I saw one at Chichester in 1956, Trevose Head, on a train from either Hastings or Brighton to somewhere west of Portsmouth. It was the only Atlantic tender engine I ever saw. I believe it was withdrawn shortly after that.
Last Atlantic tender engines I think yes - off the top of my head the ex-GC C13 tanks made it to 1960
Yes, I saw some of those and also two of the Lyme Regis ones. We had a holiday there in 1955. I also took a photograph of a Great Northern 4-4-2 tank at Peterborough in April 1958, the same day as D201 ran through light on its delivery run from Doncaster to King's Cross. I photographed that as well. Neither photo is that good as they were taken with a prewar bellows camera I'd had passed down to me which took 127 film and had a fairly slow speed shutter.
The class I never saw, and would like to have done, was one of the Tilbury ones. In the photos, I always thought they looked both neat and elegant, though I gather they were never that popular with loco crew when tried anywhere away from their original home.
From the Wikipedia article on LT&SR 442Ts:
One, 80 Thundersley, has been preserved and is on static display at the Bressingham Steam Museum in Norfolk.
IIRC, it was used on enthusiasts' specials for a while in the 1960s. Nice-looking engines, though, as @Enoch says.
The various Brighton 442Ts were also good-looking (I think the wheel arrangement helped - for some reason, it's particularly pleasing). The Town Of My Youth occasionally saw examples on cross-country stopping trains, though the last were withdrawn in July 1952.
As to the H2 Atlantics being modified by British Railways, it was, in fact, OVS Bulleid who (in 1938) increased their boiler pressure from 170 psi to 200 psi, to match the earlier H1s. BR don't seem to have altered them in any major way.
One of the H2s is reported to have been seen at Yeovil Junction, on the Brighton-Plymouth train - possibly the furthest one ever to penetrate so far into the Wild West...
The new Beachy Head is something to look forward to - no doubt there will be videos on good ol' YouTube in due course!
The hapless H1 2039 Hartland Point was, of course, extensively modified by Bulleid (during his BR years) to try out various ideas relating to his *Leader* class.
Bradley tells how the poor engine was rebuilt to more-or-less original condition, as 32039, but never re-entered service. One feels that she had surely suffered enough...
One day, someone may re-create a *Leader*, which really would be a sight to see. They nearly worked...
You'd have to do a huge amount of extremely expensive development to produce a practical Leader. And you'd need oil firing as no-one would ever volunteer to fire it.
Perhaps a diesel-powered replica would be the way to go? Or even batteries!
You'd have to do a huge amount of extremely expensive development to produce a practical Leader. And you'd need oil firing as no-one would ever volunteer to fire it.
Perhaps a diesel-powered replica would be the way to go? Or even batteries!
Well, yes - it was a rather whimsical thought...mind you, it was recorded somewhere that the fireman's cab in the Leader was no hotter than the footplate of a Bulleid Pacific on a warm day...
A diesel-powered version might be OK, though, but only in the lovely BR black-and-silver livery. Impractical, I know, but really rather impressive on the big LMS diesels 10000 and 10001, and the Southern's Bulleid mainline diesels. As far as the actual riding of the Leader is concerned, it rode very well, it seems.
(An 00-scale model of the Leader is on its way, to be available in grey, black, BR green, or BR blue...which looks like the 1960s colour, not the experimental blue of the 1950s ).
For impracticability, you need only look at CIE's all-over silver for their early diesels. The two-stroke Crossley engines spat dirty gunge all over them very quickly!
Incidentally, if the ex-LMS diesels were numbered 10000/1 (and BR standard locos numbered from xxx00), why were the ex-SR ones not numbered 10200/1/2?
A school friend of mine actually saw 10001 at a Willesden open day c.1968 - why was it not preserved for the National Collection like E26000?
I'm not sure if Bulleid (in his *retirement job* with CIE) was responsible for the supremely impractical silver livery of the new Irish locomotives and coaching stock. Colour photographs show it to have quickly deteriorated to an appalling nastiness, not helped by the dreadful engines, but they all looked much better in green. At least CIE painted their reliable (and long-lived) AEC railcars green from the start.
Splendid footage of the train coming out of Elstree Tunnel - reminds of of the "Peaks" I saw every day 15 minutes later. (Incidentally, I don't think that the tunnel the train enters is at Elstree!)
