Índex per March 2024 a Steam World

I'm not sure if I should apologise for the above photograph. I am sure some readers will dislike it. There's no train, no track, a dumped car and some derelict buildings. They are, however, railway buildings – or, at least, they once were. I'm always a bit wary of showing ‘dead’ railways and derelict railway equipment. I intensely dislike pictures of withdrawn locomotives but they are an historic truth that we can't escape. My Model Rail colleague, ace photographer Chris Nevard, has recently published a set of pictures that he took at Barry scrapyard many years ago. He'd gone to South Wales to take artistic pictures of striking coal miners but found none. Instead, he exercised his art among the rusting hulks of steam locomotives in Dai Woodham's scrapyard. Chris…

It is difficult to over-state the perceived Iimportance of Windsor in the Victorian era. Alreadya long-established Royal residence, it was the adoption of Windsor as ‘home’ by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert which really boosted the town's importance. I recall, as a small child, when taken to Windsor by bus, being told that “we might see the Queen”. I was terrified! To me, the Queen was the Alice in Wonderland character who had peoples’ heads chopped off! However, there was a cake shop opposite Windsor Castle, which sold frog-shaped iced sponge cakes. Those were worth the risk! I lived in the Royal Borough of New Windsor from 1973 until 1992. Understanding the geography and history is important to our story and it's not in any sense logical. The town, known…

The southern end of the West Coast Main Line was in a state of transition in 1963. Steam was in decline but electrification wasn't yet complete so English Electric Type 4s had taken over almost all of the long distance trains (D1 or D2 in the Working Timetable) while Sulzer Type 2s worked stopping trains to Tring, Bletchley, Northampton and Rugby. These trains were designated D240, denoting maximum eight-coach loads. Steam substitutions on the D240s was quite common but less so on the D1s or D2s. Any train without the above designations - mainly summer extras on Fridays and Saturdays - could be steam or diesel hauled. The 1963 summer timetable ran from June 17 to September 8. I spent seven summer Saturdays spotting and photographing the London end of…

BALLATER It was Prince Albert's purchase of Balmoral Castle that reinvigorated efforts to build a railway along the banks of the River Dee in Aberdeenshire. The Deeside Railway had been authorised on July 16 1846. It would link Aboyne to Ferryhill anda junction on the Aberdeen Railway (later part of the North British Railway), a distance of 30 miles. However, financial constraints left the project in limbo until Balmoral Castle, nine miles west of Ballater, changed hands. The railway reached Banchory in 1853, Aboyne in 1859 and Ballater in 1866. The latter was part of the Aboyne & Braemar Railway and works to extend that railway beyond Ballater were abandoned. The line would eventually become part of the Great North of Scotland Railway and would be closed by BR in…

I grew up to the sound of the former LSWR main line from London Waterloo to Bournemouth and the west. We had a bench and two green gas meters to sit on at our local spotting place at Haines Bridge, to the London side of Weybridge station, with the LSWR main line in the cutting below. On a very large telegraph pole just inside the railway boundary was a Southern Railway sign that threatened a 40 shillings fine for anyone who trespassed on the railway. It was difficult to climb the chicken wire fence as it was topped with barbed wire though we still had an excellent view of the line towards Sir Richard's Bridge to the east. Standing on top of the bench offered views of the bend running…

My father was a driver at Old Oak Common. My two uncles also worked for the Great Western Railway. It was fairly inevitable that I became interested in railways from an early age. We lived near the railway at Greenford, Middlesex and, like many enthusiasts, I started collecting numbers and became an avid spotter. I bought my first camera, a Brownie Box, in 1956. Initially, I took only monochrome pictures but, in 1960, I started to photograph in colour using a Voigtlander Vito B camera. I used the cheaper Agfa film at first but soon progressed to Kodachrome, which I felt was superior. Needless to say, I concentrated exclusively on photographing steam. No doubt given where my father and uncles worked, my favourite class was always the GWR ‘Kings’. My…

Newcastle spotter I was interested in David Cunliffe's letter about his spotting days in Newcastle (SW 440) because, although I lived in Leeds and did most of my spotting there, I made numerous visits to Newcastle Central in the 1950s and early 1960s when staying with relatives in the city but I don't recall seeing anything particularly unusual. I think 60700 and 60113 would have been quite rare cops in Newcastle because 60700 was allocated to Doncaster and 60113 to New England and King's Cross in the early 1950s so would have spent most of their time in the southern section of the ECML -I remember being sick of the sight of No. 60113 in Leeds! I was highly intrigued by David's reference to seeing the two streamlined ‘B17s’. in…

I became a Test Inspector at Darlington in 1937 and was one of the crew of the LNER Dynamometer Car, No. 23591, which was based there. Thus, I took part in some special brake tests on Sunday July 3 1938. A new type of ‘quick service application’ brake valves had been fitted to some of the vehicles used for the ‘Coronation’ high speed train. Three of the twin coaches were used for the tests, together with the Dynamometer Car and ‘A4’ No. 4468 Mallard, which was only a few weeks out of Doncaster works. It was the first of the ‘A4s’ to be built with a double Kylchap blast pipe and chimney arrangement, designed by Andre Chapelon at Sir Nigel Gresley's request. The brake trials had been organised by N.…