wont be able to post much soon,especially anything new due to a lil hospital trip so there's one from last year to be going on with
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Thornaby TMD, February 2010.
On a cold and grey Saturday on Teeside, it was time to get oily, greasy and enjoy those fragrant diesel fumes. Thornaby Traction Maintenance depot closed in 2008, exactly fifty years after it had opened. Owned by EWS and the second largest depot in the country (Toton near Nottingham is the largest) had little work; the destruction of heavy industry; less maintenance required of newer American built General Motors locomotives and the loss of a nearby freight contract to rivals Freightliner, spelled the end. Added to which light maintenance tends to be done these days in the open air!
This explore ticked all the boxes and remains a favorite. The shed is split into three sections and where the photograph was taken is a two road fueling point that can hold eight locomotives. Either side are the maintenance sheds, high level walkways, pits, wood/metalworking shops, spray booth, offices, canteen, stores, first aid, signing in point and a wheel lathe. The seven Class 56 locomotives stored (and since scrapped) in the centre section were a complete surprise. The other areas of the shed contained six Class 08 shunters and various wagons.
Towards the end of my most enjoyable three hour solo mooch and by now scrambling over the Class 56's for snaps, i had one of those moments. Suddenly, a loud booming sound becoming progressively louder began to shake the depot. I could not see where it was coming from and it is one of those times my fertile imagination thought that in some corner of the depot, a loco was being brought into the building. i thought that could not be possible, as the place was well and truly shut, but my paranoid mind was still in overdrive. I excited the building only to be confronted by a Class 60 easing out of the yard with a long rake of wagons containing iron ore for Llanwern Steel Works (Red Car was mothballed at the time and surplus iron ore was being moved to South Wales), so this was the noise, a matter of feet from the shed! With an exchange of surprised face syndrome by the train driver and myself, it was time to leave. On my return to Thornaby station, the Class 60 was moving cautiously through over point work. One more exchange of surprised faces took place. What a great mooch.
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