Splendid footage of the train coming out of Elstree Tunnel - reminds of of the "Peaks" I saw every day 15 minutes later. (Incidentally, I don't think that the tunnel the train enters is at Elstree!)
The LMS made a lot of use of the greatly lamented line from Derby to Manchester for testing new locos. That had quite a few tunnels, but that tunnel doesn't look like any of the more familiar ones on that section. It's possible it might be Red Hill, just south of the River Trent, between the location of the former Trent station and the current East Midlands Parkway at Kegworth.
The chimneys near the beginning could be somewhere round Bedford and Ampthill. The clip at the end with 10001 in it as well is the Royal Scot leaving the old Euston. The LMS was very keen to get 10000 painted and onto the tracks before midnight on New Year's Eve 1947. Unlike 10000, 10001 didn't not get commissioned in time to appear in LMS livery. If you look at the youtube carefully, you'll notice that by the time of the Euston clip, BR had also removed the LMS letters from 10000.
I'm not a great fan of BR liveries myself. I find them boring, and the reason I model pre-group is partly because of the liveries and partly because I do remember the last years in BR, with locos in their filth and rust livery, and am not in the least nostalgic about it. It was so obviously the dying breaths of something that had once been magnificent.
But I also accept that if someone spends £££££££s restoring (or even creating) a steam loco they have a right to paint it as they wish. If I ever get the Euromillions, I would create a replica GCR Valour but the trust deeds would say it must always stay in GC condition.
Last Atlantic tender engines I think yes - off the top of my head the ex-GC C13 tanks made it to 1960
Yes, I saw some of those and also two of the Lyme Regis ones. We had a holiday there in 1955. I also took a photograph of a Great Northern 4-4-2 tank at Peterborough in April 1958, the same day as D201 ran through light on its delivery run from Doncaster to King's Cross. I photographed that as well. Neither photo is that good as they were taken with a prewar bellows camera I'd had passed down to me which took 127 film and had a fairly slow speed shutter.
The class I never saw, and would like to have done, was one of the Tilbury ones. In the photos, I always thought they looked both neat and elegant, though I gather they were never that popular with loco crew when tried anywhere away from their original home.
Another memory pops up! Shortly after D201's delivery it was used on the King's Cross - Cambridge line until it went to ECML service, so it was a familiar and exciting sight for a while after all the B1s, B2s, B17s and the clanking L1s. The date is easy to remember - it was a few days after the 11+ exam results were published. (Yes - I was 11+ at the time).
The Town Of My Youth saw the first Cromptons (D6500 etc., later known as Class 33), and their original livery - a sort of light olive/sage green, but with quite a bit of white/cream relief - was indeed a contrast to the mostly black* steam engines:
They've certainly stood the test of time, and one feels that British Railways - in this case, at least - spent its £££ well. I recall seeing one on the daily freight to Next Town's gasworks siding - one wooden-bodied coal wagon, and an elderly Southern Railway *pillbox* brake van...
*With the exception of the Bulleid Pacifics, a few King Arthurs (we didn't see many of them), and some of the Schools, which were Brunswick Green. Stewarts Lane used to ensure that they turned out the Pacifics, and their two Britannias, in immaculate condition for the Golden Arrow...
BTW, didn't the big LMS twins 10000/1 form the prototypes for some of the later big BR diesels - 40s/45s etc.?
The Town Of My Youth also saw some of the early 204hp shunters by Drewry - I rather liked these neat little engines - but they were soon replaced by the bigger 350hp LMS-based design. That's another class of diesel that has certainly lasted well!
10000/1 were the predecessors of the three Southern locomotives, 10201/2/3 and the later Class 40 as far as the English Electric engines went, but the Southern locos had 4-axle (1Co) bogies that were very close to the 40s. The Class 45 shared the bogies, but used the Sulzer twin bank 12LDA28B engine, altogether an interesting evolution in design.
The Southern Railway locomotives came just after the LMS twins, but they were very much the brainchild of O V S Bulleid (who was, as enny fule kno, H G Ivatt's brother-in-law - no doubt OVSB was fully aware of what HGI was up to!).
The Southern engines looked good in black-and-silver, too, at any rate when new...
The Town Of My Youth also saw some of the early 204hp shunters by Drewry - I rather liked these neat little engines - but they were soon replaced by the bigger 350hp LMS-based design. That's another class of diesel that has certainly lasted well!
Yes, there are three at the steelworks in Cardiff I see most weeks. 60+ years old and still going strong but due to be retired later this year.
