I DON'T know why but the death of Cilla Black touched a nerve. The 60s was a magic era for our home grown female singers we knew just by first names, Cilla, Dusty, Sandie, and Lulu.

I had just started to watch again, on DVD, the Honor Blackman series of ‘The Avengers’, when the death of Patrick Macnee was announced. When I moved to Sutton in ’77 I gave up TV for several years, until I heard that Channel 4 was repeating ‘The Avengers’, and I went out immediately to buy not only a TV but a video recorder to record them all. When they came out on DVD, I bought all the Honor Blackman plus all the Diana Rigg plus the Linda Thorson plus The New Avengers, so I could dispose of my VHS tapes with adverts.

It’s the one show consistent in my viewing days from black and white TV ( when you went out, you missed it), to my watching my DVDs on a wide screen digital TV. Remember when you had little dials on your TV to adjust the horizontal and vertical holds, no remotes, and we didn’t own TVs but were happy to rent them.

Nostalgia again with the news of the death of Ian Allen, the man who launched a million locospotters with his ABC pocket book sized lists of engine numbers. “The platform and engine sheds of Britain were being besieged by armies of youngsters eager to underline as many of the entries as they could” ran one tribute.

As a youngster I lived opposite Warrington Bank Quay Station and can still remember the numbers of the regular locos that would take the trains to exotic and unknown places like St. Helens Junction and St. Helens Shaw Street. By consulting another book I learned they were based not at nearby Warrington Dallam shed but somewhere called Sutton Oak.

I thought I had seen the last of the ‘Pacer’ trains, better known as ‘bus buckets’ due to their affinity with cheap buses. However, with the ‘pause’ in the electrification of the “Northern Powerhouse”, and the pause in the building of new trains and us benefitting from the cascading of stock from the south to the north, they are reworking them.

They are now called Class 144 ‘Evolution’. The good news is that there will be access to the toilets for wheelchair users like me, and more space for parents with buggies. They are now due to last till 2019.

There is a natural affinity that has long existed with collieries and railways, so my run of nostalgic thoughts was further triggered by the news that this year the remaining three deep mine collieries will cease to be, and with it their subterranean colliery railways. Sadly it seems they will be left underground to be buried by subsidence.

I wonder what future archaeologists will make of them? I did suggest to the powers-that-be that preserving such a train and narrow gauge railway line would be ideal to wind its way in gentle spirals from the Sutton Manor gates and car park to the top of the Dream hill. It could be combined with the artwork trail that was also suggested at the time.

Drax Power Station is between Leeds and Hull. About 2/3rds of its electricity output is generated by biomass rather than coal. There are now 200 specially designed biomass railway wagons. Starting in October, there will be thirteen trains a week travelling from the Port of Liverpool to Drax.

The route they will take over the Pennines has yet to be announced, but they could be regularly passing the sites of Lea Green Colliery, Bold Colliery, Collins Green Colliery, and Newton Parkside Colliery. Trainspotters will find good vantage points to take photos. Fiddlers Ferry Power Station is pursuing a different option to meet EU Emissions directives.