Innehållsförteckning för November 2023 från Steam Days

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Recalling spotting trips Sir: I have enjoyed reading the reminisces of ancient spotting trips in your magazine. They reminded me of day trips to Newton Abbot on summer Saturdays, to Exeter to experience Southern motive power and to Bristol and Bath in the early sixties, but most of all a trip a friend and I made to London as 13-year-olds on a day return ticket from Plymouth We left on the midnight train which left Plymouth ten minutes before the sleeper on the Saturday night and arrived in Paddington at 7.30am. Armed with a shed book guide, our first journey was to Willesden Junction, where it was relatively easy to get round the very quiet sheds at Willesden and Old Oak Common just down the road. We stayed north of…

The voice on the platform boomed out, ‘Havant for Hayling; Havant for Hayling’. It was a stifling and sticky summer Sunday in June 1960. With my towel and bathers safely tucked in my duffel bag hidden under a bottle of Vimto, a brown paper bag containing a melting Mars bar and a cheese and onion sandwich, I set off excitedly down the platform at Havant station with my auntie Jean and two cousins, focused on plunging into the sea to cool off at the beach at Hayling Island, but my eyes caught sight of a cloud of black coal smoke floating across the platform. My ears pricked up as I heard a gentle simmering sound – the air was full of that unmistakeable magical aroma of hot oil and steam,…

When driver John Bowser and fireman John Stone booked on duty to work the 8.05am local passenger service from Hellifield to Carlisle on Thursday, 6 March 1930 neither man expected anything but an undemanding trip over the Settle & Carlisle line. The booked locomotive was ex-L&NWR ‘Claughton’ No 5971 Croxteth, one of Leeds Holbeck shed’s allocation of seven ‘Midlandised’ members of the class – despite its cut-down cab, and ROD tender, Croxteth looked striking in its LMS crimson livery. The load was relatively modest for the 4-6-0, four eight-wheel bogie coaches and a six-wheel passenger brake, overall some 108 tons. The leading and trailing coaches were electrically lit, while the passenger brake (marshalled second in the train) and other two bogie vehicles were gas lit. As often happened with experienced…

Having outlined the origins and history of the Stour Valley route within ‘The Stour Valley railway and associated lines’ (Steam Days, August 2023), it is now appropriate to examine the stations and other infrastructure in greater detail. The following section will therefore take the form of a trip along the cross-country route from Marks Tey, on the Ipswich and Norwich main line, through to Shelford Junction on the Cambridge main line. For our purposes, the datum point for calculation of distances is Marks Tey station, although in practice many Stour Valley services commenced their journeys at the main line station of Colchester, some five miles to the north-east. Marks Tey This medium-sized junction station had up and down platforms for main line passenger traffic and an additional platform for the…

Railway branch lines for me to explore, without extra travelling. As a railway modeller, I wasn’t expecting to find Kemble to be of much interest, as I assumed it would be far too large to fit in anyone’s layout, but I was in for a surprise when I got there. I think it is fair to describe Kemble station as quirky – read on! The history of Kemble is interesting, to say the least. The Cheltenham & Great Western Union Railway (C&GWUR) had an ambitious scheme to build a double-track line between Cheltenham and Swindon and include a Cirencester branch, but it quickly ran out of money and only constructed the section from Swindon to Kemble as double-track, and then as a single track line on to Cirencester; this opened…