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BASINGSTOKE & DISTRICT RAILWAY SOCIETY

NEWSLETTER September 2011 Vol.39: No 9

Visit us at www/bdrs70d.co.uk

Chairman Secretary Joint Editors

David Brace Alison Bown Sandra & David Brace 48, Hatch Lane 5B Melford Gardens 48, Hatch Lane, Old Basing Basingstoke RG22 5EZ Old Basing, Basingstoke, RG24 7EB Tel: 01256 819401 Basingstoke, RG24 7EB Tel: 01256 323958 e-mail: m.bown@tiscali.co.uk Tel: 01256 323958 e-mail: david.brace@twang.co.uk e-mail: see Chairman’s email

FORTHCOMING MEETINGS to be held at Wote Street Club, Basingstoke Centre normally at 8pm.

Wednesday 14th September BROAD GAUGE RAILWAY JOURNEY PART 2 - Canon Brian Arman Wednesday 28th September ON & OFF THE FOOTPLATE - Bill Davies, using slides and anecdotes, will give a résumé of his 40 year railway career taking in Toton, Nottingham, the GC, Kings Cross, the Southern and Bedford. He will offer some childhood memories including various trams and Liverpool’s overhead railway before focusing on his early working years. Wednesday October 12th THE LAST YEARS OF BRITISH RAIL -Richard Stumpf, will remind us of UK rail in the days before TOCs and FOCs. Slam door units and loco hauled coaches dominated on passenger services. Using slides from 1991, he will show that the changes in the 1990s were as significant as the 1960s. Wednesday October 26th EMERGING TRAM SYSTEMS – UK AND OVERSEAS - Paul Dawkins began his career with BR in the late 60s and now runs his own civil engineering consultancy. He will describe the challenges faced in constructing and subsequently operating and maintaining many of the modern light rail systems at home and abroad.

We would be pleased to hear from anyone who could give a railway-based presentation. This Newsletter is produced by the B&DRS and is issued free of charge and for the interest of its members and of the Society’s friends

Alan George, a Hunslet 2' Gauge 0-4-0T, runs round its train a t Henllan on the Teifi Valley Railway in Carmarthensh ire. The less than clement weather shows that it is July 2011. Alan George was built in Leeds in 1894 and worked in the Penrhyn Qu arries until 1953 and sold in 1965. Photograph by David Brace

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EDITORIAL At the end of July, Network Rail published its latest Route Utilisation Strategy for London and the South East. Earlier in the year I indicated some of the draft findings and recommendations as it effects us here on the South West Mainline to Waterloo. These findings have generally been confirmed but some of the recommendations have changed and so this may be the subject of an article in a future Newsletter. The level of overcrowding predicted by 2031 is still the highest of any route into London at 7000 passengers in excess of capacity for the highest peak hour. Some interesting proposals are put forward for dealing with this gap including a 5th line from Surbiton to Clapham Jn, extending CrossRail 2 (Hackney - Chelsea) to Wimbledon and Surbiton, longer trains and AC electrification from Basingstoke to Reading. All are mega ££££s with long lead times. Freight from Southampton via Basingstoke and Reading is also likely to increase from around 20 trains each way per direction to 51 with more being routed via Andover as the mainline becomes more congested. Trains will be 665m to 750m in length and passing loops will be lengthened. We will be in Colorado again for a month from mid September and so the October Newsletter will be produced and printed before our first September meeting. Hopefully there will be no more programme changes other than those detailed below. Note the revised rules and date for the Photographic Competition. If you do not support it this year by submitting some pictures it could be the last year of the competition. David Brace

OTHER SOCIETY MEETINGS Meon Valley Locomotive Society September 13th “Chairman’s Night” Barry Eagles October 11th “Aspects of Southern Steam & The Golden Arrow” Mike Pym The Railway Club of the New Forest September 30th “Railways of Rhodesia & Zimbabwe (1975-2000) Alan Inder October 28th “Isle of Man Railways and Other Aspects of this Island” John Barrowdale Newbury & District Transport Group September 16th “The Dick Sainsbury Collection. Railways 1950s/1960s” John Barrowdale October 21st “Steamy Eruptions in Indonesia”, Sumatra and Java 1984 Tim Edmonds Oxfordshire Railway Society September 14th “On and Off the Footplate” Bill Davies October 12th “Forest of Dean Railways” Ian Pope

