Table of contents for Vol 35 No 8 - August 2021 in Backtrack

ROCKET, THE LIVERPOOL & MANCHESTER RAILWAY AND ‘PUBLIC RELATIONS’ BY ANTHONY DAWSON (Matthew Jackson) Rocket, the prototype of the modern railway locomotive, is one of the most famous and recognisable railway locomotives. Indeed the name Rocket has become synonymous with early locomotives and this author has heard both Planet (1830), Locomotion (1825) and even Steam Elephant (1815) referred to as Rocket. Rocket appears in the ‘Thomas’ stories both as itself and as the character ‘Stephen’. Rocket even appears on bank notes, albeit erroneously in conjunction with George Stephenson. This fame and recognisability is perhaps thanks on the one hand to Samuel Smiles’s biography of the Stephensons, but on the other to the excellent 190-year-old ‘PR’ of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. The L&MR, and its own success, did much to…

ENGINES OF A CERTAIN AGE Joseph Beattie’s standard 2-4-0 well tanks for the London & South Western Railway totalled no fewer than 85 engines built between 1863 and 1875, all but three by Beyer, Peacock & Co. Most were employed on London suburban work, though some were stationed further afield, but time moved on and larger tank locomotives came to displace them. That left the well tanks to be sent away for light duties in country areas; 31 were rebuilt as tender locomotives for the longer distances they had to cover. However, by the end of the nineteenth century all had been withdrawn – apart from three. This trio based at Wadebridge had proved eminently suitable for the light axle loading and sharp curves of the Wenford Bridge goods branch…

SIGNALLING INTERLUDE AT KENSINGTON OLYMPIA SOUTH MAIN 1973 BY RICHARD CLARKE (David Gould) My previous article in the February issue ended by noting how I moved from Northolt Junction East signal box to Kensington South Main box in 1973. Kensington Olympia on the West London line was under the administration of the Area Manager Kensington. This was a comparatively small area but one of great significance. Firstly, it was a contingency route for all the four Regions of British Railway: all could access the West London Line. Secondly, Kensington Olympia was the Motorail terminal for London. Thirdly, it was an ideal place for engine changeovers, it being situated where no main lines would be delayed. It also had direct access to London Underground and had such a configuration of tracks…

TIMING THE TRAIN – AND CHECKING THE RECORDS BY L. A. SUMMERS (Great Western Trust) This exchange between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson is so well known as to not require to be referenced: “We are going very well,” he [Holmes] said, looking out of the window and glancing at his watch. “Our rate at present is fifty-three and a half miles an hour.” “I have not observed the quarter mile posts,” said I. “Nor have I, but the telegraph posts upon this line are sixty yards apart and the calculation is a simple one.”1 Since Holmes and Watson are on their way to Dartmoor to investigate the mystery of the disappearance of the racehorse ‘Silver Blaze’, we can only assume that he is travelling on the Great Western Railway…

UP IN THE GALLERY The Penrhyn Quarries, together with those on the other side of Elidir Fawr at Dinorwic, near Bethesda, became the largest producers of slates in the world. The industrial development of the quarries goes back to the 1700s and by 1870 over 90,000 tons of roofing slates a year were being produced. The slate was quarried on ‘galleries’ cut into the mountain and locomotive working on them began in 1876. The 1ft 10kin gauge Penrhyn Railway carried slates for shipment to Port Penrhyn, near Bangor, until 1962; the quarry system lasted until 1965. These photographs by A. BACON are recent additions to the Colour-Rail Collection. (Colour-Rail.com 131038) (Colour-Rail.com 131041) (Colour-Rail.com 131039) (Colour-Rail.com 131042) (Colour-Rail.com 131036)…

YORKSHIRE COASTAL ENGINE SHEDS AND THEIR LOCOMOTIVES PART TWO WHITBY TOWN BY ROGER GRIFFITHS AND JOHN HOOPER (Pendragon Collection) The engine shed put up at Whitby in 1847 by the Whitby & Pickering Railway, for the first use of locomotives, was built of stone, 105 x 35ft with two roads, arched entrances and a hipped roof with central smoke vent; a coaling crane completed the external facilities while an annexe at the rear of the dead-end building housed the depot office and fitters’ workshop. By 1867 increased traffic brought a plan for an extension to double the building in length, at the south end, at a cost of £1,500. However, that was quickly stymied by a legal case brought by a local resident who complained that the extension’s proposed roofline…

