Celebrating 40 years of the Yorkshire Group New Year Steam Up

I had an LGB layout in my Horsforth garden from June 1982 but knowing of Roundhouse Engineering, then at the old Cold Store building in Doncaster, I decided to go to one of their open days on July 1^st 1984. There I met two Leeds members who persuaded me, on the way home, to call at Peter Dowd’s Wakefield garden. I never looked back and watched fascinated at 16mm steam going round Peter’s original track, the legendary Mount Railway.  Sometime later I helped him lift the track when he moved to Normanton, along with those same two Leeds members, David Johnson a teaching pathologist at the Leeds Medical School who lived in Roundhay, and Ian Parry his Lab assistant. Breaking up the Mount Railway seemed sacrilegious!! It was very hard to break up the sections of wooden track because Peter had mixed old engine oil with creosote over the years, and the woodwork was in very good order. We had to use lump hammers and sharp wood chisels to split up the lengths which he re-used again at Normanton.

I joined the 16mm Association on the 7^th May 1985 having ordered a Roundhouse Dylan 0-4-0 Saddle tank “ Kathy “ which I still have.

Being in the transport industry I had access to a large Mercedes box van and was able to borrow it as and when; so I volunteered to cart around the Yorkshire layout of the time. This was a two track portable layout owned I think by Peter’s Wakefield Model Railway club, but surplus to their current requirements. We would use this layout for indoor winter steam-ups at their Wakefield HQ under Peter’s guidance. Peter used to take this layout to outside events by pulling it on a single axle trailer behind his small camper van.  I started to do the transport with my firm’s van and the first time I collected the layout from Peter in Wakefield, we went for my first New Year Steam Up in Colne. This was held in the works of Yorkshire group member John Foulds, who had an engineering business of some renown. He built lovely Hunslet saddle tanks which were known as John Foulds’ “Flying Hunslets”. They went very fast and were manually controlled. Radio control was in its infancy and, along with gas firing, not at all common. Even Roundhouse would have nothing to do with gas at this time!

It was at this 1985 New Year Steam Up that I first met Peter Angus and fell in love with an unpainted brass “Marguerite”: Angus 1985 No 9 gas-fired. Peter also had Bulldog running on that day Angus 1985 No 8 meths-fired. The rest is history. This was the first New Year Steam Up which I had attended and I do not know how many were held at Colne, but in 1986/7 New Year John Foulds was unable to host the event and I asked my boss if we could hold it on the loading bay at Fosters in Idle. It carried on at Fosters using Peter’s club layout until the warehouse and transport moved up to the Yeadon premises in about 1990.

When I had persuaded my boss to build a canteen I ensured it was big enough to host the first Mount Dowd at 40 feet by 12 feet but I forgot to make allowance for the tea & coffee machines, so when it was put up I could only get it at 36 x 12!! That serves me right for telling fibs to my boss as to why the canteen had to be so big!!

The first Mount Dowd was, I think, unveiled at the Christmas steam up in 1991/2. There is an article in an SMT showing that event and a report about that time. I retired just after this steam up in January 1992 and we may have continued to use that canteen at Yeadon for another couple of New Years.  Jill’s diary shows us at Thorpe Middle School from 1995 January 1^st, 1996 December 28^th, 1998 January 3^rd, 1999 January 2^nd, 2000 January 8^th. From then onwards we held it at The Memorial Hall Pateley Bridge in 2001, until 2006. The second Mount Dowd was built in John Boyes garage in the autumn of 2005 and was used for the first time in the Memorial Hall, Pateley Bridge the following January, 2006.

Jill’s diary records going to St Margaret’s Church Hall in Horsforth in 2007 and 2008, when John Orson took on the organising.

Therefore the “Yorkshire Group” have held New Year steam events using the Wakefield Peter Dowd layout from before 1985 to the birth of the first Mount Dowd in December 1991 which was used at Yeadon and later at Thorpe Middle School Idle until we commenced at The Memorial Hall Pateley Bridge January 6^th 2001. The second Mount Dowd made its first appearance in 2006.