Darlington Saltburn branch

[Multiprinter]

Perhaps they were doing a conversion to single decker on the cheap!

[mr B]

What I forgot to mention was, Middlesbrough railway station is built over Albert Road bridge. Middlesbrough Corporation had the job under control, then with Teesside Municiple Transport taking control of Stocton Corporation/Teesside Railless traction Board (Trolly buss) / Middlesbrough Corporation and Saltburn Motor Service's, the Double deckers went and that was that. Over the last few years double deckers started to turn up , however depot staff from the old days have long retired and it seems that new staff simply dont know the system The photo on previous page dated from4 Sept 2007.
Another , albert Bridge again 6 Aug 2006 the X61 service Durham City - Scarborough.

6 august 2006 albert bridge.jpg (11.43 KiB) Viewed 7368 times

bus crash thornaby station 26 june 2008.jpg (21.47 KiB) Viewed 7362 times

This ones at Thornaby railway station 25 June 2008.

mr B

[Kenny]

The bridge at Saltburn (below) was rebuilt in summer 1961 following an accident involving a double decker bus in the late 1950s. The original bridge was arched I believe. During rebuilding all the freight traffic to Skinningrove and the remaining ironstone mines was diverted via Hutton Gate which was good news for me as I lived at Guisborough at the time.

[Bryan]

I was at our monthly group meeting last night.
The subject Trolleybus's given by Graham Bielbe of Sandtoft.

And about 4 slides in a set of shots of Trolleys around Teeside.
Including an old shot at the foot of the bridge near the depot.

[mr B]

Around this time (late 1950's early 1960) Bristol Lowdeckers turned up to replace the Bristol K's on local United services , Dennis first thought about the low deck double decker , but Dennis been to slow to patent it , Bristol along with Easten Coach works snatched the design and patented it , calling it Lowdecker . This new design was ordered by most major bus company's , when Dennis introduced Loliner it was to late to grab the market , only the smaller opperators placed orders. The bridge Kenny refers to was arch shape and bus's had to swing into the middle of the road to pass through , unfortunetly one driver miscalculated !!

mr B

[Multiprinter]

Bristol actually spelt it 'Lodekka' - an early example of 'murdering' the English language.

[mr B]

Whoops .... any way managed to get the Dennis bit right !

mr B

[Andy W]

Great pics of how not to drive buses!

The Dennis Loline was actually a modified Bristol Lodekka, produced by Dennis under licence from Bristol. Bristol had been thinking about the Lodekka design since the mid 1940's but when they were nationalised they were prohibited from selling outside of the Tilling and Scottish Bus Groups where they had a near monopoly of sales.

When the Lodekka was launched properly in the early 1950's the bus industry woke up to the possibilities of a full height style bus in a low height outline and Dennis, whose own products were running out of steam, thought they could make serious money with the BET Group, the corporations and the independents. Unfortunately for Dennis, Leyland and AEC were working on their own cheaper designs and sales of the Loline were poor, which was a shame because it was quite a good bus.

[Bryan]

Southport used to get most of its open toppers that way.
Peel St bridge ws the favourite, especially as it was close to the depot and the late mechanic missed the staff bus to drop him off so took a bus home forgetting the bridge.

[James Brodie]

lodeckers on the M bus route.
maybe the bus drivers of nowadays don't know what a red light is for! A bus or vehicle higher than the Albert Road bridge clearance would trip a P.E.C and set the lights to red just before the bridge parapet. It was located just outside Winterslchadens Wine Store . Did James Bond learn his double deck to single deck routine on this bridge do you think?
Jim Brodie

[mr B]

no dout you have read or heard that Saltburns cliff lift cars have gone off to be serviced/rebuilt/or whatever, Stoneroad will no dout keep us all informed on the 'Now for someting different' thread. Below is a recent pictue of the lift with both cars missing only the chassis/frame and wheel's still on the rail's, no dout before the saloon's are replaced these will be overhauled to. For the benifit of our more sothern readers the 'black' stuff on the beach is NOT sand, this is sea coal the one time waste from the coal mine waste deposits thet were dumped into the North Sea mainly along the coast of County Durham, oftern in the good old days seams of seacoal could be over 2 feet deep, getting near to the dumping ground along the Durham coast larger bits of coal where found. Stange that it was unlikely to be found south of Huntcliffe(Saltburn). Many homes on the Durham and North Yorkshire coast relied on seacoal as their main source of fuel, as it was free to collect.

[52D]

Sorry Mr B i must take issue with you, Sea coal is the stuff from outcroppings from seams in the North sea that is washed ashore and makes a fair fuel. The stuff you mention is actually waste dumped at sea from the Durham pits. Remember the last scene in Get Carter which shows this happening.
My mate and i who are keen divers once found an outcrop to the south west of Coquet Island and on surfacing my mate said it looked like a face that had just been fired(he was a piman and familiar with this stuff).

[richard]

Presumably most of it comes from the actual cliffs rather than from below water. Eg. like Whitby Jet.

From an industrial archaeology point of view, I like that end of Get Carter. I think it is further north than Durham though, but south of the Tyne. A scene of something which no longer happens. Only a couple of years before it was filmed, J27s would have been busy trip working only a few miles away. A snapshot of a rapidly changing part of the world.


Richard

[mr B]

52 D , were ever it comes from, acombination of both ? From its source you get large pieces of coal and as you get farther south, south of the Tees it becomes smaller, even sand like granuals, however it was still much treasured by the locals, and several seacoal sellers could be found. In the Hartlepool area they had to be licenced to collect it .

Richard , the area Get Carter was filmed has been cleaned and is now so green its hard to belive what it was like 30 plus years ago.

mr B

[StoneRoad]

no dout you have read or heard that Saltburns cliff lift cars have gone off to be serviced/rebuilt/or whatever, Stoneroad will no dout keep us all informed on the 'Now for someting different' thread. Below is a recent pictue of the lift with both cars missing only the chassis/frame and wheel's still on the rail's, no dout before the saloon's are replaced these will be overhauled to.

Thanks! and I like this view of the empty "bogies"
Yes, quite true! At the moment we have just been doing the "exploratory surgery" and as / when there is visible developments I'll be posting some images of the progress on the afore-mentioned thread.
Just wondering (as I did over on my own thread) if anybody has got access to good images of the side views of the cars? I am interested in the historical livery and window/door proportions.
If you do, please PM me, so I'm not hijacking this thread......Ta in advance!
StoneRoad