I'm not a great fan of BR liveries myself. I find them boring, and the reason I model pre-group is partly because of the liveries and partly because I do remember the last years in BR, with locos in their filth and rust livery, and am not in the least nostalgic about it. It was so obviously the dying breaths of something that had once been magnificent. ...
I agree. The BR liveries weren't very impressive. Furthermore, even before things deteriorated into rust, most engines weren't kept clean enough to make anything of Brunswick green, yet alone lined black. Far too many, however well maintained, just looked a sort of sooty grey.
It was always quite an eye opener to visit Paddington where the express engines were kept much cleaner than elsewhere and the brasswork set off what had really been their green far better than anything on the ex LMS or LNER. However, in the late fifties some Midland Region Pacifics went back into red. If that was kept clean, it really did look impressive, much better than the Scottish ones that stayed in boring green.
Mind, IMHO, although they're before my memory, I don't think all the earlier liveries worked. I think the early Southern olive green was a much more attractive livery than the later malachite version and the paler LSWR green, the rather over decorative pre-1914 SE&C one and the LBSC brown, yet alone the later SE&C austerity grey which they still hadn't moved on from by 1923.
If kept reasonably clean, I think the black with red lining used for mid range passenger locos by both the LMS and the LNER before the war worked better than the addition of the second grey line that BR added.
And, for all the excellence of the red which the Midland used, not everybody seems to realise that after about 1906, that was passenger locos only. From then, their good engines were never painted anything other than unlined black. Whatever some preserved lines and model producers may provide, no Midland or LMS standard 4F and no LMS standard 0-6-0T was ever painted in anything else other than plain black.
It was a bit of an eye-opener when I visited Germany in about 1965/66. They were getting rid of their steam locos too, but those that remained were very clean indeed. I recall a little shunting engine sitting just outside Bonn station (or should I say, Hbf.) You could have eaten your dinner off it. You certainly would not have eaten your dinner off the equivalent Jintys that worked at Crewe.
I have always puzzled over that. Germany was (even then) a very successful economy. I'm sure there must have been pressure on their labour market too. Perhaps it was just attitude. Even then, looking at their country, I found myself wondering who had won the war. It was so obviously more advanced as a nation, even a boy could see it.
It was a bit of an eye-opener when I visited Germany in about 1965/66. They were getting rid of their steam locos too, but those that remained were very clean indeed. I recall a little shunting engine sitting just outside Bonn station (or should I say, Hbf.) You could have eaten your dinner off it. You certainly would not have eaten your dinner off the equivalent Jintys that worked at Crewe.
I have always puzzled over that. Germany was (even then) a very successful economy. I'm sure there must have been pressure on their labour market too. Perhaps it was just attitude. Even then, looking at their country, I found myself wondering who had won the war. It was so obviously more advanced as a nation, even a boy could see it.
The decision as to what to do with the Marshal Plan money, and the destruction of German industry, had a lot to do with that.
Britain used its post-war loan to prop up the pound (you will see how well that worked when you go to the travel money counter and try to get four dollars to the pound, as you did then), and its industrial facilities had been much less damaged than Germany's, so we carried on as before.
Germany had a grant it would not need to worry about repaying, and no choice but to rebuild, so it effectively forcibly modernised.
It was a bit of an eye-opener when I visited Germany in about 1965/66. They were getting rid of their steam locos too, but those that remained were very clean indeed. I recall a little shunting engine sitting just outside Bonn station (or should I say, Hbf.) You could have eaten your dinner off it. You certainly would not have eaten your dinner off the equivalent Jintys that worked at Crewe.
I have always puzzled over that. Germany was (even then) a very successful economy. I'm sure there must have been pressure on their labour market too. Perhaps it was just attitude. Even then, looking at their country, I found myself wondering who had won the war. It was so obviously more advanced as a nation, even a boy could see it.
The decision as to what to do with the Marshal Plan money, and the destruction of German industry, had a lot to do with that.
Britain used its post-war loan to prop up the pound (you will see how well that worked when you go to the travel money counter and try to get four dollars to the pound, as you did then), and its industrial facilities had been much less damaged than Germany's, so we carried on as before.
Germany had a grant it would not need to worry about repaying, and no choice but to rebuild, so it effectively forcibly modernised.
Yes, I think you're right about the 08s. They were based on an LMS design.
