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July 2020 Vol. 48 No. 7

Please visit us at: www.bdrs70d.com

A nostalgic look back to my first real trip abroad (other than a day trip to Calais in 1990) and my first BDRS European trip when we stayed at Gottingen, to the south of Hannover. We crossed the North Sea overnight from Harwich to the Hook of Holland and then took a train to Gottingen. En route we stopped at Wuppertal. Last May, Janet and I met a German couple from Wuppertal when we were staying in Girona and they were mightily impressed that we knew about the Schwebebahn pictured here and that it was then out of service. It reopened on 1 August 2019.

Other highlights from that first European adventure for me were :

my first journey on the Waterloo and City, and my first rail journey on a European train through Rotterdam and Utrecht to Dusseldorf where we took the S-Bahn to Wuppertal;

a day trip to Magdeburg and a visit to the depot there before a trip up to Hamburg and Bremen before returning to Gottingen;

Sunday on the Harz Mountain Railway, only then recently accessible to the people of Germany let alone enthusiasts from Britain, from Wernigerode, up the Brocken and then to Nordhausen (the final section from Niedersachswerden by bus as our train had failed). Unsurprisingly it was exceptionally busy, especially between Wernigerode and the Brocken.

Monday’s long journey home across country by train to Aachen and Oostende for the Jetfoil to Dover, train to Victoria with a change at Clapham Junction for the return service to Basingstoke.

The four days flew by but I was bitten and, other than when work commitments intervened, I have been a regular since and was bitterly disappointed when this year’s trip to Bilbao was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Another day perhaps. ED.

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EDITORIAL

The Bilbao Support Group

Malcolm and Alison Bown's initiative to get together those who had hoped to travel on the Society's planned trip to Bilbao in May has become a regular virtual event for the 9 or 10 disappointed travellers who join their Zoom meeting sessions. During June Howard Ray ran a quiz asking for the administrative counties in existence today in which 21 stations could be found. Needless to say many of them were just over the border from where you thought! Great fun. Malcolm Bown is setting the questions next time.

Comings and Goings

I imagine that many of you will use your internet access or other means to find out about special workings in our area. I have a friend who emails me a link to Realtime Trains showing the expected timings of specials or interesting movements when he finds out about them. On 11 June I was told that Class 47712 Lady Diana Spencer was coming through Winchester heading for Eastleigh with an HST power car on the end of a rake of coaches. It was on time and I got a picture. Soon after I had got home he sent timings for its return with two Class 90s and I dutifully went back again and waited....and waited. I gave up after twenty minutes and when I got home found that it had passed through an hour or so early! The 90s are now in Inter City swallow livery apparently. I think it got to Acton early and waited there to get back to the timings scheduled on Realtime Trains. A DC Rail Class 60, 60046, was also down this way for a few days running around light engine when I first saw it.

Lynton and Barnstaple Railway look to extend

I have read that the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway are trying to purchase Bratton Fleming Station for the eventual extension of the Railway. Exmoor Associates have accumulated over one half of the money needed before the Friends of Bratton Fleming can make an offer and are working hard to raise the balance required.If the purchase is successful it is intended that a new organisation will be created called Friends of Bratton Fleming Station (FoBFS). The new organisation will be very similar to Exmoor Associates but with a separate Board of Directors.

There are 700 shares in FoBFS at £500 each.(There is a JustGiving website to cater for smaller amounts: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/brattonfleming. People who buy the shares should not expect any dividends. The big reward will come from knowing that Bratton Fleming Station and the adjoining trackbed and former goods yard will have been saved ready for the future use of the reinstated Lynton & Barnstaple Railway. The expectation is that if FoBFS do succeed in buying the property then for a while the house will be rented out; the net income will then pay for the future maintenance of the property.

Green light for revived West Midlands passenger service

Passenger trains are set to return to the line between Walsall and Wolverhampton, having been withdrawn 12 years ago. Since then, the line has been used for freight only.The West Midlands Rail Executive has agreed a timetable with Network Rail, with trains also calling at Willenhall and Darlaston, which have not seen passenger trains since 1965.

Left, 47712 Lady Diana Spencer between Andover Road and Park Road, Winchester and, below, 60046 heads towards Acton and the North at Hookpit on the northern outskirts of Winchester.

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ONE WIRE OR TWO? RICHARD GREEN

On 6 May 2020 I received a query from a Plymouth Railway Circle colleague. He opened with:

Something tells me you'll have an answer for this question.......

