The Yorkshire Dalesman Magazine (May Issue) - Steam Trains

Photography by George Hutton

Words by Cameron Hill

STEAM ENGINES 

Everyone has seen a steam train on screen, but standing next to one you see the sheer mass of them, solid wrought metal locked together and working as one. You start to get why people sink their lives into them.

There are still fragments of steam railways scattered about Yorkshire, lines left from before our industry faded and cars spread, modernity slowly squeezing them into the past. No one is claiming that they are among the great journeys of the world, but people come here to travel through time, rather than space.

The North York Moors Railway was built in 1836 to connect the coast to the heart of the country, carting people, iron, and stone along the Esk Valley, fuelling the furnaces and shipyards of the North.

To make a centuries old machine run so smoothly takes constant, unrelenting maintenance. One mechanic told us that ‘there’s not a loco out there that’s not Trigger’s broom’. They are waiting to fall apart and into the past. 

They survive because of a small army of volunteers and paid workers, people who give their time to check tickets, shovel coal, serve coffees, walk the lines, do the admin, repair the engines, perform a thousand small acts of care that keep this part of our story moving. It is a constant, year-round level of dedication fuelled by raw enthusiasm for these engines. 

Getting it now. The deep satisfaction of these trains, a raw analogue pleasure: whistle ripping through fog, varnished wood and fading fabric, the cranking mechanics of the doors, steam rushing up to meet the sky as the train sets off again, back on its looping run up and down its lonely line, up and down, each journey an example of the daily work and effort that exists behind the idea of ‘heritage’.