Innholdsfortegnelse for Volume 37 No 11 - November 2023 i Backtrack

The Peak District of Derbyshire receives particular coverage this month with an article on Buxton and a colour feature on the former Peak Forest main line. By way of a ‘taster’ here is another photograph by GAVIN MORRISON, taken from New Mills South Junction signal box on 26th April 1984, showing English Electric Class 37s Nos.37 029 and 132 double-heading a CEMEX train from the Peak Forest sidings to the Parkstone terminal at Hope Street, Salford. The train is taking the Marple and Ashburys line, passing a gang of permanent way workers standing well clear. Beyond the railway boundary the ‘maximum speed’ road sign might seem a little premature in view of the sharp right turn over the bridge!…

It was about two o’clock in the morning, warm and slightly humid and I was sitting on a railway rail, sipping a mug of sweet lemon tea that had been brewed in a cauldron over an open fire, desperately trying to keep my eyes open as I had been working for eighteen hours. Sleep was slowly winning; I felt I just needed to shut my eyes for a few minutes and I would be fine when a crash of breaking crockery and harsh voices shouting in the Cantonese dialect brought me fully awake. In that split second between being asleep and awake the thought occurred to me – what am I, a British Railways officer, doing here, in the New Territories of Hong Kong surrounded by a Kowloon Canton Railway…

British Railways regularly arranged Open Days at railway premises of interest, notably locomotive works. On Saturday 27th August 1960 an Open Day was held at Derby Works. Such events were always popular with locomotive enthusiasts – and it’s easy to see why! Crowd control barriers and ‘health & safety’ restrictions appear to be absent and exhibits such as the BR Class 8 Pacific No.71000 Duke of Gloucester, Caprotti Standard Class 5 4-6-0 No.73135 and 9F 2-10-0 No.92139 were fully available for exploration. This included climbing all over them, walking along boilers, standing on cab roofs and sitting on chimneys. An LMS 8F and the preserved Midland Compound No.1000 can also be seen to be present, also a Type 2 diesel which is being ignored. The day appears to be a…

FROM THE PENDRAGON ARCHIVES…

In 1949/50 I was serving the early years of my apprenticeship as a fitter at Angerstein Permanent Way Works, in South London, when National Service intervened. I could have waited until I was 21 and finished my apprenticeship, but a dreaded cloud of despondency was hanging over me at the thought of military life. I decided to get it over and done with. I was nineteen at the time. At that time my father held the position of Deputy Chief Permanent Way Inspector at Purley, south of Croydon, with the family residing in a railway owned property at Orpington. Fortunately the management was extremely sympathetic with my dilemma, and had offered to keep my position open should I decide to join up, thereby enabling completion of the final part of…

Prologue “Lowry looked at the Stockport Viaduct and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He said that he was haunted by it, the millions of bricks and the ordinary heroic men who had dug up the clay, baked the bricks, loaded them, unloaded them, cemented them together, and faded into exhausted obscurity, anonymously leaving their masterpiece.” Paul Morley: The North A traveller over the viaduct in the late nineteenth century would have seen through his carriage window the rooftops of many terraced houses, intermingled with textile mills, the town’s gas works and the infrastructure of the Cheshire Lines Committee in the form of George’s Road Sidings and Club House Sidings. Today, the very busy M60 motorway passes through one of the viaduct’s 26 arches, giving the driver and passengers a…

In the months that followed the publication of the document Modernisation and Reequipment of British Railways in 1955 by the British Transport Commission (BTC) a number of diesel and electric locomotives was ordered. Initially, the British Transport Commission identified three main power ranges for its new diesel locomotive fleet. Type A covered 8001,000hp for freight duties, Type B 1,000hp1,250hp for mixed traffic work and Type C was for locomotives of 2,000hp and over for what were described as ‘heavy duties’. It proposed building ten Type C locomotives in BR workshops and these would form the basis for future BR standards. These locomotives were part of 160 approved in principle for construction on 17th November 1954. Construction was authorised by the BTC on 17th February 1955 as part of the 1956…

Some Victorian newspapers were noted for how they could be critical, almost excoriatingly so, of the railway companies – probably the best-known of these was The Times, known colloquially as ‘The Thunderer’. Others were generally less critical except when there was an obviously serious failing and these papers tended to be provincial rather than national. Two which fell into this category were the Dundee Advertiser and its stablemate The Weekly News, both not having been published for many years. The latter was published in a number of different editions, tailored to different parts of Scotland although all were edited and printed in Dundee. It was not unknown for these two newspapers to run articles in a number of parts to celebrate various aspects of railway life including the working lives…

“SERIOUS ACCIDENT TO THE SCOTCH EXPRESS” screamed the bold headline of the Mail newspaper on Monday 1st October 1888 and for good measure added a sub-headline of “NARROW ESCAPE OF PASSENGERS” In the style of the time, the language flowery and descriptive, exaggerated and speculative, the Mail gave a single paragraph report of the accident in the following terms. “On Friday night a serious accident, which was fortunately not attended with loss of life, occurred to the Midland Pullman express that left Glasgow at a quarter-past nine. The train consisted of six ordinary carriages, the sleeping car, and two luggage vans, and was drawn by two engines. At Thornhill it was stopped and detained for about five minutes in consequence of a slow train being only a short distance in…

Ashchurch station, on the Midland main line between Birmingham and Bristol, had more of interest than a Gloucesterrshire village might have expected. It was a junction for two branches: east to Evesham and Redditch, west to Malvern Wells and Worcester, while a connecting link between them crossed the main line on the level. With all these long closed, Ashchurch station itself closed in 1971 but was reopened on the same site in 1997.…

In Part One of this article (37/9) I outlined the background, building, opening and operation of the branches from Newton Abbot to Moretonhampstead and to Exeter via Heathfield, looked at the traffic the lines saw, the locomotives used and took a makebelieve journey to Moretonhampstead. In Part Two I shall continue our imaginary journey on the Teign Valley line from Heathfield to Exeter (see map in Part One), examine the decline and closure of the lines, and comment on what remains and what might yet be. Returning to Heathfield to continue our imaginary 1952 journey, we take an up train to Exeter following a sinuous course initially along the Teign Valley hugging the bank of the Teign River. First stop is Chudleigh Knighton Halt opened 9th June 1924 south of…

For almost as long as the Talyllyn Railway has been a preserved railway, there has been a museum at its western terminus at Tywyn (named Towyn until 1975) Wharf station. Containing an interesting variety of narrow gauge engines, rolling stock and other items from across the British Isles, the initiation and development of the museum over 70 years is an interesting story in its own right. Before the Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society had even been set up, running the original fleet in a museum-like demonstration manner had been considered by L. T. C. Rolt. Owing to the clear need to relay the line, and the effort and expense required, Rolt considered converting the line to 10¼ inch gauge with a fleet of new-build locomotives and carriages which could match the…