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BRITAIN’S LEADING HISTORICAL RAILWAY JOURNAL

Vol. 29

•

No. 7

JULY 2015

£4.40

IN THIS ISSUE

MEMORIES OF A NINE ELMS FIREMAN

LYR LOCOMOTIVES IN COLOUR

BRITAIN’S RAILWAYS AND THE GREAT WAR FOOD CRISIS

WORKING ABERDEEN’S HARBOUR RAILWAY

PENDRAGON

PUBLISHING

‘DELTIC’ DAWN AND A4 SUNSET

CANNON STREET STATION IN COLOUR

RECORDING THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN’S RAILWAYS

GREAT BOOKS FROM PENDRAGON

RAILWAYS IN RETROSPECT No.6

EAST COAST MAIN LINE

DISASTERS

By ADRIAN GRAY

£17.50

POST FREE

The East Coast route from London King’s Cross to Edinburgh Waverley is one of Britain’s

premier main line railways. Once the scene of the Victorian-era ‘Race to the North’, of

the ‘Flying Scotsman’ and epic feats of performance by Mallard and the famous ‘Deltic’

diesels, it has also been the scene of some of Britain’s most memorable rail disasters. This

book tells the story of how these disasters shaped the improvement of railway safety as

attention focussed on human error and design failure so that travel became both safer

and faster. The book provides powerful accounts of well-known disasters such as the

multiple collision in the snow at Abbott’s Ripton, the collision at Dunbar and the high-

speed derailment at Morpeth and shows how the type of accident changed over time

with thematic coverage of aspects such as problems with signalling or with pedestrians,

carriages and cars at crossings, culminating in the worst recent disaster, at Great Heck.

This is a book as much about people as it is about trains, for every ‘accident’ originated in

a mistake or a awed design. There are also the innocent victims, the heroic rescuers and

the painstaking investigators from the Board of Trade who together told a story which led

to lessons being learned and improvements made.

96 pages, card covers. • ISBN 978 1 899816 19 4

Index to locations and names is

available on the website

Compiled by Paul Chancellor. Captions by Ron White.

A COLOUR-RAIL JOURNEY

Colour-Rail has been known to transport enthusiasts for over thirty years and has amassed what

is probably the most comprehensive collection of colour images of railway motive power in the

country, with the aim of preserving as many of these images for posterity as possible and making

them available to all enthusiasts, either to purchase directly or to see them published.

Now, in association with Colour-Rail, we are pleased to present this very special compilation of

some of the choicest gems in the Colour-Rail Collection – most of which have never been seen

before. Over 200 pictures have been carefully selected to o er a geographical tour of Britain,

including many unusual subjects and locations. The photographs have been chosen by Paul

Chancellor, the present owner of Colour-Rail, and have been characteristically captioned by Ron

White, founder of Colour-Rail and its previous owner.

£30.00

POST FREE

128 pages hardback ISBN 978 1 899816 18 7

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Vol 29 . No. 7

No. 291

JULY 2015

RECORDING THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN’S RAILWAY

All through the night

A few months ago I touched upon the decline of the restaurant car

over the last couple of decades whilst noting a modest revival on

the First Great Western where demand has prompted an increase in

the provision of its full meal facility. A spokesperson for the National

Railway Museum dispensed a curious social theory on the role of dining

cars in the repression of the proletariat, but I begged to di er having

been captivated by the experience of afternoon tea in the diner of a

Manchester–St. Pancras express back in around 1959 and having lately

enjoyed a silver service day out on a main line excursion.

There is another aspect of passenger care which has been in

concurrent decline but which has nevertheless withstood, against the

odds, the bean-counters who would reduce everything to the level of a

glori ed diesel multiple unit. I refer to the sleeping car.

In Britain we can trace the sleeping car back to 1873 but their use

here has been more limited than overseas where trains travelled huge

distances across continents. However, there

were

long runs between

London and Scotland or the West and it became a desirable facility

to enable passengers to travel overnight tucked up in bed and awake

fresh at their destination in the morning. Here was something that

appealed to businessmen and tourists not wanting to waste a day on

their journeys, or those who resided at the further extremities of the

routes from London.

The British Railways London Midland Region summer timetable

for 1959 lists three sleepers from Euston to Glasgow Central, one to

Glasgow St. Enoch, one to Perth and one to Inverness on Sunday to

Friday nights, along with one nightly from St. Pancras to Glasgow St.

Enoch. At the same period the Eastern o ered ve to Edinburgh and

two more to Aberdeen (one with through coaches to Fort William),

while the Western ran two to Penzance and one each to Plymouth,

Milford Haven, Carmarthen and Birkenhead, along with one between

Plymouth and Manchester.

All this would require a considerable number of carriages and

some quite heavy trains, the passenger loading per vehicle being low

as its patrons were conveyed horizontally rather than being crammed

into seats as in the pack ’em in tight style widely favoured today. And,

of course, travel by sleeping car didn’t suit everyone, particularly those

who can’t sleep in strange beds, let alone moving ones. Then again, to

ensure a cabin for yourself you generally had to lay out for rst class,

though that would probably suit those with well- lled wallets or on

business expenses. Otherwise it was a twin-berth cabin (or even four) in

second class so the single passenger had to take pot luck with his fellow

occupant in the con ned space of a compartment – snoring, smelly

socks, whatever.

Sleeping car services fell prey to shorter journey times, motorways,

better cars, even internal ights, not to mention the economy-mongers’

attitude to running them at all, yet on a modest but signi cant scale they

still exist, threats over their future notwithstanding: the ‘Caledonian

Sleeper’ from Euston to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Inverness

and Fort William, and the ‘Night Riviera Sleeper’ from Paddington to

Penzance. Good luck to them – the ‘Caledonian’ one is even having

new coaches ordered and I still harbour an ambition to take the sleeper

to Fort William.

