Sunlight, steam and shadows

This is the glory that was Birmingham Snow Hill station. Opened by the Great Western Railway in 1852 and closed (after a lingering death) by British Rail 120 years later, a new station opened in 1987, but without the charm of the original.

A southbound goods drifts through on 1st October 1950, scanned from a 6x6cm size negative taken by the late Mervyn Mason, now in my collection.

Old Shoreham Toll Bridge

Sorting out some old magazines for the charity shop, this little green Bell Punch ticket fluttered out.

The bridge over the River Adur was opened in 1847, owned in part by the London & Brighton & South Coast Railway, then the Southern Railway from 1923 and British Railways from 1948. Control passed to West Sussex County Council in 1970, although road traffic had ceased to cross since 1968.

Ian Allan book counter

A mouth-watering selection of Ian Allan transport titles at their book counter, apparently at the Meccano showrooms in London, somewhere that I hadn't heard of before. The date of this magazine insert would appear to be around 1962, when the company were probably the most well known transport book publisher in the UK, thanks in no small part to their 'ABC' series of pocket books used by spotters from the 1940s onwards. Looking at this selection, I realise that I have a number of them, although not always in the best condition! There are many well-used copies around, that is, with copious underlings, that unmarked editions can fetch a pretty penny in eBay these days.

On the reverse of the sheet is an order form for the purchase of postcards, mainly from the Locomotive Publishing Company (LPC) series. Ian Allan took over this collection, introduced in 1899, in 1956, subsequently passing to the National Railway Museum in 1992.

Although still a transport book publisher, their catalogue is much reduced and their large stable of magazines have now been sold off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Allan_Publishing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locomotive_Publishing_Company

Shrewsbury

Scanning an old calender of railway posters recently, the one featuring Shrewsbury looked strangely familiar. As it turned out, I had an early 1970s guide book with the same illustration on the cover, although I suspect that the original was done in the 1950s. The artist was Jack Merriott (1901-68), a landscape and portrait painter in both oil and watercolour.

Of Steam and Suspenders

When searching through pictures of vintage pin-ups for inclusion in this blog (it's a tough job, etc.), I try to include something else in the pose. Thus, we have had Amanda climbing a stile, Jayne with her Jag and Fiona Richmond sandwiched between to big blokes and so on.

Sorting through some pictures recently, I came across this. Unremarkable, you may say. Model Jane Fairbanks looking a little distracted whilst disrobing in someone's living room from a 1970s issue of Spick magazine. What caught my eye however, was the record standing next to her right foot. Not just any old record, but a record of the sounds of steam engines, a copy of which I have had in my collection for many years.

The recording of the sounds of steam locomotives at work and subsequent sale on vinyl had been going on for many years, notably by O Winston Link in the USA and Peter Handford in this country. The record in this picture is Memories of Steam, recorded by Kenneth Grenville Attwood on the Longmoor Military Railway in 1969/69 and at Carnforth in the summer of 1968, during the dying days of steam on British Railways.The colour photographs on the cover of the album were by Ian Krause, but are misleading as none of the locations illustrated actually appear on the record itself. Further evidence of the photographer's (or the owner of the room's) interest in railways is the model of a Canadian National locomotive on the shelf behind. It's always nice to combine one's interests!

Driving Lesson

Little Barford at Acton Lane Power station; the driver steadies his nerves and rolls himself a cigarette after letting me drive his engine..................

I have just finished watching a couple of programmes on BBC2 about railways in Wales, pre-Beeching. There were lots of 1950s/60s film footage taken during the last days of steam, together with the reminiscences of retired railwaymen. One story was of a young lad, befriended a driver at Mold, who was allowed a spot of driving, once away of the eagle-eye of the station master. These programmes were of a world so much in the past and it reminded me of the opportunities for footplate rides during the 1970s/80s on industrial  locomotives, one I recall hearing being at a colliery in South Wales where visiting enthusiasts could 'play with the engine', whilst the crew were at lunch!

I did a fair amount of footplate travel myself during this period; the rough-riding old electrics at Harton Colliery, cadging a lift on the last train of the day out of Pennyvenie Colliery on a warm January afternoon in 1978 and riding on the outside of Simplex locomotives around the Leighton Buzzard sand pits (there was only room for one in the cab).

One of my earlier experiences was at Acton Lane Power station in November 1974. Visits to see the steam locomotives were granted on Saturday mornings and at the end of my visit, the old welsh driver suggested that I might like a turn at the regulator up and down the sidings. Whether management knew about this activity was unclear!

Health and safety considerations has stopped all this, not that there are many industrial locomotives around today, anyway. Even at preserved railways, locomotive sheds are now generally out of bounds to the casual visitor, unless with a guide of some sort. At least some railways now offer locomotive driving courses, which is one way to get onto the footplate. That said, my wife recently used her feminine charms on the fireman at Bridgnorth station, to get some pictures inside the cab of 42968...........

RH&DR Guide

A splendid little guide to the equally splendid little Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway, a favourite line of 'Dunstabelle' and I. This was published by Ian Allan in 1947, the scraperboard cover illustration being, I suspect, by A N Wolstenholme, whose work graced other Ian Allan titles of the period. I bought it in a secondhand bookshop in Bath about ten years ago for just 70p, a bargain even then!

Railway Ribaldry

It seems amazing that such an august a company as the Great Western Railway would give Heath Robinson a free hand to devote an entire book to poke gentle fun at the early days of their empire. But this they did, on the occasion of the railway's centenary in 1935, the result being Railway Ribaldry. All aspects of railway construction and operations were covered, all drawn in meticulous detail and with the author's renowned imagination and humour. There are page after page of contraptions, most of which look as though they could actually work. Original copies must be very collectable, mine being a reprint published by Ian Allan in 1970 (for 17/6). I believe that it has been reprinted several times since; if you see a copy, buy it!

The Far Tottering & Oystercreek Railway

Roland Emett's whimsical railway creations, first seen, I believe, in the pages of Punch magazine before the war, were bought to life at the Festival of Britain at Battersea Pleasure Gardens in 1951. The 15in gauge railway saw Nellie, Neptune and Wild Goose each in the form of a 4.6.2 built by Barlow of Southport, with a diesel engine mounted what would have been the tender. After the festival, they were returned to Barlow and rebuilt as conventional miniature locomotives. The photographs were taken on 20 September by the late Mervyn Mason, the negatives of which are now in my collection.

Wild Goose at Far Tottering

Neptune arriving at Oystercreek station

Nellie 'on shed' at Oystercreek