Regular readers of TRACTION may remember reading my articles about watching railway operations during the night at Carlisle (TRA 201 and 202), Stafford (TRA 259) and Newcastle (TRA 270). My introduction to the joys of night time train watching came about by accident in early 1971 when I was returning home to Keighley for the weekend from a placement in a school in Greenock. Because of ticket restrictions, I couldn’t use my intended route home via Edinburgh and York so I ended up on the platforms of Carlisle station on a cold February night, As I recounted in my first article I found the experience fascinating and wondered if there was anywhere closer to Leeds, where I was at a teacher training college, that could be equally interesting.
The obvious location was York but the problem was that much freight traffic avoided the station and used the freight avoiding lines which, at night, could not be seen from the station platforms. However, I had noticed that just south of the station was Holgate Road bridge and the street lights illuminated the tracks under the bridge.There was also a bank under the bridge where I had noticed some enthusiasts watching trains during the daytime. On one of my daytime visits I went to check out how to access this path and stored the thought away for a future date.
Then in late June 1971 tragedy struck at my college when three of the students in my year were killed in a road accident. Friday the 2nd July was the day of the funerals but, as I really didn’t want to be around so many upset fellow students, I decided a night watching trains would give me something else to think about.
I arrived at York on a Liverpool to Newcastle train just before eight o’clock on Thursday 1st July. I stayed on the station until just after nine o’clock whenin the morning when it began to get light and then walked back to the station where I remained until my return to Leeds on a York to Blackpool DMU at 07:30.