Very flattering, of course, but I didn't have a clue. However, with nothing much else to do I decided to make it my business to find an answer. If all else fails I could invent one. As it happens, nothing so drastic was necessary - thanks to the internet. Here are my findings.

My colleague supplied this photograph taken at Hachenburg on the Limburg - Altenkirchen line, about 40 km NNE of Koblenz on 12 August 2010.

So why did he take nearly 10 years to raise the question? He asks:

How does the apparatus on the right interact with the semaphore signals? I can see wires feeding in at the bottom but they don't seem to interact with the large armatures although I may be able to see a single wire feeding through the grey metallic box.

In British signalling practice, remote mechanical semaphore signals were almost always operated by a single wire. A lever in the signal box would apply tension to the wire which would bring the signal arm to its proceed aspect. After the passing of the train the signalman would release the lever and the signal would be

returned to its stop or caution aspect by gravity acting on a counterweight that was raised as the signal was set to proceed. In upper quadrant territory the weight of the arm would assist .

While a wire can readily supply a significant pull, it cannot transmit a push. Remote mechanical points in Britain therefore came to be operated by rigid tubular or inverted U-section rods. These could both pull and push to actuate the point blades in response to the positioning of the lever in the signal box.

These two techniques proved effective and were adopted by many overseas railway administrations, particularly in English speaking countries, before being superseded by electrical methods. However, our European neighbours had a rather different approach.

This was the so-called two wire system. In reality it is a single wire laid in a continuous loop, passing around a pulley attached to the lever in the signal box and then around another pulley near the signal or point and back to the lever pulley. This second pulley has cam slots to bring about movement of the signal arm or point blades as required.

Both runs of the wire have to be kept under considerable tension. The two devices bottom right in the photo are compensators (German: Spannwerk) which provide the necessary tension while eliminating the effects of temperature changes. With no slack in the wires and no friction from rod supports, remote operation is possible over much greater distances than with the British system.

We have seen these devices on BDRS travels but I cannot remember where or when. Any offers? Turnover lever frames have been seen in several museums, most recently at Kühlungsborn West.

As the wires are not clearly visible in the photograph it seems probable something other than a Lumix camera was employed.

There is to be an hourly service between Walsall and Wolverhampton, plus a separate hourly service between Birmingham New Street and Wolverhampton via Tame Bridge, Darlaston and Willenhall. This will be provided by diverting existing trains which run between Crewe and Birmingham.

BASINGSTOKE AND ALTON LIGHT RAILWAY HOWARD RAY

After Fred Kinge’s history of the Basingstoke and Alton Light Railway, members might be interested to know that the one remaining section of this line – the spur off the main line by the waterworks in Basingstoke – was recently “locally listed” as a result of the efforts of the Basingstoke Heritage Society. With all the spare time we now have and the requirement to take some exercise I recently took the opportunity to explore the area – something on my to-do list for a long time – to see what I could find. Access to the area is quite challenging given the modern day road system in Basingstoke. To my

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surprise I found not only the track-bed but that it contained a stretch of railway track together with a buffer stop. It looked like some attempt had recently been made to partially clear the area of undergrowth possibly as a result of the listing application. This would have had to be done I would imagine by Network Rail as the whole area is fenced in and it would seem inaccessible. You can see the small section from the air using Google facilities.

A VIEW FROM EAST ANGLIA - APRIL 2020 MALCOLM BOWN

Back in 2016 I wrote that we were awaiting the re-awarding of the Greater Anglia franchise. The shortlisted companies were the incumbent Abellio (the international arm of the state-owned Dutch national rail operator), First Group and National Express (NE). In the event the Department for Transport (DfT) stuck with Abellio (now called Greater Anglia, GA) with a franchise from October 2016 until 2025. NE maintained that the new franchise was untenable. Almost before the ink had dried on the agreement Abellio announced in January 2017 that, with DfT agreement, they planned to sell a 40% share to Mitsui. As Abellio had previously hoped to include National Express in the franchise, it would be a cynic who didn’t think that they wanted a partner all along. The finances of the franchise quickly turned from bad to worse when in January 2018 the Dutch government had to bail out Abellio with £30million followed by a further drawdown of £50m in August 2018. Abellio claim that the so-called Central London Employment mechanism is flawed and doesn’t deliver on the intended aims. No doubt Abellio would not have had the same view if more commuters had been travelling into London and had pushed revenues up instead of the other way around. Of course, this has now all changed with the Government cancelling franchises through the coronavirus problems.

