Innehållsförteckning för November 2024 från Steam Days

ith a subject as diverse as ours, there are significant moments for each and every day of the year, at some point in time, on that day, be it Acts of Parliament, openings, closures, the first roll-out of a milestone locomotive class, accidents that led to innovations in railway safety… the list is endless, and to all of us there are niche interests. However, some events do have a greater overall impact than others, so marking an anniversary for something as momentous as linking London and Glasgow by train, as we do in this issue of the magazine, is well worthwhile. It was some time ago when I realised that November 1 is an anniversary of note – 175 years for what was really a 400-mile-long city-to-city link – but…

The late 1830s and the 1840s was a period of intensive railway building, with the network expanding rapidly throughout the country, and a growing ambition was to create a through route from London to Glasgow to link England and Scotland. As we shall see, development was rather piecemeal, but in 1848 a through route was established, although the initial Glasgow terminus was very inconveniently located well away from the city centre. This was addressed during the following year when, on November 1, 1849, the Caledonian Railway opened a new terminus at Buchanan Street. It was still rather on the edge of the city centre, to the north-east, but there it stayed and acted as Glasgow’s West Coast main line terminus for 30 years. For traffic from the south, it was…

New faces on the Highland lines Sir: I always very much enjoy it when you publish articles featuring lines of the old Highland Railway (and the Great North of Scotland Railway, for that matter).The article‘New Faces on the Highland Lines’ (Steam Days, September 2024) contained much of interest, and it never ceases to amaze me how you seem to find so many unpublished photographs, or at least ones new to me. I did like the colour photograph on the front cover, but the goods train while indeed departing southbound towards Perth is doing so from Dunkeld & Birnam, not Blair Atholl. Dr John RWalker,Wilton, Salisbury In the same article, on page 24, there was a late change of picture selection of No. 34004Yeovil on the Locomotive Exchanges, but sadly not…

To most enthusiasts the Great Northern main line is synonymous with Pacific power, and it was at the two northern extremities of this system that I came across my first examples. On family days out, and long before I was a spotter, I was encouraged by indulgent parents – it was almost expected of a small boy – to ‘have a look at the engine’ if one was at the platform and if there was time before making the journey. An early presentation to me was the Ladybird Book of British Railways Locomotives (1958 edition), and these two factors sowed the seed. Whether the book was cause or effect I cannot say. However, I was always wary of getting up close following a traumatic experience involving safety valves and a…

It is often said that it is not what we have done that we regret, but more what we have not done, and I so very much regret not having paid more visits to Princetown and its branch line from Yelverton in those happy days during the mid-1950s when we were spoiled for choice, with steam reigning supreme. I must confess to having been somewhat of a King and Castle fanatic in my misspent youth. Our little band of enthusiasts congregated regularly at the end of Laira depot’s coaling line, and there I was renowned for my obsession with recording these fine 4-6-0 express beasts on film, in preference to photographing other classes. Sadly, my branch line activities were thus somewhat limited, but I did, however, make three visits to…

A lthough a previous visitor to Ireland, it was September 1959 before I was able to dedicate a whole 10 days to enjoying the delights of its railways, heading out on a railway holiday with my friend, fellow enthusiast Roger Bell, who had great knowledge about where to go, what to look out for, and what locomotives may be in steam. I have penned a previous article about some of the sightings of this trip – ‘The last days of Irish steam’ (Steam Days, May 2006) – but that covered both north and south of the border and, having allowed some time to pass, I felt that the rich diversity of classes photographed in the south alone, and yet to be shown, was calling for a revisit. Córas Iompair Éireann…

The article by Trevor Lambert (Steam Days, January 2024) about his tour from Parkstone to Scotland when 16 years old brought back some different memories for me. I lived in Bournemouth from 1945 until 1965 and used to watch trains on most of the local stations, mainly in Bournemouth itself but occasionally at Parkstone, which I could reach fairly easily by bicycle from my home in Winton. At that time Bournemouth was still in Hampshire, whereas Parkstone station was in the borough of Poole, in Dorset. It was located about halfway up the steep railway incline that stretched from the causeway across Poole Harbour and rose mainly at 1-in-60, with a short stretch of 1-in-50 before the last half mile or so, when the gradient eased before Branksome and its…