Dinting:BR:Trains:AJH@ajhurst.org

Dinting Railway Museum, when I visited it in 1980, was a struggling collection of miscellany, aided by some main line locomotives on loan, the whole outfit dominated by the need to keep the Dinting viaduct on the Woodhead route open. BR ran a passenger service to Glossop on a nearby spur line, and Dinting-1 shows just such a passenger service coming off the viaduct. But any railway realist could see that that traffic was not going to keep the viaduct open for long.

I know not how the Museum has fared, but if the General Meeting that I attended in the Stockport pub was any indication, not well! They spent most of their time arguing about whether they should purchase a wheelbarrow, while the 6-figure sums required to preserve the viaduct were simply not addressed!

I came across your site while researching the Dinting station area. I note you refer to the viaduct at Dinting as being part of the museum. It was the property of BR and now Railtrack and remains very much open. Large amounts of work have been done on it in recent months to secure its future. The line is now electrified at 25kv ac and the 506 dc unit you captured on camera was retired at the end of 1984. One was preserved but eventually too fell to the cutters torch. A cab survives at Barrow Hill.

I just came across your railway website on a random search engine, and I noticed the part on Dinting Railway museum.

I live very close to Guide Bridge on the Hadfield line which goes over Dinting viaduct.

The railway museum shut down just after I first moved here in June 1991 (in fact, my Dad bought their model collection!). It would have been completely gone by the end of the summer.

The Hadfield line is a very much valued part of the Hadfiled line from Manchester. This line goes over Dinting viaduct and splits off got the Glossop branch where the driver switches cabs and drives the train to Hadfield (where the train terminates and returns a short while later.

The new (1994 build) Class 323 EMUs (which replaced the Class 305, and the 304s, 303s and 506 before them) are much longer than the older units so Dinting required some adjusting for the overhang of the new trains which would have scraped the platforms otherwise!

I haven't travelled this section for a few years, but unless they've made alterations since then, this is one of the only electrified parts of Britains railway network with semaphore signals.

Hope this updates your knowledge of this line.