Steam and diesel at Langwith Junction, 1964

Image: © John Sutton Taken: 25 Oct 1964

Langwith Loco Depot was built by the Lancashire, Derbyshire & East Coast Railway and the job of its locomotives was to haul coal from local pits. Class 04/6 63902 was one of the Great Central 2-8-0s built during the Great War for the Railway Operating Division of the Royal Engineers, for use in France. After the Armistice these ROD engines were sold to the LNER at bargain prices and gave nearly 50 years’ service. There were several variations and rebuildings of this class of engine, and many of them were among the 41 steam engines my notebook tells me were there that Sunday afternoon, making it a worthwhile cycle ride from Nottingham, via other engine sheds at Annesley and Kirkby-in-Ashfield (and going on to Staveley – I must have been a fit 16-year-old). Langwith Junction shed closed to steam in February 1966, staff transferring to a new diesel loco depot at Shirebrook West and no doubt taking the 350hp shunter on the right, one of Langwith's first diesels, with them. The hut behind 63902 is one of the mess huts or workshops dotted around the loco shed site. The main engine shed was behind and to the left of the camera, but a majority of the engines were stabled in the open. Langwith was almost exclusively a railway town: in the days of steam the engine shed and W H Davies's wagon repair workshops were the major employers. When the engines were lit up on a winter Sunday evening for their next day's work, Langwith was a sulphurous and foggy place. See Lawson Little’s “Langwith Junction” (Vesper Books, 1995) for more on the rise and fall of the railway here. For another view, see Image

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