COPY PIT

Max. gradient: 1-in-65

An old railway map of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway’s lines north of Manchester reveals a mass of lines radiating north via Bolton and Bury to the Lancashire towns of Bolton and Burnley that then thread eastwards over the Pennines, towards Halifax and Skipton. The nine-mile stretch from Stansfield Hall, near Todmorden, to Rose Grove might look like a tiny part of that network, but it features the not insignificant climb to Copy Pit summit. There was no station at Copy Pit, and the name comes from a nearby coal mine, but it was a Mecca for enthusiasts in the late 1960s as the last weary and worn ‘Black Fives’ and ‘8Fs’ slogged their way up the grade.

COLOUR-RAIL ‘Black Fives’ Nos. 44874 and 45017 power over Copy Pit summit with the Stephenson Locomotive Society’s ‘Farewell to Steam No. 2’ railtour on August 4 1968. A layout scheme to get Copy Pit in ‘OO’ in the corner of a room. In ‘N’, the layout would work...