Innehållsförteckning för Volume 38 No 2 - February 2024 från Backtrack

In the old West Riding of Yorkshire, Shipley gained a station on the Leeds & Bradford Railway (later Midland Railway) which developed into a rare triangular layout (the only other remaining one being at Earlestown). Separate platforms served trains from Leeds to Bradford Forster Square and those coming in from Keighley and Skipton; trains from Ilkley also used the eastern side of the junctions. The northern curve carried through trains from Leeds towards Skipton, and from 1876 to Settle and Carlisle, but no platform was provided until 1979 when one was constructed on the south side, with another on the north side finally being added in 1992. The result was a busy location with a wide variety of traffic and motive power as photographed by GAVIN MORRISON.…

It says much that the Craven Herald weekly newspaper, based in the Yorkshire market town of Skipton, devoted a whole page to a 2023 event taking place in Colne in Lancashire. There have been tensions between the two settlements throughout recorded history. Boundary changes have not helped and as long ago as 1731 the antiquarian Thomas Cox lamented of Craven: “The exact extent of it we nowhere find.” The newspaper has understandably embraced as wide an area as realistically possible, despite much of West Craven being transferred to Lancashire in 1974. A change still causing deep resentment after almost half a century, it has helped to focus continuing attention on the loss of the Skipton to Colne Railway closed four years earlier. Hence the coverage given to the annual general…

In a magnificent mountain setting in the heart of the USA state of Utah lies a graveyard. In the heart of the graveyard lies a grave, its headstone depicting Robert Stephenson's 1829-built locomotive, Rocket. Why is it there and in whose memory was it dedicated? The answer arises from an extraordinary but intriguing e-mail I received several years ago from an American woman, Stacey Miller, who was employed as a teacher at an American Air Force Base in Germany. She had been recommended to get in touch with me by a mutual friend in Canada. She told me that, through folklore in her extensive family in Utah, she had learned that her four times great grandfather, Edward Robinson (1807-1896), had been the world's 'first railroad conductor'. Could this possibly be…

The history of this long-lived South Eastern class has been written many times, so the notes that follow are mainly my own recollections and comments from colleagues and friends. It is well known that the Southern Railway of the 1920s and '30s concentrated on electrification of its entire suburban network – to Gillingham (Kent), Maidstone West, Maidstone East, Sevenoaks and Sanderstead in the case of the South Eastern – as well as most of the former London, Brighton & South Coast Railway. The result was 0-4-4Ts and similar types, previously of the mainstay of suburban workings, being drafted to country depots, remaining on branch and cross-country lines well into the British Railways era. Although our H Class entered traffic in the early years of the South Eastern & Chatham Railway…

Once the railway had reached Aberdeen from the south in 1850, the tentacles of what would become the Great North of Scotland Railway system were soon spreading across the North East. The first branch line, from Aberdeen seventeen miles west to Banchory in Deeside, opened in 1853 and was eventually completed by a further 26 miles to the village of Ballater, near Balmoral Castle and Braemar, in 1866. Queen Victoria had been visiting Deeside since 1851, and the new railway became an integral part of royal travels. It is said that Ballater was the destination of more crowned heads and royalty than any other station in Europe. The easternmost section of the single track Deeside Line hosted part of the famed Aberdeen suburban service – 'the Subbies' – which began…

“It has often occurred to me that something should be undertaken to perpetuate the memory of so many of our gallant friends and colleagues from the N.E.R. who have made the great sacrifice for freedom… 1,745 is the sad total shown in the current issue of our Magazine, in killed alone. A small sum subscribed by each of the employees on our vast system would, I think, realise sufficient to erect a fitting tribute to our lost fellow-workers. How about a memorial placed at a good centre like York?“ (Mr. F. Ascough, Traffic Foreman, Hartlepool, January 1919 in a letter to the North Eastern Railway Magzine)1 The North Eastern Railway did, of course, erect a memorial to its employees who lost their lives during the First World War. The North…

One of my interests from the 1960s to the 1990s was observing and recording operations at busy centres on summer Saturdays, when the regular timetable was augmented by seasonal trains to and from holiday destinations. Many happy hours were spent at the likes of Derby, Preston, York and Reading. On 28th August 1965, towards the end of the season, I visited Birmingham Snow Hill. I think that this trip was prompted by the knowledge that Snow Hill station faced an uncertain future, following the completion of electrification from London Euston through Birmingham New Street in 1967. In addition, 1965 was likely to be the last year that any of the summer Saturday trains would be steam hauled. Making a day trip from my home in South Leicestershire, I was not…

On an unknown date around the year 1906, the wife of an Inverkeithing Minister gave birth to her second child, a baby boy who came to be called Ranald D. Stephen. His father, the Rev. Dr. William Stephen, looked after a parish which included many railway workers, as the North British Railway was an important provider of employment for the local community at that time. Inverkeithing was the junction where the NBR line to Perth diverged from the main Edinburgh–Aberdeen line and there was always a great deal of activity going on, both passenger and freight. This was made more interesting by the fact that the town lay in a hollow, involving a climb out from the station in whatever direction one chose to travel. The most arduous of these…

Historically one of the periods that has always fascinated the author is the transition period between steam and diesel on the British Railways network. In this sense I have confined the era to the one of main line dieselisation between 1958-1968 although it occurred from 1954 onwards in parts of the UK when applied to secondary and branch lines. It was not only a change in traction in this period, but a plethora of other changes which saw the diminution of the-then BR network, of course, with the publication of The Reshaping of British Railways report in March 1963. Certainly, a title which the Harvard business school would have embraced, one would imagine, with its euphemistic terminology, an early exemplar of 'management speak'. What its critics overlook, however, was that…

The North British Locomotive Company, formed in Glasgow in 1903 by an amalgamation of three well-established manufacturers, built steam locomotives for this country and all over the world but by the late 1950s the time had come for it to enter the coming world of diesel traction. In the end it was not to be a wholly successful venture but among its forays were two designs in the British Railways Pilot Scheme for Type 2 Bo-Bos in the 1,000hp range. Ten diesel-electrics appeared for the Eastern Region in 1958 and six diesel-hydraulics of similar configuration for the Western Region in 1959. These were not without their problems but both went into production runs of 48 and 52 respectively. However, the contraction of the railway in the 1960s destined them for…

The diagram in question post-1965 was never on a regular basis graced by what is termed 'glamour' motive power as that much loved commodity on the London Midland Region, except for the 'Britannias', was on its last legs. Except for 1P33 (diesel from 17th October 1966) schedules were an easy enough prospect for Class 5s and Class 5s were still plentiful. Eyebrows were now instead accustomed to being raised at such as Stoke's No.45050 oddly 'kicking off' the new Aintree regime on its first day, 17th October. No 'Black 5' more remarkable than that was subsequently seen on 1J42 during this period. Two instances of Kingmoor 'Black 5s' finding involvement were Nos.45135 on 10th December 1966 – an odd steam-worked Saturday – and 44795 on 11th January 1967. The only…