RailPictures.Net Photo: 46233 London Midland & Scottish Railway Ex-LMS Coronation 4-6-2 at Cooper Bridge, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom by Steve Armitage
Like a silent sentinel, the girder bridge spanning the River Calder stands alongside the original 1847 stone one. It bears witness to the fact that within my lifetime there were once four tracks here. Fifty years ago, day and night, these metals were carrying trains laden with coal from the West Yorkshire pits across the Pennines to Lancashire, the empties returning by the same route. Seldom was such a train not in view. Now freight and even passenger traffic is but shadow of those times. Occasionally a spectre of the past appears to remind us of those days, but did such ghosts ever look so fine?