The new franchise promised numerous improvements including the complete renewal of all 1043 passenger carriages. This involved two orders, one for 660 EMUs from Bombardier and the other for 383 from Stadler being a mix of EMUs and Bi-modes. Other improvements included better public information and on-train systems, improved performance measures, enhanced frequency on the Ipswich to Peterborough and Cambridge services, and the long wished for 90 minutes service between Norwich and London Liverpool Street. This faster service was introduced in the May 2019 timetable change and to great fanfare on the 20th May the 09.00hrs ex-Norwich arrived early in the capital at 10.28. What the Norfolk media immediately seized upon was that the service is only due to call at Ipswich (what about poor old Diss and Stowmarket?) and there are only two return services per day, Monday to Friday. As GA pointed out, you can’t have everything, but wait for our new trains!

That was a year ago, and only a handful of the class 745s has been introduced pre-Covid-19, but not without problems. The worst reported was on 28th January when 745010 failed on the 07.40 Norwich-London service between Forest Gate and Maryland. Having declared the unit a failure, the class 37 Thunderbird was summoned from Colchester but on arrival it was found that it could not couple to the class 745. The passengers eventually detrained to the ballast more than 4 hours later and arrived at Liverpool Street 5 hours later. The GA media spokesman “thanked the passengers for their patience” and said “that teething problems can happen”! After the detraining problems at Lewisham a couple of years ago I seem to recall that the RAIB (or similar) issued guidelines for the evacuation of passengers on a broken-down train. Waiting 5 hours to do so is appalling. A report from a fellow Norfolk Railway Society member suggested good and bad impressions on the internal fitments. The seating is more comfortable than found in the class 345/700/800 formats. However, being 12 car sets, the buffet is a long 9 coach walk away if you are at the back of the train and with only 5 toilets in a 12-coach train these may be overworked, to put it cleanly. Another problem may be luggage, as it is not catered for very well – lower racks and only 6 bikes per set. Remember this is East Anglia. Many ride bikes in the area and take their steeds (even the fold-up variety) with them up to town. At busy times this also causes problems on many local services.

All the rural services are now in the hands of the bi-mode class 755s, either in 3 car format or the longer 4 car set-up, the previous class 153, 156 and 170s having been shipped off to Transport for Wales or East Midlands Railway. The new sets are certainly an improvement, with swifter acceleration, more seats and a quieter travelling experience. The first class on the 170s has been lost with resulting more standard accommodation. One downside to the seating arrangement is the underframe on the airline style seats which has an inconvenient metal bar making it difficult for the window seated passenger to stretch their legs without hitting the bar (see picture over page).

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The introduction of the class 755s has not been without its problems. The well documented near miss on 24th November of a Norwich – Sheringham train travelling at 45mph almost hitting a vehicle at a crossing (by 200 metres) due to the barrier raising, just outside Norwich, did not make for good news on their introduction. Neither GA nor Network Rail have admitted responsibility and it has now gone to arbitration. Can you imagine that happening pre-privatisation? The woes continued: electric power was not immediately available south of Ely due to Network Rail not upgrading the power supply (they had known of this requirement for over 3 years); diesel engines failing at the power changeover; even in late January early February there were regularly reported failures – 28th Jan., 29th Jan., 30th Jan., 4th Feb., 13th Feb., 16th Feb.,19th Feb., etc. which all affected following services. However, the extension of the Norwich-Cambridge services to Stansted Airport is a benefit to those from East Anglia using the airport.

Just to rub salt into the wounds, at the Rail Business Awards event on 27th February, Greater Anglia received the Best UK Rail Operator award. After dreadful train service reliability and cancellations in the last 4 or 5 months one must wonder how awful the other operators must be.

The Wherry Lines (Norwich - Great Yarmouth/Lowestoft) resignalling was at last completed in February 2020, having commenced in 2018. This involved closure of numerous signal boxes, level crossing lever frames and the new signalling being controlled from Colchester. A number of weekend and fortnightly blockades have affected the services to complete the work. You may recall from my report in early 2019 that the line between Great Yarmouth and Reedham via Berney Arms had been closed completely in October 2018. This closure was planned to last about 5 months. Eventually the service was reinstated in March 2020. Notwithstanding that the resignalling scheme had been delayed by a year after the original target date, Network Rail congratulated themselves on having completed the work on time (that is to the much-delayed revised date).

