Worth Valley Visitors

For the railway's October Steam Gala the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway had two visiting locos, interesting ones too!
The first of these was the GWR 4-4-0 3440 'City of Truro' and this loco arrived on the railway more than two weeks before the Gala and was advertised to work additional trains on two Sundays preceding and one Sunday after the Gala.
During the afternoon of 2nd October 2005 3440 is heard near Damems Loop.
With the token exchanged 3440 makes a fine sound accelerating on the rising gradient before stopping at Oakworth station.

As the man at the caravan site wasn't showing any sign of stopping his grass cutting activities I decided to try somewhere else for the Super D's next run up the line.
This recording was made close to Oakworth station.
With station duties completed 49395 departs climbing through Mytholmes Tunnel heading for Haworth.

Having not been quite as successful in getting recordings of the Super D as I might have wished I went back again on 15th October 2005 for another go.
There were fewer opportunities to record the loco working on it's own, two to be precise, and for the first of these I went back to the spot near Damems Loop that I had tried on the previous day. This time, there was no grass cutting to disturb my recordings!
With the much quieter conditions I was able to get a recording lasting 15 minutes as the Super D could be heard almost all the way from Ingrow to Mytholmes Tunnel. This is just part of that recording made as 49395 departs from Damems Loop.
While waiting in the loop 49395's safety valves have lifted but once the road has been reset and the train departs the valves soon close and the loco sounds fine with 6 coaches behind the tender climbing the gradient toward Oakworth.

On a later train from Keighley the two visiting were put together and in this recording 3440 is piloting 49395 on a 6 coach train.
The visiting pair are heard departing from Damems Loop with the GWR loco making most noise!

The Super D didn't have a trouble free visit to the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway.
It had been booked to work a private photo charter on the Thursday before the Gala but had failed with injector trouble and problems with its brakes.
Fortunately these problems were fixed (but not in time for the photo charter) however there was still some concern about the brakes. While the loco would be Ok working passenger stock there was some worry that the brakes wouldn't be sufficiently effective when working goods wagons so the loco was unable to work freight trains unless there was another loco attached to the train.
During the afternoon of 15th October 2005 49395 was booked to work a freight train to Damems Loop and back and, in any case, this train had been booked to be banked by 41241.
Heard from near to Damems station 49395 hauling a dozen wagons with a brake van at each end can be heard climbing from Ingrow. 41241 doesn’t sound to be providing all that much assistance until the train has passed when it provides a firm shove to get the train into the loop.

You can find information about the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway on this comprehensive web site. Both 'City of Truro' and the Super D are part of the national collection and more information is available on the National Railway Museum's web site.