Innehållsförteckning för August 2024 från Steam World

Regular readers will know that I buy original railway slides – colour transparencies – on eBay. There are several regular sellers and I find it worth keeping an eye on what's available, not because I want to squirrel it away in ‘my collection’ but the reverse: I want it to be enjoyed by a wider audience in Steam World! Here's a lovely example. It's a pity that the weather isn't a bit brighter, but this is Bath Spa, with stone cottages and the fine tower of St. Mark's church providing the backdrop. A westbound goods has come to a stand, almost on the bridge over the river Avon. The locomotive blows off; the driver takes a break and reads his newspaper. I'll sometimes spend £30 or £40 on a slide…

It was one of the most famous conversations in railway history. Surely, Caerphilly Castle can't be more powerful than Flying Scotsman? asked LNER General Manager Sir Ralph Wedgwood. Why not find out? retorted GWR General Manager Sir Felix Pole. The conversation probably didn't go exactly like this – but that was the gist. As a result, ‘Castle’ No. 4079 Pendennis Castle went to King's Cross while ‘A1’ No. 4474 Victor Wild moved over to the GWR. The trials took place from April 27 until May 2 1925, the previous week having been spent acclimatising each set of visiting crew with the road. Pendennis Castle, crewed by Driver Young and Fireman Pearce, was initially partnered with ‘A1’ No. 4475 Flying Fox until it suffered a hot box on the opening day…

You can't understate the importance of William Stanier's arrival on the LMS on January 1 1932. Relations between Crewe and Derby factions had eased but the bubbling tension always threatened to boil over. This was an improvement over the early years of the LMS which H.A.V. Bulleid described as “dark and foreboding”. The ‘Stanier Revolution’ had started in 1933 when Nos. 6200 and 6201 were built, followed by the first batches of his ‘Class 5’ 2-6-0s. But the ‘revolution’ really kicked into gear in 1934 when the first of two new 4-6-0s appeared. Is the ‘Black Five’ the best main line locomotive ever built for use in Britain? They were powerful, rugged and had a decent turn of speed. They were versatile enough to haul all but the fastest or…

The Eastern Region train planning teams could see an opportunity to improve matters on the former Great Central Railway ‘London Extension’. Although timings had to be on the basis of unfitted trains, the planners recognised that the new ‘9F’ 2-10-0s could enable an out and home Annesley-Woodford Halse-Annesley journey to be completed within an eight-hour shift. Before that, the long-standing arrangement was for enginemen, working ‘O1’ 2-8-0s, to be relieved in each direction at Bulwell Common. The revised arrangements were to become fully available for Winter Working Timetable 1957/58… just as the ex-GCR metals south from Heath, near Chesterfield, passed to the London Midland Region. Table 1 shows the ‘9F’ take over at Annesley. Their superior braking enabled the average speed to be increased by 5mph to 30mph. The ‘9F’…

The D-Day landings are still, 80 years on, the largest seaborne invasion in history. The statistics are quite mindblowing. Over 7,000 vessels took part, with 5,000 of them responsible for landing the 150,000 plus troops on the Normandy beaches. Allied aircraft flew 14,000 sorties on the night of June 5/6 and dropped 18,000 paratroopers, who had to seize key objectives before the first troops could land. Operation Overlord would have been impossible without the mammoth logistical build up which had taken place in the months beforehand. American forces started to arrive in Britain in January 1942, weeks after the US entered the war. It was called the ‘Friendly Invasion’ for good reason. Take East Anglia for example, where the USAAF ended up with 70 airfields – either ex-RAF stations or…

1954, and the world was still in recovery from the long and destructive war that had touched all but the very remotest areas. Britons could be forgiven for thinking that the war hadn't ended nine years earlier: meat was still on ration (it ended that July) and Winston Churchill was Prime Minister. The Second World War had left Europe's railways in tatters, a situation not helped by what was later called the Cold War. It disrupted trade within Europe, made co-operation at railway level hard won and relations between staff across borders important. It was against this background that 500 delegates representing the railway networks of 30 countries gathered in the UK for the ‘International Railway Congress’. This was a regular gathering of senior railway staff, first held in Brussels…

Though Beeching's Reshaping of British Railways was published in March 1963 it took a year or more to work through the consultations and legal process to actually close a railway or a station. Those which closed in 1963 were largely in the closure process before the report was published, though they are often counted as ‘Beeching closures’. They were listed separately in the appendices to the report. In England, that amounted to some 250 stations, in Scotland 18 and in Wales, a total of 78. From those figures it appears that Scottish Region management were much more reluctant to propose closures, presumably because access and alternative arrangements were much more difficult there. Every closure required the establishment of a statutory replacement bus service for a minimum six months and in…

BENJAMIN GIMBERT G.C. (1903-1976) Ben (pictured right) was the 6th child of a farm worker and was born in Ely. He was forced to leave school at 11 to work on the land. He joined the railway at 15, starting as a ‘call boy’, progressing to a cleaner. He became a fireman at March in 1921 and passed out as a driver in 1938. After many weeks in hospital he made a miraculous recovery. However he had to return frequently for treatment and was never the same again. Locomotives named after him: Class 47 No. 47577 (1981-1987); 47574 (1987-1997); Class 66 66077 (2004 onwards) JAMES NIGHTALL G.C. (1922-1944) James was born in Littleport, in the Isle of Ely. He was an only child and started as a cleaner at March…