see the possibility as the Coal Industry gS gone but it was very much alive at the time ??
Utter waste to abandon it.
Hello, can i ask what music is in your video please ?
Another line lost
It is a thundering disgrace that this line was closed down and no longer able to be used to carry either freight or passenger traffic across the North of England - the money wasted on HS2 could have been better spent on restoring this line to full operation, especially in these days of climate change
Really sad and what a waste.
What a tragic waste
Blame beeching cut that left waste land... it time to rebuild and bring it back..need more railway route lines
another line decimated by the labour party