Sommaire pour July 2023 de Steam World

Eexcept Saturdays. S Saturdays only. Those notes were generally found most often in timetables covering the summer holiday season. Why Saturday? In those days most hotels and guest houses were a good deal less flexible than they are today. One or two night stays, which are common enough today, were unusual in seaside holiday towns and were generally the preserve of ‘commercial hotels’ used by travelling salesmen. Holiday hotels offered rooms by the week, with or without breakfast and/or evening meal. Saturday was the usual changeover day when guests were required to be gone by 10am so that rooms could be prepared for the next round of guests, arriving in the late afternoon. Railways, of course, catered for that changeover day by providing extra services to seaside towns that were…

The light in St. Ives, so they say, is perfect for artists. I have a painting of the seafront and harbour over the fireplace in my sitting room, Barnwell station ‘s former waiting room. I bought the painting while riding and researching Cornish branch lines for RAIL magazine a dozen or more years ago. However, my acquaintance with the four-and-a-half miles branch line from St. Erth goes way back before that. I ought to hate St.Ives. As a child, I cut my foot on the metal ‘blade’ of my spade while jumping on sandcastles on Porthminster beach. Seventy years on, I still have the scar. On another occasion I was the subject of an attempted abduction. In the crowded street I managed to give the guy the slip. However, none…

“A triumph of British workmanship and creative engineering, the London Midland & Scottish Railway's streamlined express train, ‘The Coronation Scot’, made its first appearance at the company's workshops at Crewe yesterday,” said The Times on May 26 1937. “The whole design of the locomotive,” it continued, “gives the impression of power and speed.” It's very difficult to imagine just what impact seeing a brand new streamlined ‘Princess Coronation’ must have had. Gresley's ‘A4s’, with their mix of Bugattiinspired nose and Douglas DC-3 inspired valance, were graceful thoroughbreds that looked as though they just slipped through the air; the huge, bulbous and Germanic nose and those massive 6ft 9in wheels of the ‘Princess Coronations’ gave the opposite effect. This was a huge, clenched fist of steel that would bulldoze the air…

It was during a holiday with my grandparents in east Lancashire that I made a day visit to see the delights of York, at least the grand railway station there, plus a tour of the old railway museum in the yard below Queen Street. In those days, the rail journey to Yorkshire from the east Lancashire towns of Burnley, Nelson and Colne was straightforward. Trains linked those places over the now-closed railway link between Colne and Skipton and onwards to Leeds, from which York was an easy add-on to the journey. On this day, I had to change trains at Skipton and was delighted to be able to photograph Midland compound 4-4-0 No.41068 arriving from Leeds with a train of non-corridor stock, most likely heading for Blackpool, via Blackburn and…

Introduction Imagine, if you will, going to work and finding in your ‘in tray’ various requests for additional or different classes of motive power and types of rolling stock to meet actual or planned requirements throughout the railway system. Imagine also, requests to arrange trains for State Occasions and visits by foreign dignitaries, for national sporting events, trade fairs, returning military personnel and a host of other reasons. Surely, for many readers, this would be a dream job! This article describes the origins and developments through times of peace and war towards what became known as the role of the Operating Officer for British Railways, later becoming Chief Operating Officer as new organisations evolved. The first holder of that office after Nationalisation of the railways in 1948 was Victor Michael…

In different ways, the Brighton Line has been part of members of my family's lives ever since it was constructed through the Sussex Weald between 1839 and 1841. For in 1839, my fourth great uncle, Jeremiah Bartley, opened a pub called ‘The Oak’ in the village of Hurstpierpoint to cater for the thirsty navvies building the earthworks and tunnels between Haywards Heath and Brighton. Apparently no fewer than 70 men, almost the total able-bodied male population of Hurstpierpoint, were attracted away from the farms and shops of the village to take part in this exciting new development, just a mile or so away. It is hard to imagine that, equipped with only horses, carts and shovels, these men and many more from other villages and further afield, were able to…