As to the DB, it's also true to say that (like many European countries), the Germans were - and still are - proud of their railways, and less inclined to criticise them that we British...
Did you note my video post above of "Beachy Head" moving under her own steam?
I missed it earlier! but I've just watched it, and yes, what a lovely sight! A wonderful achievement, and no doubt the Team will be celebrating later...
As one viewer remarked, the engine was suitably accompanied by the oldest Brighton-built loco (Fenchurch) and the newest (a standard 264T).
A philosophical quibble: i recently bought a book on the Narrow-Gauge Railways of Ireland as a birthday present for my brother. Leafing through it (purely as a quality check, of course) I noticed there was a chapter on the Listowel and Ballybunion monorail. It has since occured to me to wonder whether, if a railway's gauge is the distance between it;s rails, a monorail can be said to have a gauge at all, and whether, in that case, it can be described as narrow-gauge. But what else could one call it, except an impractical oddity inflicted on the people of Ireland (by the English, naturally?
1. Although the railway may well have been built or financed by the English (I have no idea), its engineer was the French M. Lartigue.
2. It wasn't quite a monorail as there were two light rails halfway down the A-frame supports, on which guide wheels ran.
And how would one describe the Patiala State Monorail Trainway? This definitely had a gauge - but only one rail!
Monorails have excited the imagination (and inventiveness) of many people over a long period, but the remote and little-known Listowel & Ballybunion was the only one AFAIK to work reasonably well at carrying passengers and general freight over a reasonable time (1888-1924).
Is the much more famous suspended railway in Germany a true monorail? Possibly not, but it's a remarkable piece of engineering, nonetheless:
To bring together two threads, I see that Donald Sutherland has died. Recently the BBC showed the 1992 film The Railway Station Man which he stars in, where he delivers the most unlikely line ever uttered by a great movie star in a mainstream picture: "Are you interested in railway signalling?"
Later in the picture he chats up Julie Christie with a detailed explanation of how the electric train staff is used to signal trains on single lines. I know one man who was successful with a similar line in real life (and he's now been married for for 45 years), but only one!
It's an interesting film, highlighting the extreme remoteness of the country served by the Burtonport extension of the Londonderry & Lough Swilly, among other things.
It's an interesting film, highlighting the extreme remoteness of the country served by the Burtonport extension of the Londonderry & Lough Swilly, among other things.
Only a few years ago the "Old Patagonian Express" (La Trochita) was blown off the line (there's a video of it on YouTube) but I don't think anyone was hurt.
I was actually at Longmoor on its very last Open Day. I didn't ride in the famous "blue saloons" as you had to pay for them, but I did get a ride in a compartment train to Oakhanger headed by "Errol Lonsdale". I was near the front and remember being surprised by the piston thrusts being transferred to the carriage.
The line closed in 2009 but attempts are being made to revive it and you can sometimes travel in one of those little cars. https://kecskemetikisvasut.hu/en-de/
I was thinking back, only today, to my earliest railway memory.
When I was about 18 months old, we went to stay for a week with some relatives who lived in deepest Lincolnshire. This involved a train ride from what was then Manchester (London Road) through what was a relatively new Woodhead Tunnel (complete with lights, to my astonishment) and eventually on to Brigg.
I remember my father taking me down the platform at Sheffield (Victoria) to see the electric engine come off and the steam engine come on. I wish I could say what type of steam loco. Probably a B1, but it might just have been something more classy like a D11. However, I was too young to appreciate such details.
When I was a little older, my grandfather would take me from his house in Gorton to the bridge on Chapman Street. There was a sort of viewing platform* from which we would watch the saddle tank, often just sitting on the headshunt but sometimes moving wagons in and out of the Works yard. This would be a J94, and what I did not appreciate at the time was that my grandfather in his day had worked on this very turn, albeit on a proper GCR saddle tank.
If I was lucky and time allowed, we would walk down Railway Street to the end - Beyer Peacock factory on your left - and over the bridge known as the 'birdcage' that took you right over the buildings of Gorton Works and eventually gave you a fine view of Gorton shed itself. By this time, of course, all the glory was gone, but it was still a wonderful panorama of steam locos, albeit all in BR rust-and-filth livery. There would be scrap engines too, marked with a fatal X - a sort of black spot. I often wonder what I saw, without knowing it.
