Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2022 i Steam Days

James Harrold The following account is based on the extensive diary notes of Leslie R Freeman, his opening gambit to Day One of this great adventure being ‘This was the start of an excellent week spent in the West Country in the company of Jim Harrold, during which we covered most of the lines in Cornwall and Devon using West of England Rail Rover tickets.’ On that first day – Sunday, 29 May 1960 – the itinerary was largely based on getting to Cornwall, so this account covers the outward journey and also Day 2 to include a flavour of the week away from home. We commenced our holiday by travelling down to Truro from London (Waterloo), changing onto the former Great Western Railway route at Plymouth. The day was…

R J Blenkinsop Author Sunday afternoons in the early 1960s often found me cycling past Wormwood Scrubs to the Grand Union Canal and Old Oak Common. Slipping through the canal side fencing, the roundhouse was invariably full of ‘Kings’, ‘Castles’, ‘Halls’, ‘Modified Halls’, ‘Counties’, ‘4700s’, pannier tanks, Prairie tanks, BR Standard ‘9Fs’, and Stanier ‘8Fs’, with No 48431 carrying an 81A shedplate a seemingly permanent resident. At the time I not only collected names and numbers but also the numbers stamped on the coupling and connecting rods, and the details of any works plates. No 48431 had plates that said ‘LMS BUILT 1944 G.W.R.’ which made me scratch my head and wonder about their provenance. It was only after a visit to the Public Relations Department at Paddington that all…

L W Rowe/Colour-Rail.com/3710 Probably none of our readers will have heard of such a project for Glasgow, which is hardly surprising, but in fact Glasgow has effectively had two ‘Crossrails’ for over 100 years, and had closed one and reopened it long before the London one got going! The two lines ran east-west through central Glasgow only a few hundred yards apart, having been built by rival companies. Each served the central business district, industrial areas along the north bank of the Clyde to the west, plus various suburbs to the west and east, the northerly of the two lines extending as far as Edinburgh, whilst the southerly one went into the industrial and coal mining areas to the south-east. The more northerly line was opened by the Glasgow City…

R C Riley When you were at school growing up, what did you dream of doing or being? Were you the alleged universal child (boy in those days) who wanted to be an engine driver? Or was it thoughts of being a pilot, a sea captain, or an action man hero that filled your adolescent mind? For me railways were in my blood. My father worked in the Ipswich area for the Great Eastern Railway (briefly), the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) and then, until his retirement in 1965, British Railways (BR). He had started out in the running department as a cleaner and was progressing up the grades to fireman when an injury, incurred while hand-coaling a locomotive from ground level, curtailed that career and he transferred to…