I always look for somewhere to stop on the way to the first site, this one was a bit further than ideal being a couple of hundred miles from home. Remembering how the A1 used to be it was a bit of a shock to the system when I got onto it at Stamford and my next junction was showing as 183 miles! The Garmin SatNav has taken a bit of getting used to but it does seem to work very well now, I've managed to get it to show the distance and time for intermediate stops on a route which is ideal.
The Bowes Railway is a bit different in that it is partly rope hauled inclines. It was built to take coal from the local pits down to the staithes at Jarrow on the Tyne, the hills being too steep for loco haulage. The principle was all gravity, the full trucks would go down pulling a rope that ran round a wheel and back down the hill to pull the empty trucks up. This picture shows one of the downhill tracks which took the full trucks (on the right, you can also see the scissor brake that held them until all was ready). The wooden structure has the track the empties returned up, from here they rolled down to the pit under gravity ready to be filled again.
There were two tracks where the full wagons were collected to minimise delays so they could send a train every 20 minutes. They do also have quite a bit of surface track and a few locos, unfortunately it's all out of use as the trackwork has failed inspection. The plus point though is that students from Newcastle College Rail Academy are doing some practical training there helping repair it.
It's not unusual with these places for the volunteers to outnumber the visitors, and that was certainly the case today. They were all very friendly though. You're guided round part of the site and can wander freely around some other bits. Something that had never really occurred to me is how you can get a rope down the plane, or another slope, if there are no full trucks. The answer is you use a Drift Bogie.
They'd fill the truck with any scrap metal they could find for weight and a man would stand on the white footplate facing down the hill controlling the speed with his foot on the brake lever. I certainly wouldn't do it even if they did give him a roof to keep the rain out! One wheel had a bell behind it that would ring with each revolution to warn that it was coming. After a coffee and home made sausage roll I hit the road again. Initially the SatNav was indicating a 13 minute delay on the A1 (almost certainly the Metro Centre traffic) but I accepted the diversion to go through the Tyne Tunnel.
I made a quick call in to an antiques centre just before the site, nothing much of interest, before arriving and booking in. The wardens are generally friendly and helpful but the lady broke off from her duties to go and find some suncream in her 'van for a lady who'd forgotten to bring any - that's good service! There were very few vacant pitches, inevitably on a Bank Holiday weekend, but I've found a reasonably quiet one. After an ice cream and a bottle or two of beer I went for a walk around the nearby nature reserve. It's a pleasant couple of lakes, privately owned but with permissive access. There are strong warnings about Adders though so I was a bit careful.
Tomorrow I'm going to Alnwick via the Aln Valley Railway.
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