Having extolled the virtues of the R. Wharfe I thought I should check it is still here so today I following it from Ilkley through Addingham, Bolton Bridge, Burnsall to Grassington and then returned via Threshfield and Cracoe following the private railway line that runs from the Cracoe quarry to Skipton where it joins the main line. A nice ride with the chance of seeing a General Motors Class 66 diesel using some of their 2500 HP to pull thousands of tons of limestone and keeping HGVs off the roads.
When British Railways started to introduce diesel locomotives in the rush to eradicate steam every two-bit engineering company that claimed it could build diesel locomotives was given a contract to provide locomotives to see if they actually could. BR ended up with a hotch potch of classes of different wheel arrangements and power. Some were Diesel-Electric and some were Diesel- Hydraulic and some had fundamental design flaws. A mess and the more calamitous failures put their builders out of business, notably North British which had been building locomotives in Glasgow for over a century.
Eventually Britain turned to the country which had been making high powered diesel locos for decades and by the early 2000s there were around 1000 of the superb Class 66 locos which are still ubiquitous thundering up and down the network at high speed pulling prodigious loads.
Anyway 34 miles,2400 feet and the Wharfe is as beautiful as ever.
Reply With Quote