Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2025 i Steam Days

As I lay in bed each night, my mind wanders back through the decades to the summer Saturdays of 1965. As a senior citizen in my twilight years, I wonder, did it all really happen, or is it just a dream? Then I come across some of my father’s old black-and-white photos showing me up on the footplate of engines at Ryde St John’s Road shed, alongside the friendly faces of the Isle of Wight footplate crews. The memories come flooding back as if it were yesterday. In particular, I can picture driver Harry ‘Toby’ Watson JP, a railwayman who could trace his career back to pre-Grouping days with the Isle of Wight Central Railway. For a few summer Saturdays in late June and early July 1965, this veteran driver…

Readers Letters Troubled sleep in south-west Scotland …and two iron horses Dear Mr Editor: I found David Cross’ article in the March issue about the ‘Sou-West’ sleeper problems in the 1960s highly interesting and informative. I had always wondered how Derek Cross had the luck to be on hand to photograph the various manifestations of the New Cumnock failure, and now the answer has been revealed. But whether he did continue to Shap for a late arrival or decided to divert elsewhere was not mentioned. Regarding the 1966 derailment, the depth and quality of the research undertaken is quite remarkable. Although having knowledge of the accident and assisting accordingly, and even having a few newspaper clippings from the time, there are quite a number of details of this incident in…

The first of two S&D sojourns with the Cotham Grammar Railway Society in 1965 was on Saturday, May 29, and organised by history teacher Mr Janes, who was undoubtedly a long-time railway enthusiast. The school party met near the old Brunel/Digby Wyatt terminus platforms of Bristol (Temple Meads) station, before venturing into the rather dark and dank trainshed where our short train was waiting at the farthest platform, Nos. 14/15. Comprising a Mk. 1 brake second (No. 15025), a Bulleid semi-open third (No. S3959S) and a Bulleid first/third composite coach (No. 34237), plus a parcels van, it was headed by Peak class 1Co‑Co1 Type 4 diesel-electric No. D128. Diesels, generally used on ‘filling-in’ turns, had recently supplanted some of the British Railways Standard Class 2‑6‑2 tanks which had monopolised the…

Arguably, the British Railways of 1965 was not the same as that created in 1948, and yet in some ways it was, as there were some traditional operating methods and a staff mindset that had failed to evolve sufficiently through a rocky ride of many changes, not least in transport policy but also in the diminished role that railways were now taking in the lives of much of the general public and indeed some businesses. There was a time when the railways of Britain were unchallenged in terms of their ability to move passengers, goods, and heavy freight, but two world wars and government rescue packages (of 1921-23 and 1947/48) met the challenges of those times and as a result, Britain now had a Nationalised railway network. Urban tramcars in…

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