Driving gales that could stop a steam train in its tracks (From Craven Herald)

Driving gales that could stop a steam train in its tracks

8:50am Saturday 4th February 2012 in Craven History

At Ribblehead, the weather often comes sideways. A west wind, funnelled by the Lune Valley, then by the deep trough of Chapel-le-Dale, gives a banshee-type wail as it meets its first real obstruction – the celebrated viaduct. Dr Bill Mitchell, of Giggleswick, has been fascinated by the breezy aspect of Ribblehead for more than 60 years. He records some local experiences of grim weather.

What engineers have called “Ribblehead Factor” has its sunny days. At other times it might be a Pennine cocktail of driving rain, wind and mist.

A “permanent way” man, crossing the viaduct, trudges in the lee of one of the parapet walls. The air stream is deflected above his head, belying the daft tale that when a man had the cap whipped from his head it was blown under one of the arches, reappeared on the other side and was deposited on his head – the wrong way round!

After he had crossed the viaduct there remained a walk of over a mile to the Blea Moor signal box.

Ribblehead station, now leased by the Settle and Carlisle Railway Trust, has become a shelter for passengers, a visitor centre and shop.

The viaduct, re-born through extensive work on this nationally-renowned Victorian structure, is spattered by an average of 70 inches of rain a year.

When I first visited Ribblehead, on a day in winter, the wind felt cold enough to be able to put ice crystals in my bloodstream.

Frederick Houghton, writing in 1948, observed: “Ribblehead is a particularly windy spot and no one who has stood on that gale-whipped platform needs to ask why this station has been chosen as a meteorological report point.”

The wind was known to have brought trains to a standstill. Cattle trucks, with their semi-open sides, were unhandy in windy weather, the wind getting into them with ease.

Ribblehead became a weather station in 1938. It was not until 1954 that a rain gauge was installed. That year a bucket would have been more appropriate. The annual fall was just over 109 inches. Five inches of rain descended on a single day in December.

Bill Sharpe, the last uniformed stationmaster at Ribblehead, also assessed the weather in a coded message telephoned to the Air Ministry at ten minutes before the hour throughout the day.

If Bill was uncertain about the height of the cloud layer, he might release a meteorological balloon, timing its ascent until it was obscured by cloud. Generally, the height might be assessed with regard to the summit of Whernside at just over 2,400ft.

Ribblehead is not as I remembered it on my first visits, when steam-hauled trains clattered merrily by. A quarry was being worked, reducing limestone to dust as fine as face powder. Every farm was occupied as a farm and was active.

Successive years have seen much social change, but the area is still popular with visitors. On a sunlit summer day the open road verges are thronged by parked cars. And there’s an ice cream van.

I visited Ribblehead in 1990 when the viaduct was being given a general restoration. Seepage of rainwater, not the notorious wind, was the major cause for concern.

Waterproofing the deck, at a cost of about £3 million, had become vital. Water was eroding the material at the heart of the lofty piers. On a day when the Ribblehead anemometer recorded a wind speed of 92 miles an hour, work on the viaduct was temporarily suspended. The planks on the scaffolding were going up and down like piano keys.

Footplate men, in the days when trains were steam-hauled, have assured me that some of them were brought to a halt by the force of the wind. A Class 4 locomotive “hadn’t much of a cab”.

My godfather, Ted Boak, who lived at Skipton, was one of those who coaxed steam locomotives up the Long Drag. He recalled for me when, on stormy days, the fire in the locomotive being made up, he and the fireman tucked themselves down in a corner of the cab at the viaduct to cheat the wind.

The crew of a Derby 4, being worked to Carlisle, were subject to a lively wind at Blea Moor. Because the wind blew directly into the cab, the men walked round the framing in pouring rain and stood in front of the smoke box. They were drier outside the locomotive than they had been while in the cab!

Men on gale duty, stationed to the north of the viaduct, secured the tarpaulins on goods wagons before a train resumed its journey. Even so, some of the “tarps” were plucked from the wagons, to be whirled away like wind-blown leaves – a windfall in a literal sense to a local farmer. Three motor cars were blown off a special goods train, travelling at the end of the Blea Moor loop, by a lively gale.

At Ribblehead, there have been memorable snowtimes, the worst within living memory being that of 1947. Salt Lake Cottages, just south of the station, were isolated by snowdrifts.

Local families could not get their children to school for six weeks. The railway company thoughtfully provided a light engine and brake for the conveyance of groceries to families living at the lineside.

On calm and sunny days the platform at Ribblehead station can have so many visitors it resembles a section of the promenade at Morecambe.

At Ribblehead itself, visitors enjoy ice cream, paddle in the beck or set off along the footpath leading to the summit of Whernside, the Craven highspot. In the old days, but not so commonly now, skylarks rose like feathered helicopters, bubbling over with song.

JB Priestley was not just a literary figure. He was fond of painting Dales scenes.

My favourite Priestley painting was of a white-walled shooting lodge at the edge of moorland. The lodge has since fallen into decay. A celebrated backdrop is the shapely form of Ingleborough, the flat-topped hill that, remarkably, is in clear view to walkers under supervision crossing the sands of Morecambe Bay.

What I miss most of all at Ribblehead is the cheerful toot of a locomotive’s steam whistle.

Thirty years ago, when there were diesel-hauled trains and klaxons, a retired railwayman winced when I mentioned them.

He remarked: “When t’drivers use ’em, it’s like part of the sound-track of a police film on t’telly.”