Indholdsfortegnelse for October 2022 i Steam World

I really shouldn’t mention it in a publication as solidly traditional as Steam World, but I have a presence on social media, albeit a minor and relatively private presence. I won’t say I’m a fan but there are some ‘good bits’. I’m a member of several Facebook groups, including Closed Stations, the Berks & Hants line and First Generation DMUs, all of which are a constant source of pictures and information about their specific subjects. However, being ‘on Facebook’ means one is also bombarded with advertisements, pseudo-political drivel and pointless listings of ‘20 top this’ and ‘30 famous that’ which don’t seem to serve any useful purpose at all. I did once wonder about assembling one of my own – ‘20 top movies in which the trains are wrong for…

Ten years in the making, the final trio – volumes 8,9 and 10 – are now available to complete this book publishing tour-de-force. This heavyweight album collection features 2,400 pages and around 3,500 pictures from more than 30 photographers of the ‘Master Neverers Association’…. ‘Never Again’ has been a unique, financially very risky but ultimately successful enterprise. The MNA, a loose alliance of linesiders, were united by a love of steam and photography and brought these two interests raucously together over the few short years of the mid-1960s, as BR steam dwindled, experienced its Indian Summer and finally passed into history in early August 1968. MNA members were boisterous, lively, irreverent, mischievous, provocative – and often in conflict with authority. But they were also determined, creative, passionate and highly skilled…

Until the 1950s Ipswich depot still comprised two through road engine sheds each with a pair of tracks, and a three-track fitting shop, a two-track coal shed, turntable, offices, stores and a smiths shop. There was also an accompanying carriage and wagon works. The shed was still a major running and maintenance centre. A visitor of the time would find the ‘not very imposing’ main shed and tube shop buildings clad mainly in corrugated iron beyond which were some elderly brick buildings. Working conditions in the shed continued to be very poor. A Shed Foreman later wrote ‘The conditions in which the boiler washers and tube cleaners worked in winter beggared description with boilers being emptied and blown down, others being washed out and steam and water everywhere.’ It was…

send your letters to Steam World, 4 Milnyard Square, Orton Southgate, Peterborough PE2 6GX or steamworld@choicmag.co.uk ‘Black Fives’ and the Calne branch In your Calne feature (Steam World, August) you illustrated No. 45407 on the Calne-Weston-super-Mare train. I used to see this often, near Weston, and the usual motive power was a Standard ‘3MT’ 2-6-2T but I think Barrow Road used whatever was spare. Whilst I cannot confirm that 45407 worked throughout, I cannot imagine that a diesel locomotive was supplied just to work the branch, with steam coming on at Chippenham or Bath. I presume the stock for the train was worked to Calne from Bristol in the morning rather than being left there all week. Paul Chancellor by e-mail (Judging by the late Don Lovelock’s pictures of the…

Caption by Nigel Harris, with thanks to Scotrail Drivers Gary Straiton and Grant Murchie. A wonderful spectacle at Perth, as seen from St Leonard’s Bridge, on April 20 1963. Nearest the camera, grubby Gresley ‘A4’ 4-6-2 No. 60004 William Whitelaw is fresh off shed, as indicated by the very full tender. The chime whistle ahead of the chimney is blowing and the four puffs of steam from the cylinder draincocks indicate that the ‘Streak’ is getting away from Platform 3, with the Anglo Scottish car train ‘sleeper’; this service originated here and was said to be a very heavy train. The slightly cleaner Gresley ‘V2’ 2-6-2 to the left is No. 60892, in abay platform with a train thought to be for Edinburgh, in all likelihood on the long-gone route…

In September 1955, at the age of 11, I started to travel to school in Oxted from our home in Sanderstead. What was exciting for me was that I knew the Oxted line was 100% steam operated, compared with the dozens of electric trains that passed our house, which was opposite Purley Oaks station, on the Brighton line. I was already familiar with Sanderstead station, as my dad was the manager of the W. H. Smith bookstall there. As well as the wooden shop next to the station building, he was responsible for the small platform bookstalls at both Sanderstead, and Upper Warlingham, two stations down the line, that operated only during the morning rush hour. There were also 20 morning paper rounds, as well as several for the evening…

THERE’S LOTS MORE, PLUS OUR REGULARS, INCLUDING Comment, Great Shot! Call Attention, and Crossword November 2022 issue on sale October 21, price £5.45 RE-LIVE THE GLORIOUS DAYS OF BRITISH STEAM WITH STEAM WORLD Britain’s biggest-selling historical railway magazine.…

Usually, in the broad ‘railway hobby’ of those of us whose interest embraces models as well as the real thing, a particular train journey or visit to a location may prompt us to contemplate building a model. Or at least it often did for me. I modelled Tetbury after I had been there and later Much Wenlock, too. However, just occasionally I have found that it works the opposite way, and someone else’s model prompts a visit to a real place. That’s how it was with the ‘Wye Valley Railway’. There was actually no such railway but it was the name adopted for his ‘OO’ layout by E. T. Rawlings. I never met him and his model railway was featured in Model Railway Constructor in the early 1960s, before I…

Why does the railway at Much Wenlock, which once served a picturesque market town well off the beaten track in rural Shropshire, hold so much fascination for so many? It’s up to you to work this out, but it seems quite remarkable that three railway writers from entirely unrelated backgrounds should share the same passionate interest in a quiet Great Western branch that closed 60 years ago. Adrian Knowles’ new Lightmoor Press book The Wellington, Much Wenlock & Craven Arms Railway, reviewed in the July issue of Steam World, revealed an interesting coincidence. Reviewing the book, Steam World editor Chris Leigh remarked:‘I first met Adrian in the late 1970s when he recognised that we shared a mutual interest in the fine but very derelict railway station at Much Wenlock.’ Curiously,…