Sommaire pour Volume 37 No 2 - February 2023 de Backtrack

Introduction Of all the Atlantic types which ran on the railways of Britain, none faced greater challenges than did those of the North British Railway, as every line that they traversed was fraught with difficulties. The Waver ley Route was arguably the most formidable main line in the country, rising twice to summits over 900 feet above sea level in the 98½ miles between Edinburgh and Carlisle. Southbound trains had first to battle with a nine-mile climb at 1 in 70 to Falahill which was followed by ten miles of 1 in 80 (often from a standing start) at Hawick to reach Whitrope Summit. Had the Atlantic routes been planned as a test of stamina and strength for locomotives and their crews the designer could not have achieved a better…

There can be few people remotely interested in railway history who have not heard of the south Lancashire village of Rainhill. It was here in October 1829 that the directors of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway conducted a series of trials designed to discover the best locomotive for working their line. A £500 prize was offered which, as we used to say, “every schoolboy knows” was won by Stephenson's Rocket. Ask people which Stephenson and there may be some confusion.1 None of the entrants was a local product. Rocket was built at Robert Stephenson & Co.'s works at Forth Street, Newcastle, and transported overland to Carlisle, whence it was brought by sea to Liverpool. Timothy Hackworth's Sans Pareil was also built in the north east, John Braithwaite and John Ericsson's…

From the Midland Railway the London Midland & Scottish inherited at the grouping 60 0-6-0 shunting tanks. The LMS soon found these eminently suitable for its needs and had added no fewer than 422 more of them to its stock by 1931, enabling the quick scrapping of many older shunters. So keen was the LMS to do so that it contracted most of them to outside builders, five different companies being involved, with only the final fifteen being constructed in one of the railway's own workshops, at Horwich. They went about their routine business – be it yard shunting, local freight trips, station pilot work largely unnoticed and without acclaim but they toiled hard and solidly until the last withdrawals in 1967.…

In January 2023 it will have been 50 years since I saw the advertisement for these special offers from British Railways. How long they remained on offer is not known, but they did give me an opportunity to visit three northern cities. At the time of my first visit to Sheffield. I was recovering from an operation and was glad of a friend to come with me. 11th January 1973 saw us at Wellingborough station for the 07.59 to Derby with the return fare to Sheffield at 70 pence! Soon after arriving at Derby we noticed a cluster of railway-looking officials gathered round a locomotive. Naturally we went to see what was attracting their attention. It was, in fact, the prototype High Speed Train, (No.41.002) on a trial run. We…

FROM THE PENDRAGON ARCHIVES…

In 2001 the Editor was kind enough to publish in two parts (April and June) ‘A Singular Double’, an account by this author of the two recent British locomotives as shown at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. These were Francis Webb's London & North Western Railway three-cylinder compound 2-2-2-2 No.3435 Queen Empress and Frederick Charles Winby's private venture four-cylinder simple 4-2-2-0 James Toleman. On the face of it, that the British railway industry should have represented itself in the United States at that late date with two locomotives, both of which had uncoupled driving wheels. seems extraordinary. The probable explanation is that most British companies, though obviously not the LNWR and Westwood & Winby, by then would have considered the trouble and expense simply not worth the likely…

Merseyside was the home of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, opened in 1830 as probably the first steam-worked passenger railway. Birkenhead, “over the water” from Liverpool on the west bank of the Mersey estuary, was also an important port and it did not take long for it to seek connection with the growing railway network. The Chester & Birkenhead Railway was authorised in 1837, with the intention of cooperation with the Chester & Crewe Railway, and opened in September 1840, by which time the C&C had been taken over by the Grand Junction Railway, which saw the C&B as a threat to its traffic to Liverpool. It therefore insisted on separate stations at Chester when it opened eight days after the C&B, with all goods and passengers having to be…

PART TWO MIKE FENTON concludes our series on the railway camping coach schemes originating in the 1930s with a look at Camping Coach provision 1947-67 from the Southern Railway into British Railways Southern Region days, as ever with assistance from some of the participants. In introducing this final part of the series on the 1930s camping coach years of the London & North Eastern, Great Western, London Midland & Scottish and Southern companies, it is worth mentioning that the Southern Railway's part in the story has forced upon this author a rethink in the approach in that, although my main interest in the topic has always been focussed on that pre-war period, the sheer volume of material available relating to the LNER, GWR and LMS required a full two-part appraisal,…

Golden wedding My wife Darral and I recently celebrated our golden wedding anniversary with family and friends at Pateley Bridge in North Yorkshire. We stayed at the magnificent Grassfield Hall on which construction began in 1801. The hall was built by Teasdale Hilton Hutchinson (1768-1845) who leased and managed the local lead mines in the area. On 16th July 1799 he married Elizabeth Hanley (1776-1837) at Kirkby Malzeard and they moved into the hall in 1810. Elizabeth predeceased him but he continued to live there until his death in 1845.1 In recent years the hall became derelict but it has now been beautifully restored and can be hired for special occasions, which, unbeknown to me, is exactly what my wife did. I had no idea when we arrived that the…