Railways

A charming, posed portrait of men at work early in the twentieth century at Barrow Central Station where a locomotive stands short of the station’s overall roof. On the footplate, a happy fireman jokes with another employee while the smartly-dressed driver presents a more serious aspect.

A three-piece suit with watch-chain will, however, offer him little protection on an exposed footplate! On the platform we seem to have a senior member of the staff wearing a bowler hat and carrying a raincoat, who looks confident in his place within the company.

A 4-6-2 tender locomotive, ‘Sir Aubrey Brocklebank’, built by Hunt of Southampton in 1919, became the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway’s pride and joy in its early years as a miniature railway. Yet, fewer than ten years later, it was dismantled to provide running gear for the original ‘River Mite’, a more powerful locomotive. Here it stands in a posed view at Beckfoot granite quarry, apparently on a VIP train, while quarry workers in the background stand and watch.

What could they be thinking?!

Car parks and retail now dominate the area between the Strand, Hindpool Road and the Barrow docksides. It was not always thus; for decades these were railway lands, packed with multiple, busy sidings filled with all manner of railway vehicles carrying goods that had to be transhipped from/to ships – no containers then! Many changes have happened around the town centre behind, too. Pubs and streets lost to German bombs; markets and public hall lost to redevelopment; works' chimneys lost to industrial change.

Yet the Town Hall, church spires, terraced streets and distant Black Combe remain as constants.

Under the Line Superintendent, Alfred Aslett, the Furness Railway successfully developed tourist traffic to compensate for falling revenues from ore traffic as Furness iron ore mines began to be exhausted. In addition to timetabled trains, cross-Bay steamers brought Blackpool holidaymakers from Fleetwood to Barrow where trains took them to a variety of destinations in and around the Lake District, many as part of organised multi-mode tours.

This noticeboard shows two designs of posters, including one from a series in full colour, specially commissioned.

Nowadays, most goods travelling by rail do so in trainloads from point to point - speedy and efficient. In past times, some trains were of mixed merchandise and required marshalling and remarshalling at different points on the journey. This was the job of the shunter whose agility was essential in a hard and busy job, moving between tracks to hook and unhook couplings with pole. Not a man you would be wise to challenge to an arm-wrestle, but this was a high-risk job with the danger of being run over, crushed or struck by a vehicle.

Accidents were frequent, with limbs and lives being lost.

In the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first two of the twentieth, the Furness Railway favoured light but powerful 4-4-0 tender engines for its main-line passenger services. Several variations of design were bought, two of which we see here at the head of a long train in Platform 2 at Barrow Central - possibly the lunchtime London service.

Note the overall roof covering for part of Platforms 1 and 2, a canopy for Platform 3, but Platform 4 - often used for excursion trains - is uncovered.

On the banks of Windermere, Lakeside provided a transfer point between train and lake steamer, as well as a place where parts of steamers built at Barrow could be transferred from train to slipway, and stocks of coal for the steamers could be discharged.

An overall roof covered parts of the three platforms and a veranda overlooking the lake permitted dining with a view. In this photo, the train crew pose for the photographer next to their locomotive while old-looking wagons loaded with wood from the neighbouring forests are in the background.

Built in 1863 as a 0-4-0 tender locomotive for the Furness Railway and numbered 20, this locomotive ended its career on the main line a few years later, in 1870, due to a need for more powerful locomotives. It returned to its makers along with a number of similar machines, which were then converted to saddle tanks for the Barrow Hematite and Steel Company to use on their extensive private network.

It remained at work there until 1960 when it was presented to the George Hastwell Special School on Abbey Road for the children to play on for over twenty years. Various organisations then provided grant funding and, with support from the shipyard and volunteers of the Furness Railway Trust, the locomotive was returned to its original configuration and returned to steam in 1999. It is the oldest working steam locomotive in Britain and visits many heritage railways and museums, returning briefly to Barrow in 2021 to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the Furness Railway.

A long excursion train of modern LMS carriages stands at Platform 4 of Barrow Central Station in 1939, possibly heading for Halifax on 4 February for Barrow’s first round tie, which they lost 3-8 (or perhaps to London on 6 May for that season’s Rugby League Cup Final when Halifax beat Salford 20-3). Supporters hanging out of windows appear on good form. Further down the platform a woman in uniform sells food from a tray suspended from her neck.

Platform 4, alongside the Hibbert Road boundary wall, was frequently used for excursion traffic.

Furness Railway number 3 is a 0-4-0 tender locomotive built in 1846 and is nicknamed ‘Copperknob’ due to its distinctive domed firebox. Along with its two siblings, it shared all the Furness rail traffic for the first six years. Number 3 is believed to have hauled the line’s first passenger train in August 1846. Eventually relegated to shunting work near Barrow Docks, it was withdrawn in 1900 and a glass pavilion was constructed for it to be placed on display outside Barrow Central Station. In this photo from 1924, it was being temporarily removed to be prepared to go to London for the Wembley Exhibition of 1924-5. Following shrapnel damage, when the station was destroyed by bombing in 1941, it was removed to Horwich Works for safe-keeping and eventually moved via Clapham to York where, still bearing its ‘war wounds’.

It is now a part of our collective heritage, on show at the National Collection in the National Railway Museum.