Table of contents for Volume 38 No 11 - November 2024 in Backtrack

Ticketing has been much in the news in recent times, not least Network Rail’s desire to dispense with the majority of station booking offices and instead leave passengers to fend for themselves online or grapple with ticket machines. Fortunately that threat has been repulsed – for now – and I’d certainly recommend supporting the helpful staff of ticket offices, a view further enhanced by experiences this year.. We remember when buying a ticket for your train journey involved going up to a window, stating your requirements and receiving your card ticket and any change from your cash payment. The clerk would have a rack of pre-printed tickets, these being for the destinations most frequently booked, mostly on the line on which the station was situated, with perhaps some for the…

From the battlements of the centuries old Lancaster Castle the Lakeland Fells loom ahead to the north. In the 1840s these peaks proved a formidable barrier to engineers constructing the Lancaster & Carlisle Railway, an important link in a through route between London and Glasgow. The high cost of tunnelling was avoided but at the expense of steep gradients which, in the days of steam working, taxed motive power, the line climbing from a few feet above sea level just north of Lancaster to a height of 916 feet at Shap Summit, some 35 miles distant, the last four miles up to the summit being on a gradient of 1 in 75. At the foot of the incline at Tebay the small engine shed housed a handful of steam locomotives…

This article takes a brief photographic look at some of the different designs of signal boxes once found on the former Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway. The Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway signal boxes in this article are described according to the classification developed by The Signalling Study Group in The Signal Box – A Pictorial History & Guide to Designs; OPC 1986. Reference has also been made to Peter Cattermole’s excellent little book – Alfred Whitaker and the Tablet Apparatus published by the Somerset & Dorset Railway Trust in 1982. The Somerset & Dorset Railway (an amalgamation of the Somerset Central & Dorset Central Railways on 1st September 1862) opened its single line extension from Evercreech Junction to Bath Green Park on 20th July 1874 and, in so doing,…

Standard gauge double-boilered Fairlie locomotives were rare in Great Britain, with just four examples being owned by British railway companies.1 Of these four, one had the unique distinction of originally being built to a different gauge and to have previously run on a railway several thousand miles away on another continent. The locomotive in question was a Fairlie 0-6-6-0T named Victoria, which was delivered to the Burry Port & Gwendraeth Valley Railway in 1873. It was one of three Fairlie locomotives that James Cross & Co. of St. Helens had built in 1866 (their Works Nos.28, 29 and 30) for the 3ft 6in gauge Southern & Western Railway (S&WR) in Queensland, all of which eventually returned to Britain after they were rejected by the S&WR. The S&WR was the first…

When the term ‘The Brighton Line’ is expressed these days I think it inevitable that Victoria automatically springs to mind as being at the London end of it. So used are we to that station’s past history as the starting point of many Royal journeys as well as those of the glamorous ‘Southern Belle’ and its ’Brighton Belle’ successor, the one-time ‘Brighton on the hour, in the hour, every hour’ service and as the last stronghold of Central Section steamhauled passenger trains, that we overlook the fact the City was considered much more important in London, Brighton & South Coast Railway eyes. The inevitability of serving London Bridge first was undeniable even without the convenient entrance provided by the London & Greenwich and the London & Croydon Railways and despite…

February 1983 found me travelling up to London for a business meeting. Afterwards, with a little time to spare, I wandered into Collectors’ Corner to say hello to Robert Warburton and Bob Ballard, names that will be familiar to many of our readers. I then set off to walk down Euston Road to get to St. Pancras. The weather was cold and sunny. As I neared the station I was aware that the west end of the old Midland Grand Hotel was bathed in the winter sunshine. It looked like a fairy tale castle. The old Somers Town Goods Depot had been demolished and the site cleared, other than the eastern wall of the depot. I realised that this view would soon be lost once the building of the new…

The short history of the British Railways Class 02 diesel shunters is entangled with the twilight years of the ex-Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway’s 0-4-0ST ‘Pugs’. This article outlines how these shunters were introduced to cover the unique duties of the ‘Pugs’ and consequently had very short working lives with BR, but became very useful outside BR and in preservation. As a reminder of what the Class 02s looked like, we show the official photograph of No.D2852, taken in early 1961. LYR 'Pugs' and similar LYR ‘Pugs’ (formally known as the Class 21) originated with a batch of three saddle tank locomotives, with a 6ft wheelbase, ordered from the Vulcan Foundry in 1886. These prototypes were considered a success and J. A. F. Aspinall built further batches, this time in Horwich…

Years ago in Trains Illustrated, there was a regular feature entitled ‘Resorts for Railfans’. I am sure many readers will remember their favourite station or site where many happy hours had been spent in the past. For me my favourite spot was where I was only able to spend an hour there, but even today, years later, I still get a buzz when I see the name mentioned. The place in question was the embankment overlooking Goose Hill Junction signal box, just south of Normanton on the old North Midland route from Leeds to Derby. My visit was in April 1982. This line had opened throughout in June 1840, whilst on the same day at Altofts, just north of Normanton, the York & North Midland (Y&NM) had arrived. The area…

Although for many years the author lived within easy reach of Crewe, it was not somewhere he felt motivated to visit in pursuit of the railway hobby. Certainly, train movements were reasonably frequent, with local passenger services, non-corridor coaches in the hands of tank locomotives old and fairly new. The regular freight trains by and large were in the charge of superannuated 0-6-0s. Just occasionally there might be something out of the ordinary, when the sidings adjacent to the junction were used to stable the stock off special trains supporting events in the locality. Often these would be headed by a pair of immaculate BR Standard Class 5s. Trains did stop at Crewe Junction, but there were no platforms and no passenger ever got off or on, though they might…

FROM THE PENDRAGON ARCHIVES…

Gretton – some readers may need to reach for their rail atlas. Gretton was a small station on the Midland Railway section of what became known as ‘The Nottingham Loop Line’, situated on that part of the line from Melton Junction to Glendon South Junction on the Midland main line, north of Kettering. It might be useful for a little history as to how this little station fits in to the bigger picture. May 1844 saw the creation of the Midland Railway under the chairmanship of George Hudson. He knew the value of being first in the field which prompted him to promote a new line to tap the potential profits to be made from the agriculture products being grown in the Fens. He knew that the London & Birmingham…

In mid-Victorian times there was a number of bridges across the Thames in what was known as the Metropolitan area but very few railways had managed to get across the river as a result of earlier Parliamentary resistance to such penetration. Once the Metropolitan Railway had opened its line from Paddington (Praed Street)) to King’s Cross investors began to turn their minds to other opportunities of going under the ground and this soon led to schemes to enter the central area by going beneath the river itself. Although nothing had come of it, one of the earliest references to this had said it would be achieved by means of an immersed tube: this was by Charles Dickens in 1854 who, in his Household Words, said it would be one of…