Innehållsförteckning för August 2021 från Steam World

I don’t remember the end of Southern Region steam. I was ten years old in 1967 and this particular event passed me by. I do recall England’s solitary World Cup win the summer before, of course, and, bizarrely, do remember Labour’s general election victory of October 1964, when I was just seven. How weird is that? I wish I could remember the end of steam in the South, but not only am I amnesic, I was also growing up in the wrong part of the country. As a sprat in Fladbury, Worcestershire, I did see steam trains, but that is about as far as my consciousness went. (Fladbury was opened by the Oxford Worcester & Wolverhampton Railway in 1854, but closed in 1966). At least I can claim to have…

As a sales representative for a copier firm, the late Noel Ingram’s job involved lots of driving up and down the A1 in the East Midlands, and this enabled time for frequent stops for photography on the neighbouring East Coast Main line between Peterborough and Grantham. Noel’s aim of photographing every timetabled daylight train, in colour, has left us with a rich portrait of that railway in its early 1960s transition from steam to diesel. Noel’s frequent use of home-processed colour slide film sometimes adversely affected the quality of his pictures, but modern scanning and digital adjustment now enables many of them to be restored to publishable standards. (Thanks to Paul Chancellor at Colour-Rail for his attention to these images.)…

Little things pass out of our lives, almost unnoticed, until something reminds us and we recall how good they used to be. Who remembers Woolworth’s pick ’n’ mix counter, where you could bag up your own choice of sweets without mortgaging too much of your pocket money? Well, here’s my pick ’n’ mix choice from the pictures close at hand here in my study, tucked away in the one-time Stationmaster’s office.…

I knew where Neasden shed was because I had grand parents that lived at Finchley and we used to visit them around half a dozen times a year in the 1950s. To get there from West Ealing was a bus ride from Ealing Broadway along the North Circular Road. Ealing Broadway station was the terminus of the Route 112 bus that took us along the North Circular past Hanger Lane (just before the underpass was built) under the many bridges carrying the LMS main line from Euston at Stonebridge Park and on to the girder bridge at Neasden that crossed the GC main line from Marylebone alongside the Bakerloo and Metropoliton LT lines. As we approached the bridge the shed was over on the right just beyond the allotments. I…

Swindon visits I read with interest the “One Last Visit to the Works” in SW408. It reminded me of my visits to Swindon Works; the wait outside and coming out of the tunnel to see the locomotives for repairs, ex works and for scrap. An enjoyable read. Can I make an amendment to this article’s remembrance of the May 9 1964 ‘Castle’ Class passing through Swindon. The locomotive used on the last leg of that Ian Allan railtour was 5054 Earl of Ducie. I was lucky enough to be on that epic railtour and my photograph shows 4079 Pendennis Castle at Paddington about to haul the first leg only to fail and limp in to Westbury. Angus Bruce, via e-mail (I well remember May 9 1964, too. It was my…

I hail from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, where I was born in March 1944. Our town still has two railway stations if High Brooms is included. Tunbridge Wells Central is exSouth Eastern Railway, later, SECR. The West station was LBSCR and the engine shed is now the headquarters for the Spa Valley Railway. It finally closed in July 1985 with the withdrawal of the Tonbridge-Eridge shuttle. The grandiose station building survives as a restaurant and the rest of the site is occupied by Sainsbury’s. I live a stone’s throw away from here and the noise of a steam engine at weekends evokes many happy memories from a misspent childhood. There was a single-line connection between the two stations at Grove Junction on the Tunbridge-Hastings line. It was here that Gerard Fiennes,…

No-one ever seems to have recorded that we were just a bunch of enthusiastic kids, accepting the basic theme of the dignity of man from our brilliant but erratic boss.” So said Harry Watt, co-producer of Night Mail (1936), of his mentor John Grierson. It could, however, have equally applied to the early years of British Transport Films under Edgar Anstey. As we saw last time, the unit had been established in May 1949, some eight months after Nationalisation. Anstey was 42, but many of his staff were considerably younger. Production Manager Ian Ferguson and cameraman James Ritchie were in their early 30s, for example, with senior cameraman Ron Craigen only a little older. The Railway Executive itself might have been in its infancy, but when Hugh Dalton, Labour Chancellor…

I’m sending you four pictures that I recently found at a collectors’ fair. They feature ‘Battle of Britain’ 4-6-2 No. 34064 Fighter Command with, I assume the newly-fitted Giesl oblong ejector, at Eastleigh Works in 1962. John Wickham, Ramsgate, Kent. The photographs were taken by John G Click, who was Assistant Works Manager at Eastleigh, and who had worked for O.V.S. Bulleid. No. 34064 is seen on test on the 12. 02pm from Southampton Central to Bournemouth Central. Invented by Dr. Adolph Giesl-Gieslingen (1903-92) in 1951, the ejector was designed to improve blastpipe suction draught and make better use of energy, but it really came too late to bring much benefit to steam locomotive development. A coal saving of around 8% was claimed and an increase in power of as…

I was fortunate to watch railway operations in the West of England during the early 1950s. Exeter St David’s was a favourite location and a good place to see trains; on summer Saturdays there was a constant procession worked by a variety of locomotives. These were the days when ‘anything that moved’ was pressed into service and always gave the best chance of seeing strangers that were rare in the West Country. Long days at St David’s on eight Saturdays in 1952 from July 12 through to September 13, missing just August 2and September 6, arriving about 8.30 in the morning and leaving around 7pm after the arrival of the 3.30pm train from Paddington to Penzance, left me with the question: “Where were all the ‘Kings’?” The fleet of 30…

Lots of railway enthusiasts have a problem with when they were born. Over the years I’ve talked to many who would start a conversation about trains with the words: “I was just too young to…” I was certainly just too young to enjoy the heyday of the branch line railtour. I saw one or two, however. I recall Adams ‘Radial’ 4-4-2T No. 30582 coming to Staines Central, far from its native haunt on the Lyme Regis branch. It took water at Staines before heading its three LSWR coaches down the branch to Windsor. I even persuaded my Dad to photograph it! A while later my brother, and I hopped on one of the new Greenline Routemaster buses to Hampton Court to see a pair of Beattie ‘Well Tanks’ arrive with…