Innehållsförteckning för Volume 39 No 3 - March 2025 från Backtrack

Frodingham steam shed, along with the whole railway at Scunthorpe, was in competition for labour with the local iron and steel works and their associated ironstone quarries. All of the latter were accompanied by substantial railway infrastructure and steam locomotive operation, diesels entering this scene from the mid-1950s. Well over 100 locomotives could have been in operation at any one time in the area based on this industry. Consequently with ‘The Works’ regular working pattern of 3 x 8 hour shifts each day, they offered more pay as compared with British Railways. In this article and by using Frodingham as an example, an attempt is made to compare the physical environments of a former steam locomotive depot erected and opened in 1932 with the replacement diesel servicing depot of 1965.…

The words ‘bridge’ and ‘viaduct’ are regarded by Jack Simmons as interchangeable in today’s railway parlance. Thus we have examples such as the Tay Bridge and the Royal Border Bridge, both multi-arched viaducts. There are viaducts in rural areas of Britain spanning rivers and valleys; those found along the Midland Railway’s Settle and Carlisle line furnish fine examples. Many viaducts are located in cities and towns. A viaduct in a small town such as Todmorden dominates the town’s layout, dictates the road layout and even separates districts which once were contiguous. The openings of viaducts were reported in local and national press. So too were accidents involving injuries and fatalities. The commonest reason for a viaduct to collapse in the early history of railways was the dismantling of timber centring…

When the Midland Railway (MR) launched its own plans to come south and to reach London, its first stage was to be the opening of a new line from Wigston to Hitchin, which opened in 1857 and, as is well known, was the nearest it got to London on its own line. That was to come later in 1868 with the opening of a new line from Bedford to St. Pancras. The first attempt brought about the opening of a station at Irchester which, at the time of opening, was just called Irchester. Later it was renamed Irchester for Higham Ferrers. At the time of opening there was a well-used footpath from the village to the halt at Ditchford on the London and Birmingham (L&B) branch from Blisworth to Peterborough.…

The circumstances surrounding the design and construction of the Highland Railway’s six mixed-traffic ‘River’ Class 4-6-0s, which were later sold to the Caledonian Railway to become the ‘938’ Class, remains as one of the most unusual and controversial events in the annals of British locomotive history. Appointed in 1912 as the successor to Peter Drummond, the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Highland Railway, Frederick George Smith was responsible for drawing up the specifications for a modern superheated 4-6-0 to operate on the main route between Perth and Inverness. Smith was born on 20th April 1872 in Newcastle upon Tyne and in 1888 he commenced a five-year apprenticeship under Thomas Worsdell at the North Eastern Railway’s Gateshead Works after which he spent a further seven years of his career at the…

The end of the carrying of the Royal Mail on the railways has been reported before, in particular the demise of the Travelling Post Office services in 2004, but in fact bulk flow mail continued between dedicated ‘hubs’ in a fleet of new electric multiple units, the Class 325s, introduced in 1995. Even they have now been declared life-expired by the Royal Mail and with their withdrawal in September 2024 the conveyance of ‘mail by rail’ finally came to an end – or so it seems. GAVIN MORRISON took these photographs of mail trains in various forms during the last three decades.…

“Head-on collision, single line” is L. T. C. Rolt’s pithy summation in the index to Red For Danger (1955) of the Norwich Thorpe railway disaster which occurred on 10th September 1874 on the Great Eastern Railway. It wasn’t an auspicious year for such calamities as there had been a similar accident at Bo’ness Junction on the North British Railway back in the January. The devil is in the detail, however, and Rolt’s longer description (pages 143-7) reveals that this was the worst head-on collision in the history of British railways and yet it is still, today, one of our lesser-known rail disasters although it has recently been the subject of a worthy book by Phyllida Scrivens (The Great Thorpe Railway Disaster 1874, 2021) which has given it the attention it…

When Prince Albert, the Prince Consort, was driven to Hyde Park on a rainy morning in October 1851 it was to mark the closure of one of the most remarkable and influential ventures of modern times: ‘The Great Exhibition of the Works of All Nations’ had been nine months in planning and construction and it became the defining enterprise of its era. The Prince had been foremost amongst advocates of an international manufacturing showcase and his support was critical in helping to launch the project amidst initial scepticism. In January 1850 the Queen appointed a twenty-four man Royal Commission to plan and manage the event. Its first task was to find a suitable location and – not without controversy – Hyde Park was made available. The chosen site, about 650…

A brief history It is over 60 years since the Hooton to West Kirby branch line closed to traffic. Regular passenger traffic ceased in 1956 with freight traffic suffering the same fate in 1962. I only became aware of the presence of the branch line as a young child on a family outing on a summer Saturday in 1958. The branch line was constructed by the Birkenhead Railway, also known as the Birkenhead Joint. The Great Western Railway and London & North Western Railway had combined to purchase the Birkenhead Railway and took control of its operations in November 1860. The new management inherited the Birkenhead to Chester line opened in September 1840 and the Chester to Walton Junction line (just south of Warrington) which had opened in December 1850.…