At heart, we are all railway children. The hiss of steam, the smell of hot oil and smoke from the engine evoke memories of a bygone age.
The 1970 film classic The Railway Children starring vintage trains, and Jenny Agutter, brings a tear to many an eye every Christmas. And a new version, again with Jenny Agutter, comes to a cinema near you in July.
But the heritage Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, where the legend was born, is under threat from a desperate shortage of coal for the engines.
Supplies from UK mines have dried up, and the war in Ukraine has halted imports from Russia. A cherished family outing could be the latest victim of Putin’s criminal onslaught.
There are more than a hundred heritage lines in the UK, ranging from the 24-mile North Yorkshire Moors Railway celebrated on TV to tiny routes of only a few hundred yards.
They’re run by a small army of volunteers and a few hundred full-timers. Between them, they attract more than six million visitors a year – and they need 26,000 tons of coal to keep going.
Operators are searching for “black gold” from as far away as Columbia and Kazakhstan, and prices are doubling this year.
With the Easter opening of the season, the problem is becoming acute. The East Lancashire Railway was the first to announce cutbacks, using steam on busy days only.
The Severn Valley and Llangollen Railway followed suit. “Double-headers” with two locomotives, so beloved of photographers, are cancelled, along with driver training.
The situation is described as “an existential threat” to the industry, and as the Mirror’s puffer-nutter-in-residence, I was despatched to the Keighley and Worth Valley to find out if our steam railways are on a fatal track to oblivion.
The 10.50am is in the station, ready for the stiff climb up the valley to Oxenhope. At its head is No85, a historic survivor from the Taff Vale line in South Wales, built in Glasgow in 1899 and still going strong.
It was withdrawn by the Great Western in 1923, and worked in Durham collieries until saved by KWVR volunteers in 1970. It’s often paired with vintage coaches to portray rail travel from times gone by.
And today it’s just like a scene from the 1950s. On the platform, a huge clock like something out of the film Brief Encounter ticks away the minutes to departure time. Families crowd round the carriage doors.
Richard Walker, 54, has come here from Sheffield with his 10-year-old daughter Martha.
“We’re going to make a day out of it, stopping in Haworth to visit the Bronte Parsonage” he says. And what excites her? “The steam!”
Tony Greenall, 50, has travelled from Doncaster with children Daniel, 11 and Matthew, eight, to live the Railway Children experience, having just watched the film. “It’s really good,” she says.
On the footplate of No85 are driver John Heelis, 73, and fireman Mike Timperley, a retired NHS executive. This is home from home for John – he started as a British Rail fireman in 1967 at Bolton motive power depot, Lancs.
“It’s a really good engine,” he confides with a smile that says he’s one happy engineman.
Today’s fuel is the usual lumps of coal from a 180-ton stockpile that will last the KWVR until the summer. But what then? After last year’s COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow, the general burning of coal is to be banned altogether from next May.
But after strong representations, the environment department Defra has specifically exempted heritage railways from the ban. “There is a major problem, but we have to do our bit,” said KWVR coal buyer Ralph Ingham. “We have to make our contribution.”
To this end, the railway is pioneering the use of a new, environmentally friendly bio-coal, Homefire Ecoal manufactured by CPL Industries and made up of crushed olive stones, anthracite and coke, bound together with molasses. Tests with the blend, officially classed as smokeless, took place with a standard-gauge locomotive (78022, two mixed traffic) over the last two months, culminating in a trial earlier this week closely watched by operators from other heritage railways.
They proved such a success that more is being ordered to eke out the stocks that might otherwise run out in July.
The KWVR’s stud of locomotives, ranging from the Lancashire and Yorkshire “Ironclad” that stars in he original Railway Children film to a giant USATC imported from Sweden, go through two tons of coal a day. Three tons of biocoal were loaded on to 78022 for a five-coach trial, and only two were used. I saw the rest being off-loaded by hand – like the Black Gold it really is.
“The results from the steaming were very, very encouraging,” says the coal buyer. “But it’s more expensive,”
Our train is heavily loaded, and No85 makes hard work of it on the 1-in-58 incline, five miles up the valley of the river Worth and Bridgeton beck, to the Pennine village of Oxenhope.
We stop at immaculate little stone stations: Ingrow, Damems (request), Oakworth, where the films were made, and Haworth, home of KWVR headquarters and the railway’s workshops.
There is no denying the sense of excitement among the railway children on board, some of whom are clearly in their 70s.
People wave from the train, and walkers wave back. It’s a strong family atmosphere.
Having a bad reputation to keep up, I relaxed in the 50s-style bar with a half of Orkney Brewery bitter. Not bad for £2, and very well-behaved on my part.
Arriving at Oxenhope, the engine runs round the train to take it back to Keighley. Young and old alike cluster round No85, absorbed in the business of coupling and uncoupling, attaching the steam heater pipes to the locomotive and generally fussing about. It’s a period drama.
The classic Railway Children film climaxes in the famous “Daddy! Oh, my Daddy,” scene when the wrongly imprisoned father of Bobby (Jenny Agutter again) emerges from the steam and smoke at Oakworth station. Today, it’s just a station manager, but the romance is still there.
I don’t know if that tearful shot appears in the new version, though I’ll be in the audience to find out.
But what does come out of the mist is a lingering fear that that emotionally charged shot could never be repeated, if King Coal is exiled from his home on the heritage railway.
