(10) Darlington-STAINMORE SUMMIT-Penrith snow & steam, DMU train ride 1961 - YouTube

Fantastic Ed - I lived near Darlington for around 25 years and the A66 over the Pennines was a regular with me .  There's a video somewhere of an Ivatt Class 2 snowed in at Blea Moor near the summit of that line.

I love those old steam records - many thanks for posting.  

My brother has just sent me pictures of snow in Whitby.

We don,t have any here in Queensland.

Where were you in '63


Snow (1963) - Geoffrey Jones | BFI National Archive - YouTube

Where were you in '63

Dartmoor, Princetown to be exact and totally cut off by snow for 6 weeks that winter, with snow drifts as high as houses. Navy helicoptors brought in food, mail, etc. Long school Christmas '62 holiday and as a nipper, great, great fun, but not so much for the adults and elderly.

Currenty bright sunshine here in the Loire, but minus 2 degrees outside and we're off to an unconventional vinyard this afternoon for a tasting of "natural wines", where the winemaker uses horses rather than tractors and has a long history for the unconventional. Should be fun.

Stay warm, be safe,

Bill

We were  living in Putney, South West London and I remember having wonderful snowball fights in a cul-de-sac where my fiend lived, while the Southern EMU's raced past under the footbridge at the end of the road, creating lots of sparks.


Ed

Living on a smallholding near the foothills of the Yorkshire Wolds.  Like Bill,  plenty of the white stuff although I suspect, not quite as much as on Dartmoor.

Our major problem was water.  All the underground pipes were frozen, deep though they were.  We, along with the surrounding farms, had livestock.  Initially, it was just a matter of thawing outside taps and drinkers every morning but once the mains froze, we were snookered.  The water board brought a bowser to our hamlet every day and we all decanted it into milk churns etc. to give the stock a drink.  It was extremely hard, relentless work so not a fun winter at all.  Dairy farmers took the milk churns on tractors to the nearest point the milk lorry could access - around 5 miles each way.  This went on for over a month.

The sound of running water as the pipes thawed was like Christmas all over again - until the bursts in the mains showed up.  The pipes were all metal in those days and, whilst most indoor pipes had drained before the mains froze, the latter didn't escape.

My old dad used to say "snow's lovely on a bloody postcard." I've been out in the cold myself back in blighty, trying to get sheets and ropes off a trailer in the freezing cold. Sheets frozen to the shape of the load, ropes as stiff as rods and in those days, I had hands like leather. Mucho fun in the rain too. Tightening ropes with filthy water running up yer arms. But I still enjoyed the work.

And in those days Pete, the sheets were probably heavy tarpaulins, not the lightweight plastic offerings of today !

I too remember trying to undo hemp ropes tightened in the dry which then got wet - they were dirty and held an amazing amount of rainwater !

 

I realize this is off topic but, yes, we got 30 cm last night.  Not the pretty, fluffy stuff, either, this is wet and heavy.  Temp hovering around 0C.

As it happened I had an appointment to have my wheels with snow tires fitted today.  I got up early and slid, slithered and skidded towards the dealer on roads that had only been preliminarily cleared.  I made it thank goodness.

Driving home on snow tires was like night and day, the car behaved itself admirably.

John

In 63 I was living at North Forden and going to school in Wold Newton near Bridlington.
We, 5 kids from 3 different farms, used to get picked up by a taxi and taken to school but the snow soon put a stop to that.
Our Dad took us to school on the tracktor for a couple of days but more snow put a stop to that too.

We thought it was great as all we could do was go sledging for about 4 weeks.

We were all really upset when the snow melted.

AUSSIETRAINS said

We were all really upset when the snow melted.

From “Post #289,170”, 5th December 2023, 10:52 AM

Bet you were  



Ed