Wigan Overhead Line Department
Photo: Dave Taylor

With all the excellent piccies put on by Tom Sutch and others of the footplate and guards staff who worked at The Branch; it is perhaps not as well known that other railway departments also were based there. One of these between around 1973 and 2006 was the Electrification depot that looked after the overhead electric traction equipment on the WCML (between Acton Bridge and Carnforth), and the Liverpool lines (between Weaver Jct. and Liverpool Lime St.). I rather regret now not taking more pictures at the time, but this humble offering of some of the staff and characters who worked there on the Overhead Line department must regretfully now suffice. Perhaps other members of staff also willl have some secreted away somewhere and will be encouraged to do the same! When I started in the August of 1987 the OHL staff - whose specific job it was to work on the 25kv overhead traction conductors - comprised 45 wages grade men plus six supervisors. That equated to eleven four man gangs (plus a trainman whose job it was to maintain the OHL works train) with around the clock working on a continuous eleven week roster. AND mark my words well, despite the tired old rhetoric from a certain political party at the time, all of them were gainfully employed! The distribution staff were also part of the electrification department but they would principally maintain the electrical equipment on the ground and in the line-side buildings as opposed to “the kit up in the air” Wigan OHLD and distribution departments would eventually move from Wigan Springs Branch depot to Preston as a permanent base as part of the privatisation process: a process that arguably probably ranks only second behind that which was done to the coal industry, in terms of rank bigoted stupidity. The works train itself left in 1999 to go to Preston principally to protect it against the almost continual break-ins by the scallies to thieve the large quantities of copper and aluminium on it. The OHL supervisors followed in about 2001/02, and the wages grade staff finally went in October 2006. Linesman/Erector class 2 John Bradshaw on Vulcan Bank between Vulcan works and Earlestown station. This picture was taken of course long before the evil of privatisation reared it’s ugly head hence we have men still looking like railway man and not men working on a building site; no hard hats, no all encompassing orange clothing just a simple HV vest or jacket. Elsewhere on WW/work/railways… you can also see John working as part of the Springs Branch breakdown crane team before he transferred across to the OHL department. April 1989