Innehållsförteckning för December 2025 från Steam Days

GWR Halls – Westbury Lane, Purley Dear Editor: The article on the GWR Hall class locos and the photo taken from Westbury Lane bridge, Purley, Berks as it was then, brought back wartime memories as a 6-year-old boy. The signals shown are Intermediate Block Signals, Up Relief and Main controlled by Pangbourne ‘box, and the Down line east of the bridge by Tilehurst ‘box; each signal with a telephone. Batteries were changed on a Monday morning by a 1400 engine and coach. During 1943/44 freight and coal trains could stand at the Up signals for hours – in some cases relief crews came on the Down ‘stopper’ which would wait for the crew to change. I would walk down to the engine and ask to climb up into the cab.…

This year Aberdeen celebrated the 175th anniversary since it joined the railway network – the appropriately named Aberdeen Railway connected the city with Forfar and the south through the Vale of Strathmore. Other major towns served by the company included Brechin, Montrose and Stonehaven. It is not easy to condense nearly two centuries of history into a few pages, so my focus is on what I consider the most significant events. By 1850, Aberdeen was a major port and university city, with paper, textiles, granite, engineering and shipbuilding as the main drivers of the local economy. The thriving harbour traded with many parts of the world and also served the local fishing community. During the first half of the 19th century the population grew from about 24,000 to 68,000. Union…

Following on from the 1828-32 ‘pioneer engine’ names feature in the September 2025 issue, we return for later locos in the same Royal Scot series. With the exception of Lancashire Witch, the names so far covered have all been of Liverpool & Manchester ancestry, and rather interestingly, Rocket, that railway’s most famous engine, seems to have been overlooked for re-use on a Royal Scot. In this case, the selection of chosen names is far wider ranging in terms of first use, but naturally all are of LMS lineage.With the heritage of 16 of the pioneer Royal Scots neatly falling in to the 1828-32 timeframe, the spotlight now illuminates the remaining nine locomotives – Nos. 6140 and 6142-49. If I may recap for a moment, the first 50 Royal Scots were…

Further to the article in the June 2025 issue on USA tank No. 30064 and its supporting overview of the S100 class 0-6-0Ts that arrived on these shores, the following may help clarify matters, given that the subject is difficult to research as much remains uncertain. Even after all these years, some wartime data in regard to the USATC locos – the S100 0-6-0Ts, S160 2-8-0s and diesel types – has yet to reach the public domain and may well have been destroyed. Compounding the situation, errors and even outright falsehoods that cannot be corroborated from primary sources continue to be widely perpetuated. In general terms, an aside relating to the first part of the article may be of interest, as it is part of the overall war effort with…

Even before I moved to the Chester area for work in autumn 1955, family visits via the city and its railway hub and on into Wales were regularly undertaken, always by train, but now I was living in Saltney, on the ex-GWR Paddington-Birkenhead main line and just a few yards from the Welsh border. There was rich Great Western and London & North Western heritage on my doorstep, with activity centred on Chester General, while Chester Northgate, little more than half a mile to its west, boasted former Great Central Railway and Cheshire Lines Committee routes. Beyond the Big Four era, that collective history translated into a Western, London Midland and Eastern region mix in 1948. While the latter was lost to expansion of the LMR not long afterwards, there…