I have a plan - whether it will come to pass or not I do not know yet - to construct a broad (but not deep) diorama of Gorton Shed. Or at least half of it. Ten roads I think I can manage, twenty might be a bit of a stretch, and besides I don't have 20 GC locos - yet. I suppose it's a sort of nostalgia project - but in my case a nostalgia for what I never saw, the GC in its glory.
Of course, nothing is left of Gorton Shed and Works now. Nothing at all. All gone, like a ghost disturbed at sunrise.
* What I now know was part of the old approach road to the original MS&L/GCR Gorton Station, which closed about 1908.
I missed passenger trains on the Woodhead route, but was desperate to see the electrics before they finished. Staying with my godparents in Sheffield, I took a bus to Penistone and watched the EM1s for a bit - they had a certain "presence". Then by train to Huddersfield, a very comfortable Trans-Pennine unit to Manchester, and back via the Hope Valley (and another bus).
I had the great good fortune to travel over Woodhead in 1979 on a railtour formed of the Great Western Society's Vintage Train of ex-GWR coaches, originating at Paddington but hauled from Sheffield by a class 76.
I know I was there but I wish I could more clearly recall what it was actually like!
Give me a Wickham Trolley, a loudhailer, and a circular track and I’ll show you a fun day out….
Ah... another tangent. You can ride a Wickham trolley (with a trailer connected by a dodgy drawbar) from the splendid railway museum in George in South Africa, up a most beautiful climb into the hills. I want to do that again.
Comments
I never saw one, as they never (AFAIK) worked on the former South-Eastern & Chatham section of the Southern.
Last Atlantic tender engines I think yes - off the top of my head the ex-GC C13 tanks made it to 1960
Yes, I meant tender engines.
The class I never saw, and would like to have done, was one of the Tilbury ones. In the photos, I always thought they looked both neat and elegant, though I gather they were never that popular with loco crew when tried anywhere away from their original home.
One, 80 Thundersley, has been preserved and is on static display at the Bressingham Steam Museum in Norfolk.
IIRC, it was used on enthusiasts' specials for a while in the 1960s. Nice-looking engines, though, as @Enoch says.
The various Brighton 442Ts were also good-looking (I think the wheel arrangement helped - for some reason, it's particularly pleasing). The Town Of My Youth occasionally saw examples on cross-country stopping trains, though the last were withdrawn in July 1952.
As to the H2 Atlantics being modified by British Railways, it was, in fact, OVS Bulleid who (in 1938) increased their boiler pressure from 170 psi to 200 psi, to match the earlier H1s. BR don't seem to have altered them in any major way.
One of the H2s is reported to have been seen at Yeovil Junction, on the Brighton-Plymouth train - possibly the furthest one ever to penetrate so far into the Wild West...
The new Beachy Head is something to look forward to - no doubt there will be videos on good ol' YouTube in due course!
The hapless H1 2039 Hartland Point was, of course, extensively modified by Bulleid (during his BR years) to try out various ideas relating to his *Leader* class.
Bradley tells how the poor engine was rebuilt to more-or-less original condition, as 32039, but never re-entered service. One feels that she had surely suffered enough...
One day, someone may re-create a *Leader*, which really would be a sight to see. They nearly worked...
Perhaps a diesel-powered replica would be the way to go? Or even batteries!
Well, yes - it was a rather whimsical thought...mind you, it was recorded somewhere that the fireman's cab in the Leader was no hotter than the footplate of a Bulleid Pacific on a warm day...
A diesel-powered version might be OK, though, but only in the lovely BR black-and-silver livery. Impractical, I know, but really rather impressive on the big LMS diesels 10000 and 10001, and the Southern's Bulleid mainline diesels. As far as the actual riding of the Leader is concerned, it rode very well, it seems.
(An 00-scale model of the Leader is on its way, to be available in grey, black, BR green, or BR blue...which looks like the 1960s colour, not the experimental blue of the 1950s
For impracticability, you need only look at CIE's all-over silver for their early diesels. The two-stroke Crossley engines spat dirty gunge all over them very quickly!
Incidentally, if the ex-LMS diesels were numbered 10000/1 (and BR standard locos numbered from xxx00), why were the ex-SR ones not numbered 10200/1/2?
A school friend of mine actually saw 10001 at a Willesden open day c.1968 - why was it not preserved for the National Collection like E26000?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1xbh2bQ53Q
I'm not sure if Bulleid (in his *retirement job* with CIE) was responsible for the supremely impractical silver livery of the new Irish locomotives and coaching stock. Colour photographs show it to have quickly deteriorated to an appalling nastiness, not helped by the dreadful engines, but they all looked much better in green. At least CIE painted their reliable (and long-lived) AEC railcars green from the start.