CHANGES TO OUR PROGRAMME For a number of reasons, our programme of talks published in our February Newsletter has some changes in the next 3 months. Please note the following : Wednesday October 12th Annual Photographic Competition put back to 23rd November and replaced by Richard Stumpf’s talk entitled “The Last Year’s of British Rail”. Wednesday 26th November Home and Abroad in 2011 by Ian Francis put back to 12th April 2012 and replaced by “Annual Photographic Competition”. Please note that the rules for the Annual Photographic Competition are broadly as last year (see August 2010 Newsletter). The main changes are: a. All entries must have been taken within the last 3 years. b. Up to five entries per category can be submitted and each category should have the entries

ranked from 1 to 5. If too many entries are submitted, the compiler will reduce the size of entries by removing the lowest ranked pictures.

c. All entries must be received by David Brace on or before 7th November

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REVIEW OF PREVIOUS MEETINGS MEETING ON 10TH AUGUST 2011 Indian Hill Railways by David Brace Our Chairman enthralled a full house with an illustrated presentation on his and wife Sandra’s trip to India earlier this year to travel on and photograph three hill railways: Kalka to Shimla and the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway in the north, and the Nilgiri Railway in the south. David’s digital images were complemented by video footage taken by a fellow traveller which added sound and movement for fuller appreciation of the experience, particularly the bustling and boisterous local people, the shops and markets, the railway workforce, its workshops and, frequently British made, infrastructure. There was also the exceptional scenery and, of course, the sturdy and stoic (and usually veteran) steam locomotives slogging their way ever upwards by way of reversals and/or spirals to gain height rapidly – although, in relation to each of the railways, the word ‘rapidly’ needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. An hour’s delay for a locomotive to come off shed when no other traffic was on the line was one example. For a few rupees cab rides were available, one being described by David as hell on earth – down on the cab floor with handkerchief over his nose and mouth to keep out the noxious exhaust. What he really meant was that it was the best ever! Even better than on the Darjeeling Railway where, with no cab back and the fireman perched on the coupling with the first carriage, David had first hand experience of the dangerous conditions endured by the locomen on every journey up and down the steep hillsides. In their three weeks away, David and Sandra travelled the length and breadth of the country to visit the three hill railways but, being a very reasonable man, he also made sure that several important cultural sites were included in the itinerary: the Taj Mahal, the Golden Temple at Amritsar and the Jama Masjid Temple at Delhi to name but a few. We also saw the changing of the guard at the India/Pakistan boundary demonstrating that John Cleese is not the only one who can carry off silly walks! Described by David as the holiday of a lifetime (so far), it was plain to see how exceptional the whole experience must have been. Clag and culture. Steam and sweat. Dust and dirt. Everything a railway enthusiast, particularly of a certain age, could ask for. David Hinxman MEETING ON 24th AUGUST 2011 The Great Central Railway in the First World War by Martin Bloxsom Martin returned, we believe for the 5th time, to present a talk about how the 10th largest railway company in the UK, the GCR, was involved in and was affected by the happenings of World War I. In 1914 the GCR had around 31,000 employees, all but 75 male. By 1918 numbers had dropped to 29,000 of whom 8800 were women. Two telling photographs illustrated this graphically. The first, pre-war, showed an all male staff with a number of lads and porters. The second, post-war, showed a number of women staff and no young men. Martin explained how senior staff, such as Sam Fay, were seconded to the government to manage the transport logistics of the war and he also demonstrated some of the detailed work down at the lower levels - including lady cleaners working on a humble goods engine. Shipping featured as the GCR had a cross-channel fleet prior to the war and three were interned in Germany, complete with crews. Many ships were lost once Germany unleashed its u-boats. The GCR were required by government to build two long ambulance trains and these were used around the whole of he UK. Martin illustrated his talk with slides taken of pictures in the GCR in-house magazine. This was yet another fascinating talk on a little known subject so thank you Martin, yet again. David Brace

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ERRATA - JULY NEWSLETTER There were two errors in the last newsletter for which we humbly apologise. First our Millbrook correspondent should have read “Paul Gosling” and not Dosling. Secondly, the 70000 class (Britannias) were of power classification 7P6F and not 6P as shown.

