Innehållsförteckning för January 2026 från Steam Days

While this month’s tour through our pages takes us to such places as Ash Junction and Attleborough, Birchington-on-Sea and Birmingham, Canterbury and Crewe, Diggle and Dublin, and even Waterloo, Whitby and Woodhead, I’d like to take a moment to voice my appreciation for the input of the readership and the joy of Tail Lamp. Following the news that I shared about dad in the last Trains of Thought, there have been countless kind messages recollecting time spent with him, or how through the pages of Steam Days, and phone conversations filled with reminisces and shared memories, so many of you knew him; thank you. Tail Lamp ebbs and flows with amounts of feedback that can never be anticipated, with some articles inspiring a wealth of correspondence; a lively spell can…

It is probably fair to say that the transition from private to public ownership very likely had a greater effect on shareholders and railway enthusiasts than it did the workaday railwaymen for whom matters remained largely unchanged – perhaps the greatest factor in the minds of railwaymen was the novelty of the situation, which was quite new. Socialist politics had long advocated an elysian world in which everything that could be state-owned would be and although the Atlee government was not the first Labour administration, it was the first that commanded sufficient support on such a scale that many of the basic industries were snapped up by the state in the first few years after the war. Prior to 1948, there had been two levels of railway administration, the operational…

Canterbury has a rich railway history that began with official opening of the Canterbury & Whitstable Railway on May 3, 1830, the South Eastern Railway entering the scene to run that impoverished line a short time before its own route arrived in Canterbury on February 6, 1846, at a separate station and initially as a branch line from Ashford. A pause of just a few weeks then preceded extension of this route through to Ramsgate on April 13: the C&WR passenger services were diverted to the SER station from the outset but some coal traffic (at least) remained at the C&WR terminus until circa 1848 and its closure. At this time, Kent was a battleground for territory between the SER and London, Chatham & Dover Railway, and sure enough the…

Do you ever find yourself away from home territory on a journey, by train or car, and across a field you spot the outline of what can only be an old railway embankment, and you start to muse as to its origin? You might have a ‘that surely must be such and such a railway’ thought, but some are less familiar – I suspect the section of Manchester & Milford Railway near Llanidloes, south-west to Llangurig, has probably caused a few head-scratching moments for drivers on the A470 and A44. Completed in 1864 as three-miles of double-track, it seems only to have seen one train. West of Llangurig, a tunnel of near 1½-mile length was started but never completed, with the planned line through Devil’s Bridge abandoned in favour of…

In my 1940s childhood, travel opportunities were few and my transport interest was concentrated on Birmingham’s fascinating network of 3ft 6in gauge trams. I travelled daily by tram to school for six years, as well as enjoying the occasional treat of the splendid 45-minute ride out to the Lickey Hills on the city’s southwestern fringes. But in 1953 the trams were sadly taken away, thus prompting me to widen my horizons to embrace British Railways. My first session of railway observation came late in June 1953, the month of the late Queen’s Coronation. Not required one afternoon for games at school, I adjourned to Birmingham Snow Hill station and bought the required platform ticket, price one (old) penny, and an Ian Allan ABC of Western Region locos for two shillings…

The name Britannia conjures up different connotations to different generations. To some it immediately brings to mind images of the Royal Yacht Britannia, to others the Bristol Aircraft Company’s four-engine turbo-prop airliner, and to others the 1740 poem Rule, Britannia! by James Thomson, which was set to music by Thomas Arne in the same year and is now an integral part of the Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. To Roman scholars, it is redolent of the Roman Province of Britain, the name being derived from the Greek form Prettanike or Brettaniai. In the second century, Roman Britannia came to be personified as a goddess, armed with a spear and shield and wearing a Corinthian helmet, an image that still appears on coins, banknotes and in…

Rex Kennedy Dear all: I have just received my Steam Days (December 2025 edition) which contains the sad news from Andrew of Rex’s passing, and there could be only one response from me to those tidings. I had to get this letter off to you as soon as possible. When I bought my first Steam Days in the early ‘90s, Rex was the name at the top of the magazine team. I did not dare bother him, because he was the editor of this great magazine, which I soon came to know so well and admire greatly. Steam Days was the timely and suitable document for me in the midst of a hectic family life, career in law and in active church work. After some years reading the magazine and…