The chimneys near the beginning could be somewhere round Bedford and Ampthill. The clip at the end with 10001 in it as well is the Royal Scot leaving the old Euston. The LMS was very keen to get 10000 painted and onto the tracks before midnight on New Year's Eve 1947. Unlike 10000, 10001 didn't not get commissioned in time to appear in LMS livery. If you look at the youtube carefully, you'll notice that by the time of the Euston clip, BR had also removed the LMS letters from 10000.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUiQ3VcEAY8
I gather that there is now a group which intends to build a working replica of the locomotive!
But I also accept that if someone spends £££££££s restoring (or even creating) a steam loco they have a right to paint it as they wish. If I ever get the Euromillions, I would create a replica GCR Valour but the trust deeds would say it must always stay in GC condition.
Another memory pops up! Shortly after D201's delivery it was used on the King's Cross - Cambridge line until it went to ECML service, so it was a familiar and exciting sight for a while after all the B1s, B2s, B17s and the clanking L1s. The date is easy to remember - it was a few days after the 11+ exam results were published. (Yes - I was 11+ at the time).
The Town Of My Youth saw the first Cromptons (D6500 etc., later known as Class 33), and their original livery - a sort of light olive/sage green, but with quite a bit of white/cream relief - was indeed a contrast to the mostly black* steam engines:
http://www.class33crompton.co.uk/CromptonHistory.htm
They've certainly stood the test of time, and one feels that British Railways - in this case, at least - spent its £££ well. I recall seeing one on the daily freight to Next Town's gasworks siding - one wooden-bodied coal wagon, and an elderly Southern Railway *pillbox* brake van...
*With the exception of the Bulleid Pacifics, a few King Arthurs (we didn't see many of them), and some of the Schools, which were Brunswick Green. Stewarts Lane used to ensure that they turned out the Pacifics, and their two Britannias, in immaculate condition for the Golden Arrow...
BTW, didn't the big LMS twins 10000/1 form the prototypes for some of the later big BR diesels - 40s/45s etc.?
The Town Of My Youth also saw some of the early 204hp shunters by Drewry - I rather liked these neat little engines - but they were soon replaced by the bigger 350hp LMS-based design. That's another class of diesel that has certainly lasted well!
The Southern engines looked good in black-and-silver, too, at any rate when new...
It was always quite an eye opener to visit Paddington where the express engines were kept much cleaner than elsewhere and the brasswork set off what had really been their green far better than anything on the ex LMS or LNER. However, in the late fifties some Midland Region Pacifics went back into red. If that was kept clean, it really did look impressive, much better than the Scottish ones that stayed in boring green.
Mind, IMHO, although they're before my memory, I don't think all the earlier liveries worked. I think the early Southern olive green was a much more attractive livery than the later malachite version and the paler LSWR green, the rather over decorative pre-1914 SE&C one and the LBSC brown, yet alone the later SE&C austerity grey which they still hadn't moved on from by 1923.
If kept reasonably clean, I think the black with red lining used for mid range passenger locos by both the LMS and the LNER before the war worked better than the addition of the second grey line that BR added.
And, for all the excellence of the red which the Midland used, not everybody seems to realise that after about 1906, that was passenger locos only. From then, their good engines were never painted anything other than unlined black. Whatever some preserved lines and model producers may provide, no Midland or LMS standard 4F and no LMS standard 0-6-0T was ever painted in anything else other than plain black.
I have always puzzled over that. Germany was (even then) a very successful economy. I'm sure there must have been pressure on their labour market too. Perhaps it was just attitude. Even then, looking at their country, I found myself wondering who had won the war. It was so obviously more advanced as a nation, even a boy could see it.
Am I right in thinking that the shunting engines referred to are the 08
The decision as to what to do with the Marshal Plan money, and the destruction of German industry, had a lot to do with that.
Britain used its post-war loan to prop up the pound (you will see how well that worked when you go to the travel money counter and try to get four dollars to the pound, as you did then), and its industrial facilities had been much less damaged than Germany's, so we carried on as before.
Germany had a grant it would not need to worry about repaying, and no choice but to rebuild, so it effectively forcibly modernised.
Yes, I think you're right about the 08s. They were based on an LMS design.