FUN AT WELWYN GARDEN CITY (WGC) On August 2nd, John Clark, Ian Francis and I had a very successful day of photography at Welwyn Garden City station. At about 1530 hrs, 92042, in the latest DBS colours, crawled into the down through platform with the Dollands Moor to Scunthorpe steel empties and expired. The train was of such a length that it blocked the entrance to the station for all local services from Moorgate, and semi-fasts to Peterborough and Cambridge. Trains to Moorgate from the sidings north of the station could leave using the flyover from platform 4, but there were no trains available. Eventually the Kings Cross class 67 Thunderbird was summoned, but by the time it arrived, coupled up, did brake tests and then got the road, it was about 1800 hrs before the platform lines were available again. How passengers fared at intermediate stations, wanting to go to WGC and beyond, is not known. We were fortunate since a pair of class 313s arrived empty stock on the down main line and were able to reverse across into platform 2 where we boarded for Welham Green where we had left the car. What is interesting is what happened to the freight. Would the Class 67: uncouple the failed loco and leave it in the carriage sidings? move the whole train into the carriage sidings (if the sidings were long enough)? take the train to the next set of sidings on the down side (probably none suitable before Peterborough)? take the train to New England yards? take the whole train to Scunthorpe? find another DBS loco from somewhere to take the train on (New England)? borrow a GBRF loco at New England? Whatever, it would be a struggle for a 67 to pull a train of that weight including a failed class 92. (none of these! The 67 took the complete train as far as Doncaster then a class 66 continued.) David Cable

INDIAN HILL RAILWAYS PART 6 At the end of Part 5 we were leaving Darjeeling by jeep on our way back to Bagdogra Airport. In the next two days we moved south by plane to Chennai and then by train to Coimbatore. The next morning we were taken by coach for about 45 minutes to Mettupalayam at the foot of the Western Ghat mountain range and the start of the Nilgiri Railway. This would be our final hill railway and a fitting climax to the trip, although little did we know what we were letting ourselves in for. The morning was beautifully sunny and the mountain range to the west was in full view with peaks reaching up to over 8000 feet above sea level. Mettupalayam has broad gauge and metre gauge stations back to back, both being termini but with trains leaving in opposite directions. Our train was in the platform and comprised 3 smart coaches pushed by a Swiss built (SLM) 0-8-2T steam rack engine. It was showing its age with everything looking well worn. The coaches were unusual with an additional set of windows below the cant rail making them look like double deckers. The line as far as Kallar is adhesion worked and is fairly level. The terrain soon became jungle like with palm trees. Kallar was a delight as we took water before engaging with the rack and starting the steep climb. The station was made more attractive with the bougainvillea in full bloom and making an attractive

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surround to the two lower quadrant signals on a single post. We were soon on our way and engaging with the rack. The jungle like territory was reinforced by a track side memorial stone for a track worker killed by a wild elephant as recently as 2010. Water was taken regularly (and frequently) at both open and closed stations. The ashpan had to be cleared equally frequently and there was much attention by the crew and other railway men as the engine did not seem in the best of health. We also stopped unofficially for more blowups, usually for 10 to 15 minutes or so. At each of these unofficial stops we all piled out and took our pictures. From Kallar, one of my colleagues went for a cab ride and I was allocated the second slot from Adderly to Hillgrove. Incidentally, a number of stations have quite delightful names such as Runnymeade, Lovedale and Fern Hill. Our tour manager had warned us that the cab ride was not for the faint hearted and was he right! In the end, only two of us were brave (or foolish) enough. The first thing the driver did was to demonstrate how to cover one’s complete face with a handkerchief and that I was to crouch on the floor with the two firemen amongst the loose coal as we entered the tunnel. Each tunnel felt like Woodhead in steam days but these were only 60m to 90m long. The engine was being worked at full regulator and the atmosphere was stifling and pitch black apart from a glint through a gap in the firebox door. There was constant vibration and noise as each high and low pressure piston thrust its way upwards. I have never been more grateful than to take a slug of lukewarm water after each tunnel exit. The crew each had their own bottle immersed in a bucket of dubious quality “cool” water. I must have drunk 2 litres in my short trip. All too soon, my latest trip to heaven (hell?) finished. We meandered our way up the mountain with frequent stops for water and/or a blow up and eventually reached Coonoor, the end of the rack section some 60 to 70 minutes late. In typical Indian fashion, Coonoor station is a terminus and all trains, up and down, have to reverse in or out to continue (similar to Killarney). At this station the steam engine is replaced by a diesel locomotive. This still pushes the train although on easier gradients and without rack. The changeover at Coonoor was typically slow and full of entertainment, particularly as we were late and other service trains were about. Nevertheless we eventually got under way and made a relatively speedy journey up to our final destination of Udagamandalan (or Ooty as the British shortened it). We were greeted on the platform at Higginbothams Bookstall by the author of a booklet on the railway, one Mr K Natarajan. He was more than happy to sell it to us, duly signed. The next day was rail free as we explored this relic of the British Raj and went to the highest point on our trip at Doddabetta (8640 ft ASL). We had an excellent lunch at a former colonial hotel and visited a tea factory and plantation. The final evening comprised a splendid barbeque on our colonial lawn and our personal servant lit our fire in our room and put a hot water bottle in our bed! The final day should have been an anti-climax. Luggage headed down to the plains in our coach as we retraced our steps down the Nilgiri Railway to Mettupalayam. I had another cab ride, this time in

Your chairman climbing on board SLM 0-8-2T 37389 dating back to 1925.

