Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2022 i Steam World

Long distance travel has always presented problems. In the early years of the 19th century the meansof travel had been either on foot or on a horse-or horse-drawn vehicle of some sort. On main roads with regular carriage services there grew up a network of coaching inns to provide rest and sustenance for travellers and stabling for horses. The coming of railways brought similar problems but now the ‘coaching inn’ facilities had to be readily accessible during a station stop - and the railway hotel was born. Basically an inn, offering food and/or accommodation, close by the station, there grew to be hundreds of railway inns across the land, initially owned and operated by the railway company or a local brewery but soon resulting from opportunist private enterprise, too. With…

One of the pleasures of a railway magazine is the pictures, especially if they make you think, ‘I was there’ or, ‘I could have been there’, or ‘I was born too late to see that, it must have been fascinating’. Yet the truth is we are where we are, and looking back just how many opportunities did we turn down, compared with the ones we took? Sometimes when you read about trainspotters bunking a shed it sounds like it was a national sport in the 1950s and 60s that somehow died out. It must have been fun, but it was actually a minority pursuit and one frowned on by the publisher of the Abc books. So, it's always good to remember that you might not have missed out, and that…

BOOK REVIEW OF THE MONTH West Coast Main Lines - 1957-1963 John Palmer Pen & Sword Books, 47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire S70 2AS. Tel: 01226 734222. Web: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk Email: enquiries@pen-and-sword.co.uk Description: Hardback, 254mm × 178mm 184pp. ISBN: 9781526 791825 Price £.35. For better or worse, the West Coast Main Line changed more in the short space of six years from the late 1950s than the previous hundred. The speed of modernisation Was more than observers could possibly take in, and was not helped by the sparsity of official information and the non-existence of social media that came half a century later. Now, a quality factual analysis written by someone with a keen interest in locomotive numbers as well as history is something quite novel, and extremely readable. Thanks to his…

Retro poster art at Bare Lane Steam World reader, David Alexander, is a member of Northern Station Adopters at Bare Lane, Morecambe, a group set-up to ‘adopt’ and help maintain today's railway stations, often with a nod to their past. David wrote to tell me, ‘As part of the work of the Northern Station Adopters at Bare Lane, displays of the station's heritage have recently been added to. For the first time in over 70 years, one of the area's platform posters dating back to 1949, is again on display at the station. First produced by commercial artist Claude Buckle for the newly formed London Midland Region of British Railways, the poster depicts some of the highlights of Morecambe and Heysham on the sunny Lancashire coast. Buckle was one of…

No. 6859 was the ‘Grange' I read with interest the help Brian Till (Former Wolverhampton Oxley Fireman) is seeking regarding the summer Saturday ‘68XX’ working from Wolverhampton Low Level to Crewe via Shrewsbury in ‘Call Attention’, Steam World October 2022. I spent quite some time on summer Saturdays in 1965 around Wolverhampton Low level and Birmingham Snow Hill with both still and cine cameras. The weekend would usually start with a visit to Oxley MPD late on a Friday night when all was quiet, to scan the roster board and check upon the summer relief workings that night and for the following day. There were no fewer than 18 summer relief and excursion workings shown for July 23/24 and all were steam-worked by a rich mix of ‘Halls’, ‘Granges’ and…

A copy of the book Western Main Lines: Reading to Didcot by Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith (Middleton Press) will be given to the sender of the first correct answer opened on November 18, 2022. Answers (with your name and address) to SW425 Crossword, Steam World, 4 Milnyard Square, Orton Southgate, Peterborough PE2 6GX. Photocopies welcome, but please do not enclose correspondence. Crossword compiled by Alan Frost. Clues Across Takenfarfromthemadding crowd by ‘Brit’ no. 70034! (5) Signsofprogresswithroutes to city station? (7) ERA3Pacificno 60045 named after Derby winning racehorse (7) Boysnameonthe side of ER A4 Pacific no. 60007 (5) NameofReidD34Class 4-4-0 no. 62467 (10) LinkbetweenMaunsellSchool’ 30902 and ‘Brit’ 70014 (10) See-throughmaterialinlatterpart of ER A3 no. 60063 (5) JunctionshedoftheSR encoded 72A (7) Merchantsdependentonthevessels of…

I take railway photographs but I am not a railway photographer. I like a really good railway photograph but I don't claim to have taken one and I've never been among the ‘in-crowd’ with their quest for the much-vaunted ‘master-shot’. Like all of us, those masters have an ‘off-day’ once in while where nothing goes to plan. You know the kind of thing. You've picked your spot beforehand but on the big day someone else got there first. You know exactly where you plan to go but when you get there, undergrowth has grown up and obstructed the view. The light will be perfect if the train comes on time and those clouds don't close in. Or perhaps, you try to take too many shots and none of them really…