I have just realized I filched those rattletrap pictures from the wonderful Northumbrian Railways website for which I apologize. I saved them in my pictures so long ago I had forgotten where they came from. I have a load of my own somewhere that I'll try to dig out, scan and replace them with (you know what I mean).
Something it would be nice to see from rattletrap days would be a picture of the maps that used to be in the trains which showed long closed stations like St Anthony's or Byker (whose overgrown platforms could be seen at the junction of the Riverside branch), and lost opportunities to change at Monkseaton for Blyth and Newbiggin. I was always reminded of those maps when I spent some time in Berlin and the maps in the U-bahn showed stations in the East which the trains passed through , but where they could no longer stop. Actually they used to go through them at a crawl as if to say "we would stop if we could but see there are armed border police on the platforms to discourage us." I never saw armed police at Byker (station, anyway) but I did once see an old bloke in cap and muffler waiting hopefully. Come to think of it, is it possible that trains still made 'unscheduled' stops at Byker even after it was closed to the public? I know that happened at Eryholme on the way to Catterick Camp (an entire branch line and station that did not appear in the public timetable).
When I was at primary school in Tynemouth we used to have 'school trips' by train, including one I remember to Edinburgh which took the Blyth branch at Monkseaton and then reversed at Morpeth. The teachers told us the train was actually going back home because we were behaving so badly.
Something it would be nice to see from rattletrap days would be a picture of the maps that used to be in the trains which showed long closed stations like St Anthony's or Byker (whose overgrown platforms could be seen at the junction of the Riverside branch), and lost opportunities to change at Monkseaton for Blyth and Newbiggin. I was always reminded of those maps when I spent some time in Berlin and the maps in the U-bahn showed stations in the East which the trains passed through , but where they could no longer stop. Actually they used to go through them at a crawl as if to say "we would stop if we could but see there are armed border police on the platforms to discourage us." I never saw armed police at Byker (station, anyway) but I did once see an old bloke in cap and muffler waiting hopefully. Come to think of it, is it possible that trains still made 'unscheduled' stops at Byker even after it was closed to the public? I know that happened at Eryholme on the way to Catterick Camp (an entire branch line and station that did not appear in the public timetable).
When I was at primary school in Tynemouth we used to have 'school trips' by train, including one I remember to Edinburgh which took the Blyth branch at Monkseaton and then reversed at Morpeth. The teachers told us the train was actually going back home because we were behaving so badly.
