PART ONE
It will be 54 years ago this summer that the engine shed at Rose Grove finally ‘closed its doors’ to steam traction in August 1968. This form of motive power had reigned supreme since the railway arrived in Burnley in 1848. Perhaps now is as a good time as any to make some record of what happened there during existence up to its closure, while the memory of life there is still a distant recollection in the mind.
If you travel along the M65, over the site where the shed was situated between Rose Gove’s Liverpool Road overbridge and the canal underbridge proceeding in the direction of Hapton, there is now little or nothing at all to indicate there was ever anything other than a roadway. Consequently, as the years roll by, recollections become more vague and those of us who were employed there become fewer and fewer.
Although it did continue as a diesel traction depot for a short time after closure to steam, it must now surely rank as a chapter in the social and industrial history of Burnley.
Rose Grove Motive Power Depot, to give it its proper title, was to us who worked there simply referred to as ‘T’Loco’.
It was built in the earlier part of this century as a Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway depot, which later became part of the London Midland and Scottish Railway before finally becoming part of British Railways.
Rose Grove shed also had the dubious
honour of being one of the three sheds that remained open until the very last day of steam in the whole of Britain. The other two were Lostock Hall near Preston and Carnforth, all in Lancashire, all other sheds having been closed previously.
The activities that were involved in the running of the shed were what has become known as ‘labour-intensive’, a phrase we rarely heard before the arrival of the diesel trains and locomotives, and in today’s economic climate it would be regarded as extremely wasteful. But of course there was no alternative to that situation in the heyday of the steam engine.
In addition to many a young lad’s dream occupation of engine driver and, of course, fireman, there were many other ancillary but equally essential jobs carried out by the ‘shed-bound’ staff, which members of the travelling public never saw.
Most of these jobs
