“Fifty Years Ago”

Presenter: Roger Hepworth

Due to the unavailability of the booked speaker for the first meeting of the new year Roger Hepworth stood in as the deputy when he presented a most excellent rendition describing his railway adventures from some 50 years in the past.  As a resident of the West Riding plenty was to be seen of dieselised traffic throughout the region where Bradford, Wakefield and Keighley were well to the fore.

Early day Worth Valley Railway pictures were most noteworthy showing both its infrastructure and motive power.  Wider travels were to embrace scenes from the southern end of the Settle & Carlisle focussing on the days of West Coast main line diversions when multiple numbers of class 50’s were often employed.  Journeys over the Hull to Beverley lines described much of that was to be seen in East Yorkshire whilst cross Pennine activities were shown along the routes into Lancashire.  Visits into Lancashire depicted action at Liverpool, Wigan and Blackburn along with the changing environments at both of the Blackpool stations were each well covered.  Most interestingly, and for comparative purposes, then and now pictures were frequently shown of several well-known locations.

In order to broaden the interest the presentation intermittently illustrated scenes from 60 years back which thus brought many pictures of steam activity into the programme, and plenty was therefore to be seen of Eastern Region Pacifics and their motive power chiefly operating through Doncaster.  Finally, steam day photographs were shown illustrating all that was to be seen on the LNWR lines over the Pennines between Huddersfield and Manchester Victoria.  This nostalgic presentation was greatly enjoyed by all and thanks to the speaker for deputising in such fine style.