Innehållsförteckning för Vol 36 No 6 - June 2022 från Backtrack

(Author) In my previous series of articles, I concentrated on feed-water heaters as a way of improving fuel efficiency in steam locomotives. I now intend to discuss another major source of thermal wastage – poor and incomplete fuel combustion. One of the rules for the Rainhill Trials in 1829 was that the contestants “had to consume their own smoke” and this became the law for nearly all early public railways. This had nothing to do with the efficient use of fuel, but was an early ‘health and safety’ issue to ensure that exhaust smoke was not a nuisance to the public. This requirement initially ruled out the straightforward use of coal in early fireboxes, because of the smoke formed by the combustion of the volatile components inherent in most common…

(Author) On hearing the news of my promotion, Mother concluded that I had gone completely insane! “What was wrong with that nice little signal box at Kimberley? Why on earth do you want go all the way to Chesterfield on that awful Ml? You’ll have to lodge near that new box – I’m sure you’ll find some boarding house to stay in.” This was not my idea of living. A boarding house indeed! Mother did not understand that the old Great Northern/Great Central was about to close, whilst all Father could say was “I hope that you’ll still get plenty of customers.” He related to all working activities in terms of customers! In this case he saw trains as customers! I had left Kimberley before the final curtain came down…

A notable location on the London & South Western Railway main line in Hampshire, to the west of Basingstoke, is Worting Junction and the Battledown flyover. Worting Junction marks the divergence of the main lines from London to Southampton and to Exeter and in 1897 a ‘flying junction’ was created to avoid the growing problem of conflicting traffic by means of the Battledown flyover which takes the up Southampton line over the West of England tracks. These photographs were taken by ALAN REEVE.…

(Bob Judge) In 1949, towards the end of a somewhat nomadic schooling, the result of my father’s numerous promotions, the family was settled, for a few years at least, in a railway owned semi-detached property located adjacent to Orpington station. Previously living in Tooting, my father, Herbert (always known as Dick), had been Deputy Permanent Way Inspector at Waterloo during the latter half of the last war, an onerous task if ever there was one! Come the end of hostilities and a further promotion to that of Deputy Chief PW Inspector based at the former South Eastern & Chatham locomotive shed at Purley, to the south of Croydon; he became responsible for a vast swathe of the lines that radiated from Charing Cross, Cannon Street and Victoria stations into Surrey…

(Peter Sunderland/Martin Bairstow Collection) Today there is still a great viaduct in Ingleton which ought to be carrying the best, most direct and relatively low-lying main line from West Yorkshire to Scotland. Instead it is trackless and a memorial to the sheer obstinacy of two determined railway companies that indulged in constant rivalry and cast reasoning to one side. They made Ingleton a frontier between their empires with the viaduct forming a tenuous link connecting separate stations at either end. It was more akin to the situation still to be found in third-world countries that put politics before the needs of passengers. The saga of how the Midland Railway failed in its bid to create a main line through Ingleton and was instead forced to build the magnificent but unnecessary…

(Gavin Morrison) (Gavin Morrison) The second half of the 1980s saw considerable changes on the 122¾-mile long West Highland main line between Glasgow Queen and Fort William (opened in 1894) and the 42-mile-long extension between Fort William and the west coast port of Mallaig which dated from 1901. Notable among the changes was the introduction of Class 156 Super Sprinter units which brought to an end (with the exception of the overnight London sleeper) regular locomotive-hauled passenger working and changed forever the character of this most delightful and picturesque route. The advent of the Haymarket (Edinburgh)-based Class 156s from Monday 23rd January 1989, also brought to an end the last surviving example of mixed train working on Britain’s railways, two or three tank wagons with fuel oil for the Mallaig…

(C. J. B. Sanderson – Armstrong Railway Photographic Trust, ARPT) At one minute before midnight on Saturday 31st October 1964, the last passenger train left Blyth station in south east Northumberland for Newbiggin as passenger services along several lines in the area were withdrawn. The Newcastle Journal reported on the event: “Mr. Bob Yellowley, a 70-year-old railway guard, blew his whistle and brought to an end the long history of the Blyth and Tyne line at the weekend. It was busier than usual for its last ever journey and left the station to the sound of exploding fireworks and the blare of the train’s hooter.” Blyth, a town with a population of 40,000, was left without a railway service along with Newbiggin, Ashington, Bedlington and several other pit villages and…

Sometime in the early 1980s a friend called to see me and to show me three photographs he though I might be interested in. All the photographs were of a Beyer-Garratt locomotive. There was nothing to say where or when, or who the photographer was. What took my eye was not the locomotive but the fact that at the back of it stood Bedford Central signal box. I had never seen a photograph of this box (nor have I seen one since) and as my friend wanted them returned within a day or so and I very much wanted copies of them, I had no choice but to photograph them myself. With today’s modem cameras and scanning equipment it would have been easy to make copies. I just had to…