Despite the fine array of lower quadrant signal in the background, shunting at Coonoor is by time honoured red and green flags.

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a diesel loco No YDM4 630, powered by bio diesel. I was the only one up for yet another cab ride. We made our way steadily downward and passed a service train at the first loop. At Aravankadu I left the engine and visited the signal box. This turned out to be a major education on absolute block working on a single line in true traditional British working using Westinghouse and Saxby equipment. The signal lady was hard worked in dealing with passing trains at this wayside railway but coped extremely well and welcomed us to observe the workings in her signal box. We then moved down to Coonoor where we were advised that we had 10 minutes only to either visit the shed or obtain our lunch. Well you can guess what we men did! Needless to say, there was no urgency. We did our shed visit at leisure and ensured we had our samosas etc in good time. Our engine was an absolutely brand new oil fired rack loco only just released from the main works at Golden Rock in Southern India and which we had seen two days previously on shed at Mettupalayam. The engine was swiftly attached to the front of the train, we took our places and the starter signal was lowered. 5 minutes later the signal was returned to danger, the engine was uncoupled and, in true Thomas style, went off to shunt the temperamental coaches in the sidings. Despite having three carriages to ourselves, some railway workers needed to move down the line and they were not allowed to travel in our chartered train. Thirty or forty minutes later, interrupted by up and down service trains, our engine had managed to put each of three carriages in to one of three sidings and select the one to add to our train. Despite having a splendid signal box at Coonoor, all shunting moves were carried out manually with three flag men. Having a flight to catch, for the first time on this trip, our tour manager was beginning to look stressed! Well we left about an hour late and proceeded sedately down the line and all seemed well. That was until we suddenly lurched to a very sudden halt as we emerged from Tunnel No 3 at the site of a disused station. Geraldine, the tour manager’s wife looked out and uttered these immortal words “the engine seems to have gone off without us!” It had indeed and was nowhere to be seen. Of course we all piled out for the pictures and spotted our engine beyond the former station and back on the rack. It slowly returned and it was somewhat obvious that the front coupling had pulled out. Then followed a delightful episode of pure Indian mayhem as some 22 railwaymen tried to resolve the problem. They shunted the engine forward, they shunted it backward. They hit anything metallic with hammers or even fishplates. They pushed the train backwards so half of the carriages were in the tunnel. Eventually, with the help of a disused pit under the track two men started to tighten up the large nut but were unable to apply sufficient torque so a wire rope was fixed to the wrench handle and about six men in unison pulled on the rope. After some 60 minutes had elapsed we were on our way again but with an even more stressed tour manager. Our coach with luggage was about 600 feet below us and attempts for us to be met at the next wayside station failed so we continued to the end of the line as the sun was setting. By having only a beer and brownie at Coimbatore Airport, we made our flight and there was time for a further beer and a KFC at Mumbai Airport! So ended in style a most amazing trip with adventures and excitement from beginning to end. David Brace

Finding the right coach at Coonoor is not easy when you have three to chose from.

Where is our coupling then?

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A RAILWAY ENGINEER OF THE RAJ David Brace’s fascinating presentation on Indian Hill Railways (August 10) reminded me of a remarkable old lady, now passed on, that I used to work for. Hilary Bourne was a distinguished weaver who had made curtains for the Royal Festival Hall, and material for Charlton Heston’s costumes in the film Ben Hur. In 1985 at the age of 75 she co-founded Ditchling Museum in Sussex and became its first curator; she was still very much in charge when I went to work there in 1993. What has this to do with Indian hill railways? Well, Hilary was born in India in 1909. Her father, James Bourne, was a railway civil engineer there, and by 1909 he had risen to the position of chief civil engineer of the Madras and Southern Maharata Railway. One of the projects he worked on was the construction of the Nilgiri Railway. He had gone out to India in 1898, where he was joined by and married Hilary’s equally remarkable mother Hilda in 1903. He worked there until his death from typhoid fever in 1918, contracted whilst building a twenty mile line through virgin jungle to access a supply of timber for sleepers for another railway – a line across desert to service the Mesopotamian front. He took many photographs. They are now in the keeping of an Oxford College, but I was able to borrow them for a temporary exhibition at the museum, including the example reproduced here, taken whilst the Nilgiri Railway was under construction.

