Page 1 of 1
Monkwearmouth museum
Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2010 9:13 pm
by Bryan
Re: Monkwearmouth museum
Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2010 10:38 pm
by redtoon1892
This museum was to little - to late, it could have had a fantastic collection of artefacts, locos, trucks etc but either the funding or the will wasn't present and it is now just a motley collection of sorts. Even the Stephenson Museum could have had a finer collection than it has but again it suffered the same problems in the beginning.
Look at all the colliery locos and trucks that were cut up, I can remember in the early 70s lines of various colliery locos being cut up at the Springwell workshops and the same at Philadelphia, dozens of tankies are lying rotting at Marley Hill surely at least a few more of these could be restored. Beamish open air museum has a miserable collection of representitive locomotives of the area, a few of Marley Hills tankies wouldent go amiss there.
At one time there must have been several hundred N.C.B.tank engines working around Gateshead and the close by colleries, exchange sidings, washeries,coke works and staithes and even in the 80s some still had steam locos as reserves,Norwood in particular and maybe Derwenthaugh.
Wrekenton washery held a fascination for me, it had several very handsome outside cylinder saddle tanks, Pecketts I think which were kept spic and span by their crews.
Dunston Staith was a bit of an anomaly, as I remember it B.R. J72s worked the sidings and staith not N.C.B. locos.
Re: Monkwearmouth museum
Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 5:51 pm
by Bryan
I went past on the Blyth Spirit tour in May and noticed that my bit of official platform alteration work from 1993 (I Think) was still evident.
The crossover to the colliery turnout was being reballasted and to enable use of a Gopher.
I had to apply for listed building consent to demolish part of the Sunderland bound platform.
In the end I think we got away with only affecting about 8ft of platform at the ramp end.
I seem to remember that the week after we finished the reballast the colliery shut. Typical.