Innehållsförteckning för March 2022 från Steam World

On St George’s Day – Sunday, April 23 1961 – my father Arthur Herbert, two friends Noel Machell and Eddie Crawshaw, and me, started a visit to Scotland. My father had planned the trip with two objectives in mind. The first was to cover as many main lines and, more importantly, as many branch lines as possible; the other was to visit as many motive power depots as possible and also to photograph as many of the remaining steam locomotives in service, and especially the locomotives built before the Grouping. Our day started on a Morecambe & Heysham Corporation double-decker bus from Morecambe to Carnforth (route 73) to join the 11.10am Birmingham New Street to Glasgow Buchanan Street service; 2.55pm from Carnforth. The reason we travelled to Carnforth and not…

Constructed in 1864, the Seaford branch in East Sussex was intended mainly to serve the important port of Newhaven and the town of Seaford itself. It was always a pleasant trip from Sussex’s county town, Lewes (today’s county town of East Sussex), to the small resort of Seaford. The Newhaven cross-Channel route’s apogee was reached just before the Second World War with 383,000 passengers crossing in 1938. Winter passenger services were withdrawn in 1956, although roll-on/roll-off ferries prompted a temporary revival from 1964. There was even a sleeper train to Scotland that allied with all this for a number of years! Of course, the ferry traffic meant boat trains, so there were some splendid locomotives seen on this route during the BR steam era. ‘Schools’ class 4-4-0s could just about…

We’ve published features about those famous overnight ‘shed bashes’ a few times in the past and they always make interesting reading about the ‘experience’ of these once enormously popular tours – but this one takes a slightly different view. It details every visit and every locomotive seen, from original notebooks, and is a fascinating snapshot of the mid-1950s GWR steam scene. Patrick Evans has opened up his Shedmaster Archives after a few years’ break, and provided a complete record of the locomotives he actually saw on this marathon to South Wales. The trip was organised by The Northern Railfans Club and started on Sunday June 3 1956 at Crewe station, on the West Coast Main Line. The group boarded the 1.25am overnight train from Crewe to Cardiff – a train…

Trains on the silver screen I wonder if my memories and photograph (taken in May 1971) about the film Young Winston might be of interest? At the time I was serving on the Great Western Society Management Council as Didcot Manager (voluntary positions). At the January 1971 Council meeting, it was reported that we had received an approach from Open Road Productions to supply stock for a forthcoming film to be based on the early life of Winston Churchill, to be called Young Winston. They would be required on location from around mid-May onward. Initially, ‘14XX’ 0-4-2T No.1466, ‘Manor’ 4-6-0 No.7808 Cookham Manor, two clerestory coaches, the ‘Asmo’, ‘Mink A’ and ‘Toad’ were under consideration, but it eventually ended up with just No. 1466 and the ‘Toad’ brake van. Discussions…

Around 1953, I had become a young trainspotting enthusiast. We lived in Chesterfield in the village of Old Whittington, in north Derbyshire: over to the west was the Midland Railway (MR) ‘New Road’ to Sheffield, Leeds and Manchester. Gowholes (mainly freight), to the east, was the ‘Old Road’ (now called the ‘freight line’), which diverged from the New Road at Tapton Junction, just north of Chesterfield station. The New Road was mainly used for passenger services, with such titled trains as the ‘Thames Clyde Express’ and ‘The Devonian’ being among the many other passenger trains that frequented this line, plus the occasional heavy freight services for Gowholes and Manchester. The route to Manchester diverged from the main line just south of Dore station, at Dore West Junction, which formed the…

On December 16 1926, the Board of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway approved an order to be placed with North British Locomotive Company of Glasgow for the construction of 50 ‘improved 4-6-0 tender locomotives’ to be delivered within 35 weeks, for the ‘express’ purpose of working the Anglo-Scottish services. Twenty-five, numbered 6100-6124, were thereby built at the Queen’s Park Works and 25, numbered 6125-6149, at the Hyde Park Works. (Later the remaining 20 ‘Royal Scots’ were built by the LMS itself at Derby.) No. 6109, originally to be named Argyll, but formally named Royal Engineer early in 1928, was built September 11 1927 as Works No. 23604 and despatched to Crewe North. (There is a published ‘Works Official’ photograph of No. 6109 in photographic (or ‘works’) grey, but it…

The Oxford-Witney-Fairford branch line closed in June 1962, almost 60 years ago. I marked the 50th anniversary of its closure in the June 2012 Steam World, and now it’s time to take a different look back at the place where my interest in GWR stations began. The Late Michael Harris took a bold leap of faith in me when he took his proposal for a book on GWR Country Stations to the Ian Allan books committee for approval. It was to be based on a couple of articles I had written for Railway World magazine after my return to the company in 1977, following a decade of misery working in the advertisement department of a local newspaper. At that time, most Ian Allan railway books were about locomotives, trains or…