THE SOUTHERN DIESELS By MIKE G. FELL OBE and R. A. S. HENNESSEY (Mike G. Fell) A diesel on milk duty The date is Wednesday 12th July 1961 and the location is just south of Madeley on the West Coast Main Line (WCML). The train, headed by one of Oliver Bulleid’s three 1-Co-Co-1 diesel-electrics, is on the up fast. Mike, who took the photograph, was concentrating on capturing the scene and so unfortunately missed identifying the particular locomotive, all three of which were based at the London Midland Region’s Camden shed (1B) at the time. The locomotive is carrying a Class 1 headcode which applied to a fully fitted milk train. In those days, even fully fitted trains had to have a guard’s van and a guard. The view was…

PART TWO SUMMER SATURDAYS TO THE COAST PHILIP BENHAM concludes his account of the working of holiday traffic to the West of England in its post-war boom years. (Trevor Owen/Colour-Rail.com 390294) Taunton to Newton Abbot – a long bottleneck The former Great Western Railway main lines from London and Bristol converged at Cogload Junction, a few miles east of Taunton. That from Bristol fed in services from three other important routes: the ‘North & West’ via the Severn Tunnel, used by trains from North West England and South Wales, the Western’s own route from Birmingham via Honeybourne, and the London Midland ‘North East/South West’ route via Derby and Birmingham. This busy cross-country route brought many long-distances services from the North East, Yorkshire and East Midlands. Thus large numbers of holiday…

‘THE BRANCH’ – THE KENT COAST RAILWAY COMPANY BY JEREMY CLARKE (R. C. Riley) After many vicissitudes, mainly financial, the East Kent Railway had opened between Chatham and Faversham on 25th January 1858 and crossed the Medway into the South Eastern Railway station at Strood two months later. With extensions authorised into both London and Dover, despite best efforts by the SER to prevent them, in 1859 the East Kent metamorphosised into the London, Chatham & Dover Railway. By virtue of running powers west of Bickley over the MidKent Railway and the West End of London & Crystal Palace Railway the Chatham got into the Brighton side of London’s Victoria station on 3rd December 1860. Faversham to Canterbury had opened five months earlier but it was not until 22nd July…

FOLLOWING THE CUMBRIAN COAST The Furness Railway line, leaving the West Coast route at Carnforth, is one of the most scenic in England, taking a course via Grange-over Sands, Barrow, Ravenglass and St. Bees to Whitehaven, connecting there with continuing tracks to Workington and Carlisle. Its setting is around Morecambe Bay and close to the Irish Sea with spectacular river crossings and the Lake District mountains in the background. GAVIN MORRISON captured these scenes at a number of spectacular locations.…

FROM THE PENDRAGOM ARCHIVES MR. GRESLEY’S PACIFICS – AS THEY WERE The first two of Mr. H. N. Gresley’s Class A1 4-6-2s took to the rails in the final year of the Great Northern Railway in 1922 and production was continued by the London & North Eastern Railway until 52 were in service by 1925. The design was taken forward with the fitting of higher pressure boilers with larger superheaters in a new batch of 27 locomotives between 1928 and 1935; these were the A3 Class and the earlier engines were rebuilt to that arrangement over the years up to 1948. These photographs show Mr. Gresley’s Pacifics (he wasn’t knighted until 1936) during the LNER years.…

‘LIKE A RAZOR’ – EASTER SUN DAY TRAIN TURNS INTO TRAGEDY IN 1846 BY ROB LANGHAM Like all early railways in the North East of England, the Brandling Junction Railway mainly depended on mineral traffic, with four coal drops in operation shortly after the line opened in 1839 – one at Gateshead and three at South Shields. The Brandling Junction Railway’s takeover of the Tanfield Waggonway, which had been in operation since the 1720s, saw the introduction of iron rails replacing wooden ones and the use of self-acting and stationary engine worked inclines to move coal to the Tyne. The Brandling Junction Railway was remarkably interconnected, crossing the Stanhope & Tyne at right angles at Brockley Whins, also joining it by a short branch, and via the Redheugh incline at…