#snowdrift at bleath gill

[feigeroman]

Saturday Movie Night: Snowdrift At Bleath Gill (1955)

On February 24th 1955, while hauling a goods train between Bishop Auckland and Kirkby Stephen, BR Standard 2 #78018 found herself stuck in heavy drifts of snow just below Stainmore Summit. Engines with snowploughs were dispatched to dig her out, but the snow turned out to be so bad that they found themselves stuck. So began five arduous days and nights of digging, ploughing and thawing - compressed for our benefit into just ten minutes, in what has become one of BTF's most iconic productions

[emotoothtiger]

Snowdrift at Bleath Gill (1955)

Happy Solstice.

I can vouchesafe that Tilley lamps in snow give excellent light and heat.

Ironically despite a sweltering 12 degrees C this Solstice, there are still no trains.

[km-steam]

Great Central Railway  Leicestershire  UK Saturday 12 August 2017

********************************************************************************

Built at Darlington North Road Works. Entered traffic on 3 March 1954 at West Auckland Shed (County Durham). Became famous for getting stuck in a snow drift during February 1955, which resulted in the film Snowdrift at Bleath Gill. Transferred to Chester Midland in April 1960; Workington in 1962; Willesden in May 1963; Nuneaton in September 1965; Shrewsbury before withdrawal on 12 November 1966.

Spent 11 years at Barry scrapyard before being preserved at Shackerstone in November, 1978. Owned & rescued by the Darlington Railway Preservation Society in 1981 from Barry in Wales, after a 34-year restoration effort by the DRPS the locomotive was 85% complete, it was then transferred to the Great Central Railway in 2012 where the remainder of the work was carried out.

The locomotive went back into active service on the GCR on 6 October 2016. Boiler ticket expires in 2026.

[feigeroman]

Saturday Movie Night: Snow (1963)

WARNING: The editing of the footage gradually speeds up over the course of the film, and the last 2-3 minutes contain several flash frames and flashing images. If you are at all prone to seizures and/or sensory overload, I would strongly suggest stopping the video at the 6:00 mark, if not giving it a miss entirely.

With Christmas just around the corner, I thought I'd treat you to something suitably wintry this week. During the bitter winter of 1962/63, director Geoffrey Jones was busy doing field research for a BTF production about design. Reviewing his test footage, he was struck by several stunning images of dark steam trains chruning across snowy white backdrops, and this inspired him to put forward an idea for a different film - contrasting the comfort of the passengers against the Herculean efforts of the staff to keep the trains running.

Jones' idea was given the green light, and he was immediately sent off with cameraman Wolfgang Suschitzky (later of Ring of Bright Water and get Carter fame) to shoot as much as he could before the cold snap came to an end. The footage they shot was supplemented by some of Jones' original 16mm test footage, and the odd snippet from the BTF archive (most notably 1955's Snowdrift At Bleath Gill). This was then all cut, in Jones' signature style, to a cover of Sandy Nelson's Teen Beat, arranged by Johnny Hawksworth and Daphne Oram.

[emotoothtiger]

Snowdrift at Bleath Gill (1955)