Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2025 i Steam World

In a recent issue, a reader’s letter referred to certain locomotives apparently being ‘camera-shy’ and seldom appearing in published photographs. The subject of this month’s ‘Comment’ picture was certainly not camera-shy. Indeed, this is ‘9F’ 2-10-0 No. 92001’s second appearance in a ‘Comment’ having previously appeared as recently as November 2024. In that picture, it was at Hatton with a train of new cars, but I did mention that it had previously served a stint on the Somerset & Dorset and here it is heading a local train on the S&D in the high summer of 1962. Whilst it is hard to ignore a ‘9F’, even a grimy, care-worn eight-yearold example on a Somerset & Dorset local train, it isn’t the locomotive that’s the real talking point in this picture.…

The East Coast Main Line in the 1950s, unlike some routes, was not known for its double-headers. Many may be surprised to learn that two such trains departed from King’s Cross on Mondays to Fridays. Photographs of these services have appeared in books and magazines from time to time but, sometimes, with misleading captions. So let’s have a look at the daily procedure and try to dispel some of the myths and mysteries about these trains. Departure times varied slightly over the years so I have used the winter 1957/58 timings in this description. These daily double-headed workings operated until September 1958. They were a consequence of two evening peak services from King’s Cross being formed of portions which divided at Hitchin and went their separate ways. Both of these…

By the time the serious number crunching kicked in, I had spent many hours line-siding at Haines Bridge, on the London side of Weybridge station. The 30 ‘Merchant Navies’ were working between Waterloo and Bournemouth and from London down to the West Country, as far as Exeter. Their home sheds were Nine Elms, Bournemouth, Salisbury and Exmouth Junction, with a number based at Weymouth right at the end of Southern steam in July 1967. For a while, some were based at sheds on the South Eastern Section. These included: • No. 35001 Channel Packet: Stewarts Lane, period ending January 25 1957; Nine Elms, p/e June 14 1959 • No. 35014 Nederland Line: Stewarts Lane, p/e June 4 1955; Nine Elms, p/e June 5 1956 • No. 35015 Rotterdam Lloyd: Stewarts…

WIN A PRIZE WORTH £70! This month we will be giving away a special prize worth £70! A copy of Steam Photographer by Gavin Morrison along witha copy of An Illustrated History of Her Majeysty’s Railway Inspectorate from 1840 by Ian Prosser & David Keay to the sender of the first correct answer opened on October 17, 2025. Answers (with your name and address) to SW460 Crossword, Steam World, 4 Milnyard Square, Orton Southgate, Peterborough PE2 6GX. Photocopies welcome, but please do not enclose correspondence. Crossword compiled by Alan Frost. Clues Across 1 Minor or serious consequence of crash (6) 4 Gresley ‘A3’ No. 60067 evoking old Soviet motor cars (5) 9 Drink (vermouth) in the railway bar (7) 10 Thomas, engineer who built the harbour for the Canterbury & Whitstable Railway (7) 11…

The Beeching ‘axe’ was still swinging in 1965, with 600 miles of railway scheduled to close. That was considerably less than the 1,000 miles that went in 1964. But the figure went up again, to 750 miles in 1966. The first closures of the year came that January. These were lines in Wales and western Shropshire and I travelled on them in November 1964, describing them in SW450. When we got to Llanfyllin, it was a very wet, dark autumnal evening. Therefore, I remained in the compartment. It was only the photograph in SW451 (Great Shot!, p34-35) that showed me that I had missed! The next closure was the 20½-mile North Devon & Cornwall Joint Railway between Halwill and Torrington. Opened as late as 1925, essentially for the china clay…

An invitation to share in a holiday with my son’s family took me to South Devon in July. My eldest granddaughter had done her homework and deliberately chosen a location with railways not far away. Indeed, our holiday home seemed strategically placed within easy reach of Brunel’s Royal Albert Bridge, the Looe branch, the Plym Valley Railway (at Marsh Mills) and the South Devon Railway (formerly the Totnes-Ashburton branch). I had been to all four in the past but the two Devon branch lines had not been visited in a very long time. I think my most recent visit to the South Devon had been when it was still the Dart Valley Railway. My only visit to the Plym Valley Railway was some 40 years ago, in connection with an…

How many young people get to see a working factory today? At the end of the street in Westbury where I lived in the 1950s was a factory making best Wiltshire worsted cloth. The doors and windows were always open during the summer as it was a hot, working environment, with very noisy machinery. It was full of people doing whatever they did with the looms. The long, overhead driving shafts were rattling away, driven by a steam engine. Seeing this was a daily experience as I made my way to and from school. It’s a scene that’s long gone. Some 30-odd miles away is another town that’s lost its industrial past. Few Steam World readers will be unaware of the importance of Swindon Works or its history. But one…

The 1960s were notable for the use of many of the surviving classes that, previously, were normally only seen on goods trains being used on specials and railtours. The sight of some of these locomotives in charge of passenger stock was quitea novelty. Factor in that these specials often passed over routes that would not normally play host to passenger trains, or were shortly to be closed and you had the makings of something very special indeed. In fact, some of these goods-only lines, such as the Cromford & High Peak for example, were unsuitable for coaches and passengers were carried in brakevans or, sometimes, open wagons. The first tour in our survey ran on April 3 1960 and featured the first passenger turn for brand new ‘9F’ No. 92220…

The early days of preservation are full of tales of withdrawn locomotives passed over because of some defect that would be considered almost trivial today. But what brought about a locomotive’s withdrawal? Discovered in the archives is a British Railways Shopping Proposal form, for ‘Black Five’ No. 45304. This engine was one of 227 built by Armstrong Whitworth to Lot 131 between August 1936 and December 1937. It entered service month ending January 1937 and had spent 30 years simply doing the job that it was built for, in the quiet, unflappable way of the ‘Black Five’. The Shopping Proposal was dated April 20 1967, by which time the engine was based at Bolton shed. It had received an H Intermediate repair at Cowlairs (dated July 11 1964) and, by…