Innehållsförteckning för December 2024 från Steam Days

Blessed with an opportunity to photograph on a glorious summer evening, Potters Bar was chosen. It was just off the Great North Road (A1), which passed over the twin Potters Bar tunnels (1214 yards), about three quarters of a mile south of the station; the station itself is 12¾ miles from King’s Cross. To say that quadrupling on the Great Northern Section was a lengthy affair is an understatement, as it started in the 1880s, was ongoing in LNER days, and work on the section extension south from Potters Bar to near New Barnet was started in September 1953 but not in service until summer 1959. Now in use, it opened up photographic potential, and with the longer daylight hours, an evening visit meant that trains were lit on their…

The important rail centre of Gloucester lay seven miles south-west of Cheltenham and was where three significant former Great Western Railway and London, Midland & Scottish Railway (ex-Midland Railway) routes came together. A proportion of passenger and freight services from these then headed north towards Cheltenham over what was originally a congested, jointly-owned two-track route – this congestion was alleviated in 1942 when a wartime funded scheme saw the line quadrupled between Gloucester’s Engine Shed Junction and Lansdown Junction, Cheltenham, from which services in the 1950s and 1960s continued to benefit. For the most part, this article will concentrate on that period. Returning to Gloucester, historically speaking it was an important commercial centre and the first crossing point of the Bristol Channel, narrowing into the Severn Estuary and finally the…

JIM REDMAN - MAN OF STEEL FRANK MELLING AVAILABLE NOW Softback £15.00 ISBN: 9781911704171 OFFICIAL MIKE HAILWOOD IN 100 OBJECTS JAMES ROBINSON AVAILABLE NOW Softback £30.00 ISBN: 9781911658894 COLIN SEELEY JAMES ROBINSON AVAILABLE NOW Softback £7.99 ISBN: 9781911658399 TRIUMPH: PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE GREAT BRITISH MARQUE JAMES ROBINSON AVAILABLE NOW Softback £25.00 ISBN: 9781911658580 AGOSTINI JAMES ROBINSON AVAILABLE NOW Softback £9.99 ISBN: 9781911704126 LE VACK’S LEGACY BRIAN THORBY AVAILABLE NOW Softback £50.00 ISBN: 9781911658788 TAKING IT TO THE LIMIT PETER STARR AVAILABLE NOW Softback £45.00 9780615301402 ONE MAN ON A BIKE RICHARD GEORGIOU AVAILABLE NOW Softback £7.99 ISBN: 9781911658139 MOTORCYCLE TRAVELER PETER STARR AVAILABLE NOW Softback £45.00 9780692151389 LAMBRETTA & VESPA STREET RACERS STUART OWEN AVAILABLE NOW Softback £14.99 ISBN: 9781911658603 SCOOTER BOYS GARETH BROWN AVAILABLE NOW Softback £14.99 ISBN:…

WE TOGETHER: 451 AND 453 SQUADRONS AT WAR ADAM LUNNEY AVAILABLE NOW! Hardback £14.99 ISBN: 9781911658351 F-16 FIGHTING FALCON BERTIE SIMONDS AVAILABLE NOW! Hardback £25.00 ISBN: 9781911658566 F-15 EAGLE BERTIE SIMMONDS AVAILABLE NOW Hardback £14.99 ISBN: 9781911658535 MESSERSCHMITT ME 309 DEVELOPMENT & POLITICS CALUM E DOUGLAS/DAN SHARP AVAILABLE NOW Softback £40.00 ISBN: 9781911658962 Chosen in 1941 to replace the Bf 109 as the Luftwaffe’s standard front-line fighter, Messerschmitt’s innovative Me 309 embodied a wealth of hard-won experience from the Battle of Britain. Its sturdy tricycle undercarriage would make landings safer, its capacious wings could accommodate much heavier weaponry, its retractable radiator would make it aerodynamically clean, its pressure cabin would allow high-altitude operations and its ejection seat would help preserve the Luftwaffe’s most precious asset – its pilots. All of…

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A lready an engine shed of some note, as a natural hub within the railway network and its proximity to coal reserves, LNER investment at Thornton Junction in 1933 saw the shed’s influence within Fife grow substantially, new engineering facilities usurping those of the first major locomotive facility of the Edinburgh & Northern Railway at Burntisland – that premises had seen some loco building in 1861-63, so 12 years or so after the company’s rebranding as the Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway (EP&DR), and when absorbed by the North British Railway in 1862. As with the main lines already covered – Burntisland (and then the Forth Bridge from 1890) to Dundee, and the Ladybank to Perth link – some loco servicing provision was transient in the earliest days of the…

The London, Midland & Scottish Railway consisted essentially of the London & North Western (L&NWR), Lancashire & Yorkshire (L&YR), and Midland (MR) railways in England, with their extensions into Wales, plus some smaller constituents. It also included a considerable mileage of Scottish lines, but only a few miles of the Caledonian Railway (CR) are involved in this particular subject. Beyond the Nationalisation of the railways, the LMS largely became the London Midland Region (LMR), so that is embraced in this story too. The railmotor For younger readers, perhaps an introduction to push-pull trains is appropriate. In the early days of conventional railways, a train was a locomotive, tender (probably) and a train of vehicles, for which at least three people would be required to operate, possibly more before a through-braking…

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Locomotive No 32 Tamerline became the first steam locomotive to be completed at Crewe Works on 10 March 1843. One hundred and fifteen years later BR 9F No 92250 became the 7,331st steam locomotive to be built at the Cheshire works, when completed in December 1958. This publication is a tribute to the thousands of people employed there during the steam locomotive building era. In 1913 The Railway Magazine proudly described Crewe as “the most famous railway works in the world”. Indeed, railways throughout the world benefited from adopting ‘best Crewe practice’. Many who worked at Crewe in its heyday, first under the London & North Western Railway and later the London Midland & Scottish Railway, held the firm belief that the works was the ‘beating heart’ of the Cheshire…