In the 1960s, Hilda, who lived to the age of 102 wrote an unpublished book about their life in India. I was permitted to read this, and when Hilary was preparing her own autobiography for publication in 1999, I contributed a supplementary chapter based on my reading of Hilda’s book; this chapter is my source now. Hilda’s book is full of fascinating stories about Indian dignitaries and ceremonies, the wildlife, about managing a household with fourteen Indian servants, building a church, and much else, including some very interesting anecdotes about her husband’s work in which she took a strong interest, visiting him on site whenever she could. Thus it was that Jim, (as Hilda always called him), once took her on a fast downhill ride on the Nilgiri Railway on an inspection trolley. Hilda wrote that she clung on “like grim death”; she felt frightened, but elated too, and blessed Jim for taking her “as it was an experience that few women ever have.” Hilda had another really frightening experience with Jim on an inspection trolley (not on the Nilgiri Railway this time); they were coasting downhill when he suddenly pulled on the brake and yelled to her to jump off; then at his command the “coolies”, (as Hilda called the Indian Railway workers) whose job it was to push the trolley, lifted it off the rails and flung it to the side. An unexpected goods train that only Jim had heard was almost upon them. As they gathered their wits and Jim prepared to

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give the careless local station master a dressing down for giving them the all clear, “ a gorgeous peacock with his tail fully spread in the sun appeared at the line side – a wonderful sight to soothe our nerves after the shock we had just had.” On another occasion Hilda watched as Jim directed the replacement of a long section of track on a viaduct that led directly into a steep cutting, a very restricted site. He planned to complete the work in twelve hours, the interval between the passage of two important mail trains. His superior had said it couldn’t be done in the time, but he had planned the work meticulously, and by the time the second mail train could be heard in the distance the final bolts were being tightened. “What a moment!” Hilda wrote. “Jim gave it the signal to proceed and it came slowly over, and crossed the newly fixed section without any mishap. We thanked God from the bottom of our hearts, and the gang all shouted and laughed and danced about with glee.” Jim said he could have done with a “sky hook” for the job. Nowadays, Hilda commented, he could have used a helicopter. Often Jim had to work away from home using a private railway carriage shunted into a siding as accommodation. One evening when Hilda was with him there, he went off with his gun to hunt for a tiger known to be nearby. Whilst he was gone, a friend of his turned up unexpectedly, and hearing about the tiger, borrowed Jim’s spare gun and also rushed off in pursuit of it. At this point Hilda discovered that the friend had left the cartridges behind. She told Jim’s chokkra (valet) to go after him with them, but the terrified man refused, so Hilda set off to deliver them herself. As she hurried along the track, she began to hear “growling and whuffling noises” coming from the other side of the thorn hedge bordering the line; the tiger was keeping pace with her. Fortunately after a while it disappeared without trace, probably, she thought, frightened by the sight of her white dress in the moonlight. Incidentally Hilda was a crack shot herself. She often beat male competitors in rifle shooting competitions and once she drove off a thief who had entered her compartment on an overnight train by pointing a pistol at him, and on another occasion she used this to dispatch a cobra that confronted her on the balcony of her bungalow. Both Hilda and Jim clearly admired many of the Indians they came into contact with. There was, for instance, the old head foreman of a bridge repair gang, a man with magnificent carriage, a long white robe and a great air of authority, whom Hilda watched walking barefoot along a high twelve inch wide girder as flood waters raged and swirled below. Then there were the two “coolie women” in a mixed gang building a bridge under Jim’s supervision. With all the comings and goings, he paid little attention when these women retired to a nearby field. When they returned he was amazed to see that one of them was carrying a new-born baby. Straightway the new mother went back to work, happily suckling the infant at intervals. Jim was told that this was “a common occurrence among coolie women who lead such a natural life that they think little about childbirth, and manage the whole thing without effort and without complications of any kind.” Whether or not the impression that Hilda Bourne conveyed of Anglo-Indian relations in the days of the Raj is wholly typical, I am unable to say, but her account certainly conveys a very positive sense of mutual respect between two very different peoples. John Hollands

Whilst no pregnant female workers were observed on our trip, most gangs had a mixture of men and women as in this picture where an earth embankment is being strengthened with rocks all positioned by hand. Photograph by David Brace