Innehållsförteckning för May 2023 från Steam World

Do you fancy a pint?” “Wouldn’t mind. Where are we going?” “Follow me. I’ll show you.” This was usually the conversation between a driver and a fireman whenever the chance of a pint arose, frequently after being relieved and waiting to relieve another crew. I Was booked with a notorious ‘ale-cart’. He didn’t taste the first four. The first was gone before you had the chance to pick yours up! His name was George, the surname I’ll keep quite about, lest any 16A man will know who I am writing about! We had a job at Nottingham where we would relieve Westhouses men at Wilford Road with a train for Peterborough, about 7:30pm. We picked up a ‘fitted head’ in Nottingham Yard East. It was Boots or Players bonded cargo…

During the BR steam era a holiday excursion to the Norfolk coast was still very much in fashion and achievable, although the connection with the railways was loosening with increased car ownership. People were also discovering foreign holidays (my first one would have been in about 1965), so the wilting was on the wall for a network of lines which served the Coastal resorts. Today the national rail network can take you to King’s Lynn but no further. The lovely line to Hunstanton was a late Beeching closure in 1969. You can still reach Sheringham and Cromer on the north Norfolk coast, and finally along the Wherry Lines to Great Yarmouth. That’s your lot, though. When the UK’s railways were nationalised, in 1948 there was so much more, the legacy,…

The late 18th century had been the era of canal-building, giving the first-ever opportunity to move large quantities of heavy goods over considerable distances by connecting navigable rivers with man-made canals. However, many of the canal promoters were also aware of other developments in transport. Among them was William James, whose own mining interests had made him aware of the use of horseworked waggonways using iron rails. In the early 1820s, having seen Trevithick’s steam locomotive demonstrated, he began formulating plans for a Central Junction Railway or Tramroad linking the midlands canal system at Stratford-upon-Avon with the Thames at Oxford. It was much too ambitious for the time but it appealed to inhabitants of the hill country between Stratford and Moreton-in Marsh, an area bereft of a decent transport system…

So, to another Sunday, the date of which is sadly forgotten, but it was in the late Autumn as it was dark by the time we visited the last shed. Although it included 1A Willesden and 81 A, Old Oak Common, the other four sheds were based on the Eastern Region in London. However, on the Saturday we purchased a Twin Rover (with a white background) as it included travel on both bus and the London Underground at the cost of 10 shillings [50p]. On the Sunday we caught a local train to Waterloo, from Weybridge, saving a couple of hours travelling, with our first objective being 34A Kings Cross. So, at Waterloo, we took the underground to Kings Cross, paid a brief visit to the station to note down…

GWR 2-4-0T No. 1384 was at Hemyock Regarding the photograph of Lambourn Valley 2-4-OT No. 1384 at ‘an unknown location’ (page 49 Steam World April) surely it is at Henryock? Howard Mason, Sale, Cheshire Memories of the WCML at Blisworth around 1960 From time to time I like to browse through past copies of Steam World and during one such bout of nostalgia I came across the tremendously evocative article ‘Fate, Steam and The Copy Pit Line’ (issue September 2018) by Nigel Harris. I must admit that this set the old memory brain cells working with a vengeance! In the 1950s and early 1960s I used to travel the 5½ miles from Northampton Castle station to the main line venue of Blisworth on the Euston-Glasgow-route. There were usually two Ivatt…

The funny thing about winter, is that once you’ve got past Christmas, all thoughts start to focus on spring and in particular, holidays. It is something that the railways have been well aware of for a long time. In the past, railway publications extolling the virtues of where you could go (by train, of course) for your holidays, such as the Great Western Railways’s Holiday Haunts were sold by the tens of thousands. The idea continued through the early years of British Railways and today seems rather quaint when you can get all the information you want and book things world-wide by using a computer. (Quaint enough to make these historic publications highly collectable) Though, on reflection, this publishing phenomenon is still there in one form at least, as specialist…

I freely admit that I’m quite obsessive about certain parts of the old railway! One of those obsessions is the Lambourn Valley Railway, which has fascinated me from the moment I first saw it. Gathering a selection of pictures and producing last month’s feature on the line was a real pleasure. As part of my research I looked for photographs and other ephemera and put ‘Lambourn’ into the Ebay search box in case any pictures came up. They didn’t, but what did come up was an original letter on Lambourn Valley Railway headed notepaper. A most unusual item to come up for sale, it was hand-written in black ink and concerned arrangements for funding the construction of the light railway and accepting a reduced offer for construction costs from a…

Following our trials and tribulations, next day, No. 1859 was back in service and on asking Jack Meanwell about the gent on the train, it seemed he had complained, but had been told “if you ask daft questions when men are doing their best you can expect similar answers.” It transpired that the blastpipe on No. 1860 had been rocking on loose bolts which still gave the petticoat pipe a clean edge all round suggesting a centralized blast pipe, But when in motion it rocked about, thereby destroying the smokebox vacuum and inhibiting steaming. That helped to explain the woolly smoke at the chimney after each firing and why it came round so quickly while standing. After that, when looking in the smokebox, I always used the shovel to make…

When Brunel took the decision to build the South Devon Railway along the beach between Dawlish Warren, Dawlish and Teignmouth, little did he realise this Was to become one of the most scenic and instantly recognisable sections of line in Great Britain. Brunel had previously favoured an inland route, avoiding the coastal section completely, but this would have required extensive earthworks and several lengthy tunnels. The coast route, on the other hand, was Cheaper to construct and also directly served the towns of Dawlish and Teignmouth. It appears Brunel did not anticipate that placing a railway next to the sea would result in any major problems, although in this, of course, time has shown even him to be mistaken! Not only has the line always been particularly expensive to maintain,…

Bulleids Go North Having previously looked at locomotives which visited the Southern Region from elsewhere, we now look at the reverse process, the sending of SR steam off the Region during the 1960s, often at a time when the SR itself was short of serviceable motive power. The regular operation of Bulleid ‘Pacifies’ to destinations north of the SR’s territory was generally confined to the Reading and Oxford route and the Somerset and Dorset line, where they were eventually displaced by the much mote suitable ‘9F’ 2-10-0s. However, there were some interesting exceptions, even in the pre-railtour era. December 1960 saw the diversion of the ‘Pines Express’ off the S&D due to flooding, the service running from Bournemouth via Salisbury, Bath, Yate South Junction and thence its normal route of…