Tabla de contenidos para October 2023 en Steam World

It's difficult to comprehend that the days of the sleepy wayside station are still within living memory. Life was wonderfully peaceful. Station staff would know regular passengers by name. The seasons would pass and nothing much would disturb the tranquillity except for the occasional train. Rowfant was one such station. Apparently, it generated the lowest number of ticket sales of any station on the London Brighton & South Coast Railway (a dubious honour it shared with Kingscote, now part of today's Bluebell Railway). Rowfant was one of the stations on the East Grinstead Railway, which opened on July 9 1855, linking Three Bridges with East Grinstead. Its bill to extend eastwards to Tunbridge Wells via Groombridge was passed by parliament in the summer of 1862, although the line was actually…

What is it about military establishments that makes them so fascinating? It has to be the knowledge that there's some exciting hardware hiding beyond the imposing security fencing. That fencing and the complementary signage makes it very clear that ‘bunking’ is definitely not an option so the only opportunity for a good nose around is at an official open day. Even then, there's still that exciting thrill that you're getting to see something hidden or forbidden. Sadly, the reduction in size of Britain's armed forces has had a knock-on effect and the number of official open days and airshows are disappointingly small nowadays. You don't have to turn the clock back many years to a time when the calendar was much fuller. Go back even further and there was a…

Coal on the Loudwater line Chris Leigh's article on the Maidenhead to High Wycombe branch (SW433) brought back memories as I lived only a few hundred yards from Loudwater station, until we moved in 1968. Much of the coal traffic he mentioned would have been destined for the paper and board (cardboard and millboard) mills which then spread along the Wye Valley. Manufacturing paper and board requires large amounts of heat and power and, consequently, a lot of fuel. Blotting paper manufacturer T.E Ford, only a few yards from Loudwater station, had, I think, gone over to oil-firing by 1965. However, Hedge Mill (which made high quality packaging cardboard) near Wooburn Green used coal delivered by lorry from Loudwater. Wooburn Green station served Glory Mill, which made photographic paper while…

When Ruswarp added his paw print to the petitions, it really was a case that every man and his dog wanted to keep the Settle & Carlisle open. It seemed that only BR wanted this spectacular stretch of railway to close. British Rail's reasoning was that the huge number of tunnels and viaducts were expensive to maintain. In fact, the S&C had become a bit of a millstone around its neck. BR, however, was not the only railway company to think this way. Nearly 120 years earlier, the Midland Railway had even tried to get out of having to build the line in the first place. The concept behind the S&C was to give the Midland a direct link to Scotland. The Settle & Carlisle Railway Bill received Royal Assent…

Historians and students of locomotive development will continue to debate the Great Western Railway's locomotive policy for years to come. The latter years of Charles Collett's reign are viewed as a period of stagnation while successor Hawksworth is often criticised for playing it safe by building a two-cylinder 4-6-0 and not a four-cylinder ‘Pacific’. It is, therefore, easy to forget that from 1902 until the late 1920s, the GWR led the way in locomotive development. George Jackson Churchward showed incredible foresight when he combined the latest thinking from France and the United States with his own radical ideas to create a superlative locomotive. What made his vision extra special was that he then used parts to create a standardised range of locomotives in order to cover all traffic requirements. Not…

My uncle asked my parents if we would like to join his family for a week's holiday in Llandudno. Yes, we would. My family would travel to Wales by car. They'd travel by train and we'd meet them there. It took a while before the penny dropped… Could I not go by train from Leeds and someone else go in the car? I don't know how much negotiating had to be done but, in the end, we travelled down from Newcastle to Leeds on the Friday and stayed overnight with my grandma. My aunt joined my dad, mum and sister in the car for the journey from Leeds to Llandudno and I join my uncle and my cousins on the train. We left Leeds City in the early afternoon on…

1962 was the last ‘proper’ year of the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway. It was the last year where it hosted through trains from the Midlands and the North to the South Coast, including the famous ‘Pines Express’. Apart from the LMS ‘2P’ 4-4-0s which had finished in 1961, you could still enjoy all the locomotive variety that the line was famous for, including the ‘7F’ 2-8-0s. When planning with two friends the itinerary for the second week of our ‘Southern Rail Rover’ bash, we knew that we simply had to spend a Saturday on the S&D. Lucky for us that the only day we could do this was July 28 1962, one of the peak days of the year. We caught the 8.30am from Waterloo to Bournemouth on the…

Anyone who has feasted their eyes on South Eastern & Chatham Railway ‘D’ 4-4-0 No. 737 inside the National Railway Museum would find it hard to argue against the claim that the SECR possessed some of the most beautiful steam locomotives ever built in Britain. It's the livery that does it: the deep rich green, the red frames and the intricate lining, all topped off with heavy dollops of brass and copper. No. 680 is a typical example of SECR craftsmanship… or it is? With the way that the cab front blends seamlessly into the splashers, it might look as though it has come from the pen of Harry Wainwright himself. Except that No. 680 is actually credited to William Pickersgill of the Great North of Scotland Railway. In fact,…

History remembers that, on the weekend of November 15/16 1936, the LMS set a record for steam. The object of the exercise was to prove whether a high-speed, non-stop London-Glasgow service was possible. ‘Royal Scot’ No. 6113 Cameronian and ‘Compound’ No. 1054 had both proven that the LMS could run from Euston to Glasgow Central without stopping, back in 1928. Over that weekend, Stanier 4-6-2 No. 6201 Princess Elizabeth undertook a special trial, to see how quickly it could get from London to Glasgow without stopping. With Tom Clark at the regulator, two firemen and Robert Riddles on the footplate, No. 6201 ran from Glasgow to Euston, a distance of 401¼ miles, at an average speed of 68.2mph. It was the fastest, non-stop run by steam. But it was not…