As to the DB, it's also true to say that (like many European countries), the Germans were - and still are - proud of their railways, and less inclined to criticise them that we British...
I missed it earlier! but I've just watched it, and yes, what a lovely sight! A wonderful achievement, and no doubt the Team will be celebrating later...
As one viewer remarked, the engine was suitably accompanied by the oldest Brighton-built loco (Fenchurch) and the newest (a standard 264T).
Well, I did wonder where it had come from! Remarkable beasties, those 08s - ugly as sin, but incredibly rugged and reliable...
1. Although the railway may well have been built or financed by the English (I have no idea), its engineer was the French M. Lartigue.
2. It wasn't quite a monorail as there were two light rails halfway down the A-frame supports, on which guide wheels ran.
And how would one describe the Patiala State Monorail Trainway? This definitely had a gauge - but only one rail!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lartigue_Monorail
A small portion (using a diesel-powered locomotive) has been recreated, so that all can see how it worked:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lartigue_Monorail
Is the much more famous suspended railway in Germany a true monorail? Possibly not, but it's a remarkable piece of engineering, nonetheless:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Schwebebahn
I see that there is now a similar line in Japan.
Later in the picture he chats up Julie Christie with a detailed explanation of how the electric train staff is used to signal trains on single lines. I know one man who was successful with a similar line in real life (and he's now been married for for 45 years), but only one!
It's an interesting film, highlighting the extreme remoteness of the country served by the Burtonport extension of the Londonderry & Lough Swilly, among other things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH4OWLjly7E
Only a few years ago the "Old Patagonian Express" (La Trochita) was blown off the line (there's a video of it on YouTube) but I don't think anyone was hurt.
But anyway... Longmoor at the end of its pomp in The Great St Trinians Train Robbery takes some beating.
I was actually at Longmoor on its very last Open Day. I didn't ride in the famous "blue saloons" as you had to pay for them, but I did get a ride in a compartment train to Oakhanger headed by "Errol Lonsdale". I was near the front and remember being surprised by the piston thrusts being transferred to the carriage.
The line closed in 2009 but attempts are being made to revive it and you can sometimes travel in one of those little cars. https://kecskemetikisvasut.hu/en-de/
When I was about 18 months old, we went to stay for a week with some relatives who lived in deepest Lincolnshire. This involved a train ride from what was then Manchester (London Road) through what was a relatively new Woodhead Tunnel (complete with lights, to my astonishment) and eventually on to Brigg.
I remember my father taking me down the platform at Sheffield (Victoria) to see the electric engine come off and the steam engine come on. I wish I could say what type of steam loco. Probably a B1, but it might just have been something more classy like a D11. However, I was too young to appreciate such details.
When I was a little older, my grandfather would take me from his house in Gorton to the bridge on Chapman Street. There was a sort of viewing platform* from which we would watch the saddle tank, often just sitting on the headshunt but sometimes moving wagons in and out of the Works yard. This would be a J94, and what I did not appreciate at the time was that my grandfather in his day had worked on this very turn, albeit on a proper GCR saddle tank.
If I was lucky and time allowed, we would walk down Railway Street to the end - Beyer Peacock factory on your left - and over the bridge known as the 'birdcage' that took you right over the buildings of Gorton Works and eventually gave you a fine view of Gorton shed itself. By this time, of course, all the glory was gone, but it was still a wonderful panorama of steam locos, albeit all in BR rust-and-filth livery. There would be scrap engines too, marked with a fatal X - a sort of black spot. I often wonder what I saw, without knowing it.
I have a plan - whether it will come to pass or not I do not know yet - to construct a broad (but not deep) diorama of Gorton Shed. Or at least half of it. Ten roads I think I can manage, twenty might be a bit of a stretch, and besides I don't have 20 GC locos - yet. I suppose it's a sort of nostalgia project - but in my case a nostalgia for what I never saw, the GC in its glory.
Of course, nothing is left of Gorton Shed and Works now. Nothing at all. All gone, like a ghost disturbed at sunrise.
* What I now know was part of the old approach road to the original MS&L/GCR Gorton Station, which closed about 1908.
I know I was there but I wish I could more clearly recall what it was actually like!
Ah... another tangent. You can ride a Wickham trolley (with a trailer connected by a dodgy drawbar) from the splendid railway museum in George in South Africa, up a most beautiful climb into the hills. I want to do that again.