An article this month makes mention of a derivative of the

sleeper service – the ‘Car Carrier’. This came about in the 1950s from

the realisation that many people were deterred by the prospect of

driving to and from Scotland on holiday over the ‘A’ roads of the day

and indeed in the average car of the day. Why, then, not load their cars

into railway wagons and provide sleeping accommodation for their

owners, thus saving them a day in tedious motoring at either end of

their holiday? The rst car carrier began between King’s Cross and

Perth in 1955, proving popular enough to spawn other routes over the

ensuing years.

In the January 1958

Transport Age

the Perth train was reviewed

in an article ‘The easy way to Scotland: Time and Expense saved by an

E cient Car Sleeper Service’, written by someone from

The Autocar

magazine who admitted to enjoying long drives but was prepared to

be open-minded about the railway alternative.

In general he seems to have been impressed by the operation,

especially the careful handling of the cars, the packed suppers, the

steady rate of progress and the good breakfast (with porridge) in the

Perth station restaurant, even if it was “half past ve on a cold, grey

October morning”. The writer also highlighted the opinion of a typical

couple of fellow tourists: “If we couldn’t come on the Car Sleeper we

wouldn’t come at all... No matter how much we like Scotland, we’re

not going to tackle that long drive up the A1. And in any case this is

cheaper, because we would spend at least one night in a hotel if we

came by road... It’s the Car Sleeper for us, and we shall be on it again

next year.”

The

Autocar

man concludes by observing that “there are many

motorists for whom long journeys are less welcome, and for them the

Car Sleeper is the answer. There is undoubtedly a great future for these

trains in this country”. And for a good few years there was. So let’s

spare a moment to acknowledge that in these times when the dogma

in some quarters is to deride the nationalised railway of old for lack of

initiative and enterprise, in its day British Railways was perfectly capable

of identifying a new source of tra c and making a success of it.

Contents

Cannon Street – The ‘City Terminus’

......................388

Memories of a Nine Elms Fireman

..........................

392

‘Deltic’ Dawn and A4 Sunset

.....................................

398

Britain’s Railways and the Great War

Food Crisis – Part One

.................................................

403

Working Aberdeen’s Harbour Railway

..................

408

The Phantom Crampton

.............................................

415

Long Live the ‘Lanky’

...................................................

416

The ‘North Atlantic ’ Coaches of the LMS

Northern Counties Committee................................. 420

Western Railtouring

....................................................

423

In and Out of Waverley

...............................................

424

Inherit the Peace – Part Two

....................................

426

The Blackburn Railway 1845-1858 – Part Two

432

In Great Eastern Territory

..........................................

438

Signalling Spotlight..................................................... 442

Railway Passengers Assurance Company............. 444

Readers’ Forum

.............................................................

445

Book reviews

..................................................................

446

LYR 0-4-0ST No.51237 shunts

wagons at Irwell Street goods

yard, Salford, in the early 1960s.

(A. Gray/Colour-Rail.com 307761)

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Publisher and Editor

MICHAEL BLAKEMORE

•

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Contributions of material both photographic and written, for publication in BACKTRACK are welcome but are sent on the understanding that, although every care is taken, neither the editor or publisher can accept responsibility

for any loss or damage, however or whichever caused, to such material.

●

Opinions expressed in this journal are those of individual contributors and should not be taken as reflecting editorial policy. All contents of this

publication are protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers

●

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www.pendragonpublishing.co.uk

JULY 2015

PENDRAGON PUBLISHING 2015

387

PENDRAGON

PUBLISHING

CANNON STREET – THE ‘CITY TERMINUS’

above

SR rebuilt ‘West Country’ 4-6-2 No.34013

Okehampton

departs from under Sir John

Hawkshaw’s fine trainshed on 31st May 1958.

The overall roof was 106ft high and 190ft wide,

with a pair of square Baroque towers at the

front corners; after St. Pancras it was the widest

of the capital’s arched trainsheds.

below

One of the narrow-bodied Hastings line

diesel-electric multiple units, Set No.1017,

shapes up across the platform from ‘West

Country’ No.34025

Whimple

on 30th May 1958.

London Bridge station, on the south bank of the Thames, was the nearest

the South Eastern Railway came to the City of London until, spurred on by

the rival London, Chatham & Dover company, the river was crossed on a five-

span cast iron bridge and a new terminus opened at Cannon Street in 1866.

Although before 1914 Cannon Street hosted Continental boat trains, most

of its traffic was outer suburban and down into Kent for City commuters, the

terminus being just a short walk from the Bank and Mansion House. For some

years it was closed outside peak hours as well as on Saturday afternoons

and Sundays; it still closes early on Saturdays and all day Sundays. These

photographs of one of London’s lesser-known termini are by

DICK RILEY.

above

This view from March 1957 shows Cannon Street’s proximity to the

Thames. The railway was carried across it on a five-span bridge 706ft long

supported originally on groups of four cast iron piers, increased to six

when the bridge was widened towards the end of the nineteenth century.

‘Battle of Britain’ Pacific No.34082

615 Squadron

is taking stock out of

the smoke-blackened station, crossing the working river with its moored

barges and lighters. Southwark Bridge can be discerned behind it, while

the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral inimitably dominates the city skyline.

below

Cannon Street in a grey London setting in 1955,

with No.34082 blowing off on the engine siding. The

track layout had been remodelled and resignalled by

the Southern Railway in 1926 to give the maximum

possible operational access in and out of all eight

platforms, then later in the 1950s Platforms 5-8 on the

western side were extended out on to the bridge to

accommodate twelve-car trains.

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