Woodhead railway to tunnels to Hadfield today

I first saw the Woodhead route - the lost railway from Sheffield to Manchester - in the summer of 1978. In those days Sheffield to Huddersfield trains used it to reach Penistone, running through the derelict Sheffield Victoria station on the way and also taking sweeping curves about the valley of the Don.

At Penistone you could watch a constant stream of goods trains taking coal from the South Yorkshire coalfield to a power station at Widnes or returning empty.

The class 76 locomotives were unique to this line and you could tell they had been designed in the 1930s, before the war put a temporary stop to electrification.

And I did manage to ride on the whole route shortly before it closed. In the winter of 1980/1 the Hope Valley line, the alternative way to Manchester that all Sheffield trains now use, closed for engineering works on Sundays and passenger services were diverted via Woodhead. I can still remember coasting past the reservoirs you see in the video on the way down to Manchester.

This is an excellent video from Trekking Exploration, showing the remains of the line between Woodhead and Hadfield today as well as some archive footage and photos of its last days.

Write a guest post for Liberal England

The new political season has begun. What should Lib Dem strategy be in this brave new world? Is there a policy you would like to see us adopt? Any heretical thoughts you want to confess?

You're welcome to share your ideas in a guest post for Liberal England. 

I'm happy to entertain a wide variety of views, but I'd hate you to spend your time writing something I wouldn't want to publish. So do get in touch first.

And, as you may have noticed, I'm happy to cover topics far beyond the Lib Dems and British politics.

These are the last ten guest posts on Liberal England:

• So far this year, 49 councillors have left the Tories and 42 have left Labour - Augustus Carp
• Singing the songs of the Cambrian Railway - Eric Loveland Heath
• Councillors changing party: general election update - Augustus Carp
• The Lib Dems achieved a wide and remarkably deep success - Alex Folkes
• The Lib Dems must meet the challenge of the Greens in the new political landscape - Anselm Anon
• This blog is not suitable for kids - Laurence Warner
• The future’s bright, the future’s orange - Stuart Whomsley
• An Oasis reunion? Have we not suffered enough? - Stuart Whomsley
• The night the Walker Brothers played a Market Harborough club - Jo Colley
• An essay in identifying Englishness - Stuart Whomsley

Fascinating Paddington London history walking tour

I've gone down with a cold, so I'll leave you in the excellent company of John Rogers:

A London walking tour exploring the ancient village of Paddington, famous for its railway station (and Paddington Bear of course). Originating as an Anglo-Saxon village, Paddington has a long and rich history. We cross the Grand Union Canal, Harrow Road and the Westway to visit Paddington Green and St. Mary's Church. 

From here we have a mooch in Church Street Market and wander down Edgware Road. In Praed Street we see the place where Alexander Fleming discovered Penicillin  at Saint Mary's Hospital. We then look for the Tyburn Milestone and the burial ground where Laurence Sterne was laid to rest. 

Finally our walking tour takes us to Bayswater Road and the Smallest House in London, the Tyburn Convent and the site of the Tyburn Tree.

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

Michael Gove on why elected politicians have to fight against 'Treasury brain'

Rachel Reeves is starting to make Danny Alexander look like a maverick economic expansionist, but maybe the reason they succumbed to orthodoxy lies in the Treasury rather within them.

Michael Gove, stay with me, spoke to Jo Timan of the Manchester Evening News, and the interview is discussed in today's Northern Agenda email from Rob Parsons:

Describing an issue that's all-too-familiar to Northern leaders, he criticised so-called “Treasury brain” in government​ ahead of a Budget due on October 30.

On the way in which civil servants review investments, he said: “The way it works unfortunately means that the nominal return, say, on improving train times between Guildford and London is weighted disproportionately in such a way that it looks much better in terms of bang for your buck than improving rail links between, say, Sheffield and Manchester.”

Mr Gove said the phrase “Treasury brain … speaks to two things”, and claimed officials would have raised concerns with the 1944 D-Day landings on the basis they were “novel and contentious”.

He said: “The Treasury is where the brightest brains are in government but it’s also the case that the Treasury brain – and it’s quite a small-c conservative thing – looks at different propositions and it takes the view: ‘Hmm, you sir are saying that if we invest now, we’ll secure all sorts of benefits later.

“‘I’ve heard that a hundred times. All I know is you’re calling on me to invest now, that means spending money. These benefits, they may never come.’

“So there’s a classic sort of Tory scepticism of utopianism within the Treasury, but the parallel to that is there’s also a scepticism of anything which is anything which is in Treasury phrase ‘novel and contentious’.”

It's well worth subscribing to Northern Agenda, which bills itself as 

Read by policy-makers from the North's town halls to Whitehall, you'll get a bitesize guide to the stories that matter in our region from journalists outside the Westminster bubble.