Cheshire

A regular sight for me after leaving the train at Middlewood Station is the departure of class 150 units towards Buxton. This somewhat remote station has no road access and requires a walk through the wood or along the trackbed of the former Macclesfield, Bollington & Marple Railway which now forms the Middlewood Way. Sadly the daytime service here is only two hourly with several more trains not stopping. This makes off-peak travel particularly difficult as the first train to Manchester with cheaper fares is at 11.18! Well done Northern for altering it from 9.30. This location was once bustling with industry, There were colliery sidings to the left of this view along with the colliery locomotive shed. The colliery line was served by the two railway companies whose lines crossed here and lasted until 1892.

Fomer Fellows, Morton & Clayton motor boat 'Gailey' lies against the towpath on Marple Locks on the Peak Forest Canal. This 1937 built boat is now used as a maintenance boat in the Canal & River Trust heritage fleet.

Some nice terracotta around the doorway on this house in Marple.

Prince is one of two Royalty Class boats built in 1931 by James Pollock Sons & Co Ltd of Faversham. Kent, for Associated Canal Carriers Ltd. Seen here at Tramway Wharf in Marple on the Peak Forest Canal.

Chaos at Norbury Crossing on the Buxton (ex LNWR) branch.150 124 is flagged past the home signal at danger after electrical failures caused signalling and gates to become inoperable. The narrow and awkward location for road traffic meant complete gridlock and it took some time for the vehicles to be extricated to use alternative routes. This is the second time that this has happened in the past week and clearly the engineers have no idea where the intermittent problem lies.

Tanks at the oil refinery operated by Eastham Refinery Limited, a joint operation between Nynas and Shell. The site operates a distillation unit established in 1966 and designed to run on heavy naphthenic crude. In 1989 the unit was expanded to provide a capacity of 1.2m tonnes per year. The main product is bitumen, both penetration and blown grades, and a range of distillates is also produced. These find outlets as gas oil, marine diesel, lubricating base stocks and in a broad spectrum of process industries. A separate blown bitumen unit completed in early 1990 provides additional capacity. It is the largest producer of bitumen in the United Kingdom with a capacity of 800,000 tonnes per year.

230 008 arrives at Neston on a run to Wrexham Central. A ride on this battery powered train, using heavily modified ex London Underground stock, was smooth with rapid acceleration from the several stops. There are many seats in fours with tables and all seats coincide with windows (praise be!). These units are not yet proving very reliable and another unit had failed on this line earlier in the day. The other services on this route were being worked by a Transport for Wales class 150 unit.

Cooling plant in the Air Products works at Little Stanney on the outskirts of the Stanlow oil refinery.

Cooling tower of the Innospec plant at Stanlow which manufactures fuel additives and, according to its website, is the world's only manufacturer of tetraethyl lead products.

Rusty Nissen huts at Snape Farm Prisoner of War camp, Weston. This site has now been cleared and replaced by housing.

The Central Hall in Stalybridge was built in 1914 as a billiards hall. This is nicely captured in terracotta on the face of the building where two tables with cue and balls are depicted. It is now used as a bingo hall.

Borough coat of arms on a mosaic in the entrance to Dukinfield Town Hall.

The Newmarket Tavern on King Street, Dukinfield, closed in 2006 and is now converted to flats. It still bears the name of the Openshaw Brewery Company on the frontage which was added to an older building at some point in its life. The plastic windows are unfortunate.

Boilers sleeping in the remains of their building at the Cheadle bleachworks.

The Ellesmere Port lighthouse was completed in 1880 at the entrance to the Shropshire Union Railways and Canal Company docks and Whitby Locks. Whilst it marked the entrance from the Mersey estuary it became irrelevant once the Manchester Ship Canal was constructed and went out of use in 1894.

The Warrington Transporter Bridge has been out of use since 1964 and is deteriorating quite quickly even though it is listed Grade II* and is also a Scheduled Ancient Monument. It was opened across the tidal River Mersey in 1916, at a cost of £34,000, to connect parts of the Joseph Crosfield and Son Ltd soap and chemical works. Initially it carried railway trucks up to 18 tons in weight but was converted for road vehicles in 1940 and upgraded to 30 ton weight limit in 1953. The double steel cantilevers on each tower support a central 200ft span of riveted mild steel plates and angles. The overall length of the structure is 339ft and it provides 76ft clearance at high water. It was designed by William Henry Hunter, and built by contractor Sir William Arrol. It is now owned by Warrington Borough Council, which may not augur too well for the long term security of the structure. Fortunately a 'Friends' group has been formed to try and secure the future of the bridge.

Corrugated iron blister hangars at the Marcliff Industrial Estate in Hazel Grove. These were probably erected here for wartime manufacturing purposes.

The Westminster Coach and Motor Car Works building in Chester has a façade of elaborately moulded terracotta and red brick and was designed by Philip H Lockwood and is believed to have been built in 1913-14.