Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2022 i Steam World

When I rejoined the Steam World team last summer, I did so because I knew I would enjoy it. True, I like some aspects of the Editor’s job more than others, but when I was speaking this morning to the lady who has taken over editorship of our local parish magazine, I realised that I’m not the only one who gets a ‘buzz’ out of putting a magazine together and seeing the finished result. There’s no doubt that one of the most pleasing aspects of producing Steam World is writing ‘Comment’. Once the words start to flow, the writing is easy. What isn’t so easy is finding 12 subjects per year to write about. I recently took a nostalgic trip through the bound volume of Steam World 2012 (for some…

With additional notes by PROFESSOR ANDREW McNAUGHTON formerly Chief Engineer, Network Rail and Technical Director, High Speed 2 Ltd. By August 12 1948, parts of the Eyewater in rural Berwickshire had seen fully one-third of their annual rainfall in just six days. This resulted in the washing away of seven ECML bridges between the former North British Railway wayside stations at Reston and Grantshouse (both closed on May 4 1964). Huge amounts of additional damage was also done to the track and infrastructure, including the sudden appearance of a mile-long lake on the high side of a 60ft embankment after a culvert collapse at nearby Ayton. In total, 20 bridges in the surrounding area were washed away and a further seven were very badly damaged. So severe was the damage…

Steam World Historical Consultant, the late Richard Strange, was a good friend of mine -and this magazine -for nigh on a quarter-century. He and I shared many laughs together in our regular phone chats and occasional meetings for fish and chips, when he lived in Bingham. We by no means always agreed and so these meetings were often lively, and always entertaining. I always learned knew things talking to Richard. He was an uncompromising stickler for historical accuracy and his knowledge was both deep and broad, ranging over many aspects of railway history. Richard’s specialities were locomotive histories and operations. Woe betide you if you got something wrong, especially if it was something which in Richard’s world was basic and elementary: my goodness, could he ‘let rip’ at what he…

Keats may have been moved to poetic heights by looking at Chapman’s edition of Homer but for a boy of 11 or 12 in the 1950s or 1960s, what book could possibly compare with his first Ian Allan ABC Combined Volume?! That fascinating and wonderfully laid out encyclopaedic publication shed vivid light on the railway scene around us and treats hitherto undreamed of in other parts of the country. One of its fascinations was the single locomotive. To the new enthusiast there was little knowledge of what had gone before, nothing to show whether a locomotive was the last remaining example of something once commonplace or a genuine one-off. I offer here some memories of a range of one-offs as I came across them in a range of Ian Allan…

send your letters to Steam World, 4 Milnyard Square, Orton South gate, Peterborugh PE2 6GX or steamworld@choicemag.co.uk Turbomotive souvenir This small item was very kindly given to me recently by Terry Burnett, a former employee of GEC Alstom (Metropolitan Vickers). A former colleague of his, a turbine design engineer, on his retirement from the company, passed to Terry a tobacco tin containing a few small turbine blades. These were original spares for the ‘Turbomotive’, Stanier ‘Pacific’ No. 6202. The Engineer had been given them originally by H.L.Guy (Sir Henry), who designed the actual Turbine. The blade in the photograph, approximately 50mm long, depicts the original ‘bulb root’ fixing and has been suitably plinth-mountedby Terry on my behalf. Those few surviving blades are all that apparently remains of this historic locomotive.…

Realising to my horror that it had been a whole year without a visit to Bristol and Swindon, I quickly applied for permits. Luck was with me, receiving them in time for a weekend ‘bash’ on October 20-23 1962, to one of my favourite areas. This time I would travel overnight on the Saturday, by the Birkenhead-Paddington and start with the Reading area first (which was a major error of judgement that I would not repeat). Setting off on Saturday night in time to connect at Chester with the Paddington service, all went well for the first part of the journey with a compartment to myself and a takeaway cup of tea at Shrewsbury from the platform trolley, but from then on it was downhill! With several passengers joining at…

Ispent several years in the Combined Cadet Force at school and the only thing that Ican remember about it is my good fortune to be selected with a friend for a 14-day training course on the Longmoor Military Railway, during the Easter Holidays of 1952. Neither of us had any idea what was in store for us when we arrived at Exeter St David’s on April 16 to join the 8.10am from Ilfracombe to Waterloo. As often happened at busy times, portions from west of Exeter had additional coaches and the train worked forward independently from Exeter Central to Waterloo. It arrived behind No. 34001 Exeter, was more than a single-engine load for the bank to Central so was assisted in rear by one of the resident bank engines, ‘E1/R’…

Part 2: Day Return to Weybridge, Surrey At the end of Part One (Steam World, April) Iwas becoming bored with the same old locomotives passing home day after day. It was one of those unwritten truths of trainspotting: if you always spotted in the same place, you would always see the same locomotives. Though I had begun trainspotting in the garden of The End House, I did not really need to go outside. Inside the house, there was virtually no view of the railway from downstairs but you could certainly hear them, and not just the ‘Q1’ 0-6-0s and the rattling French windows. Ordinary goods trains with 10ft-wheelbase wagons made a pretty substantial noise on the jointed track and there seemed to be a rail-joint right behind the TV! Mum…

PART ONE It will be 54 years ago this summer that the engine shed at Rose Grove finally ‘closed its doors’ to steam traction in August 1968. This form of motive power had reigned supreme since the railway arrived in Burnley in 1848. Perhaps now is as a good time as any to make some record of what happened there during existence up to its closure, while the memory of life there is still a distant recollection in the mind. If you travel along the M65, over the site where the shed was situated between Rose Gove’s Liverpool Road overbridge and the canal underbridge proceeding in the direction of Hapton, there is now little or nothing at all to indicate there was ever anything other than a roadway. Consequently, as…