Innehållsförteckning för Volume 38 No 10 - October 2024 från Backtrack

Vol. 38. No. 10 No. 402 OCTOBER 2024…

Some 8½ miles out from Douglas, the station at St. John's occupied an expansive site but offered passengers few comforts. Its three platform faces of minimal height were devoid of cover and thus a bleak prospect in adverse weather, the only accommodation being in the station building, located on the south side. This was the same small timber structure provided on opening in 1873 and originally designated a ‘3rd Class Station’. Like any self-respecting junction, St. John's was characterised by long periods of inactivity interspersed by sudden bursts of frenetic happenings when multiple trains suddenly appeared and exchanged both engines and passengers. This is what we see here on the sunny afternoon of Wednesday 7th August. Our photographer had arrived from Douglas aboard the 2.10pm to Kirk Michael operated by…

After World War II the Southern Railway, needing new locomotives for shunting at Southampton Docks, was able to purchase fourteen surplus American-built 0-6-0 tanks from the War Department. With their 10ft wheelbase they proved suitable for the sharply curved dock lines and entered service in 1947. All but one were built by the Vulcan Iron Works of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Five lasted in service until the end of Southern Region steam in 1967.…

With their line fast approaching completion to the revised terminus at Strome Ferry, the directors of the Dingwall & Skye Railway turned their attention towards providing prospective passengers with onward seaborne transport: the necessity of this being obvious from the title of their railway. With David Hutcheson & Co. declining to provide a steamer service as far up Loch Carron as Strome Ferry, the directors, I suggest reluctantly, were obliged to seek suitable vessels and run their own services from Strome to Skye (see ‘Over the Sea to Skye’, Backtrack Vol.37 No.1 January 2023) although there are questions as to their legal authority to so do. The first two vessels to be acquired were Oscar and Jura, both bought second-hand from the Glasgow firm of William Sloan & Co. at…

In 1984 the Wilson's brewery in Manchester celebrated its 150th Anniversary with a number of commemorative events including the chartering of a one-coach steam special hauled by LNWR 0-6-2 ‘Coal Tank’ No.1054. The train made several out and back trips from Manchester Victoria over three successive days, running out via the Calder Valley line to Rochdale, from where the specials continued by returning to Manchester along the Oldham Loop. Travel on the trains was by invitation with the guests, which included past and current employees and their families, as well as publicans and suppliers, being conveyed in former West Coast Joint Stock Dining Car No.41 which had been converted into an Observation Car in 1960.…

Swindon today is not quite the great railway town it used to be when it had the famous construction and repair shops established by the Great Western Railway and the locomotive depot where pretty well every form of GWR motive power could be encountered at some time. Here are some of GAVIN MORRISON’s finds on visits made in the 1950s and ’60s.…

What is humdrum today can be tomorrow's interest. When professional railway officer and dedicated train timer Gerald Aston set off from Nottingham to his eventual destination, Downham Market, he chronicled in one day what a transformation there was to come in the period immediately after. In this sense it is a great historical ‘snapshot’ of the era. The changes that occurred in this period have been tirelessly chronicled in many enthusiasts’ periodicals regarding the station and lineside closures and the replacement of steam by diesel and electric traction, but not in this format. Even the dedicated chroniclers that are the timing fraternity rarely show a journey of this nature in its entirety and therefore this gives a very rare and valuable insight into what cross-country journeys were like in the…

FROM THE PENDRAGON ARCHIVES…

Rhinolophus hipposideros, or The Lesser Horseshoe Bat, is a protected species. It has taken up residence in an old railway tunnel traversing the Malvern Hills and its presence has proved controversial even though its presence hasn't prevented trains travelling between Hereford and Worcester. Trains no longer disturb the bat's domicile because they use a different tunnel built parallel with it and 44 feet away. The second tunnel was finally completed in October 1925, making 2025 its centenary, although trains didn't start running through until 2nd August the following year. The new tunnel took two years to build but its predecessor took seven years and might never have been finished but for the efforts of a local man, Stephen Ballard. Ballard was born in Malvern and by all accounts was a…

At one time there were over 70 railway stations in Northamptonshire. Today there are only six, although if you drive around the county it is surprising how many London Road, Midland Road and Station Roads are still to be seen – a very tangible reminder of the past when the county was well served by its railways. At the start of the railway revolution in this country, there were many small villages that had remained, almost changeless, for decades. For some, the coming of the railway was to change them dramatically. In the county of Northamptonshire two, for example, were to see these changes, namely Woodford Halse and Roade. The village of Roade, in 1830, had a population of around 550. Then it found itself on the route of the…

In earlier articles (Backtrack 38/1 and 38/4) we have seen how closure of part of the original East Coast Main Line through Fife came about – firstly the section from Leuchars to Tayport went in 1956 and was followed ten years later by closure of the suburban commuter service over the section from Tayport to East Newport in 1966, caused this time by the inevitably reduced numbers of passengers expected once the Tay Road Bridge (TRB) directly into the city of Dundee opened to traffic. Rumours soon spread that British Railways was deliberately running down the remaining section of the Newport Railway in order to close it, for the service had been fairly quickly reduced to only fourteen weekday trains each way; the last from Dundee thus became the 7.40pm…

Subjective comments on traffic growth created by diesel multiple units were common in the press and railway literature, but detailed figures are harder to obtain. Some snippets found include: Birmingham–Sutton Coldfield–Lichfield: passenger journeys up by 250% after five years. Liverpool–Manchester via Cheshire Lines Committee route: passengers increased by 52% in first six months Trans-Pennine: revenue up 21.5% in first year. London Midland Region traffic growth Some useful information for the early years of DMUs on the London Midland Region comes from surviving minutes of the Lightweight Trains Committee. Table 1 shows data for DMU services versus the last period of steam. (See Table 1, below). The figures show high levels of growth for services in dense urban areas and more modest increases on lines running into the country. Exceptionally, Buckingham–Banbury…

Particularly from the time of its opening, images of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway (L&M), on prints, on kerchiefs and mugs all show people merrily waving at us from the leisure of their Landaus and Barouches on carriage trucks. So did people really ride in their carriages on carriage trucks? Certainly the L&M had carriage trucks although they don't appear to have advertised this service to the general public; however, a discovery in an anonymous letter gives us at least one personal account. On a journey on 12th July 1832, the traveller writes at “… Manchester we took our station on the railroad, in our own carriage which was put upon a stand & fastened to the rear of the train”. Interestingly, also on the L&MR in 1835 on his…