Finally, the Mid-Norfolk Railway (MNR) continues to host both new and old GA rolling stock in the new sidings built in the countryside between Kimberley and Hardingham, pictures below. Sadly, my prediction that despite security it would not take long for the graffiti artists to find them turned out to be true, with some individual with the tag name “BOSZ” managing to desecrate two brand new carriages in early February. All the GA spokesman could say was “trespassing on the railway is incredibly dangerous” which is hardly going to deter such individuals as the MNR is shut for the winter season.

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COMMITTEE UPDATE TONY WRIGHT

As you all know, Society meetings were brought to a sudden end in mid-March by the Government announcement of restrictions on group meetings and the closure of pubs and clubs prompted by the spread of the coronavirus. A Society Committee meeting on 16 March was aborted and agreement reached by email to cancel the intended Society meeting on 25 March and future meetings until the end of April. The Wote Street Club had also been closed. We hope that all members received appropriate notice of the cancellation of meetings. The Committee resolved, as a gesture of goodwill, to pay our usual room rental at the Club for March and April and subsequently to pay a modest 'retainer' to the Club in recognition of our use of storage space at the Club for our equipment. The gesture was well received by the Club and at the time of writing we await news of when the Club is able to reopen.

Our Programme Organiser, Roger Smith, has been busy cancelling our intended speakers until the end of July. He is hoping to be able to book them for meetings in 2021. At our next Committee meeting iwe will have to consider whether, in the light of the Government guidance at that time, we can resume our meetings. We are very conscious of the age of many of our members and our potential vulnerability to the virus and we recognise that even if restrictions are removed many members may choose not to join a large group meeting at an indoor venue.

Members who had booked to join the Society's continental trip to northern Spain in early May were disappointed that it had to be cancelled. Not only had David Brace made all the arrangements for the trip but he has been burdened with securing refunds (largely successful) for the bookings that had been made.

The Committee is grateful to David Hinxman who has been keeping the Society Newsletter in production and to all contributors who have assisted. As always, he would welcome features and pictures of railway interest for future editions.

In the absence of meetings, the Committee has adopted a suggestion that we arrange 'virtual meetings' using on-line technology. All members for whom we have email addresses should have been notified of the first of these meetings held at 7.45pm on Wednesday 24 June when David Brace presented a show on visits to the Settle to Carlisle railway line. We believe from Members’ reactions that those who asked to join that session found it worthwhile. A review of the session appears on page 10 of this newsletter.

There will be a further on-line session on Wednesday 22 July. If you would like to see it and have not already signed up then we must have your email address (to Graham Lambert please) and you will need a computer, laptop or tablet with sound and a reasonable broadband connection. We can then let you know the details and how to join in.

We do need a volunteer for the session, however, to give a talk with pictures for up to 45 minutes. If you would like to do it please advise the Secretary.

We hope that you and your family and friends have been keeping safe and well during the last few months and we wish you well until we are able to meet again.

Flying Scotsman approaching Medstead on 8 March. TW

LOOK BACK IN TIME - (NO 18) – JANUARY/JUNE 1985 HOWARD RAY

Most of you, being long standing Society members and regular readers of this Newsletter, will be aware that I have, for the last five years, been commenting on what our old Newsletters tell us about the Society and the railway scene 35 years ago. We have now reached the first half of 1985, over ten years since the Society’s formation.

The most significant item of news in the January Newsletter was that the Editor had changed. A certain John Clark had taken over. I had better be more careful going forward in making any negative comments about the Newsletter and its content! In his opening “Editorial” John announced that the previous Editor, Brian Elliott, had “requested a relief driver due to other commitments and temporary loss of his shed-plate”. John makes the point that he does not have the opportunities to travel as widely as the previous editor (presumably John was still earning a living at the time) so he would be dependent on the members for information, stories, anecdotes etc. The significance of some of what he then says escapes

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me totally! However he ends by saying that if all else fails in terms of obtaining Newsletter content we could always resort to “Steam Shed Bingo”!

For the next six months the content of the Newsletter, consistently three pages, largely contained information about the “big railway”. However the Editor does comment on the information provided, at times in a most entertaining manner. He also helps the reader with a small paragraph heading for each item. I found myself wondering where he got all this information from in the days before the internet.

What was interesting in reading these pieces was the degree to which we have gone through a full rolling stock cycle since 1985. In April we read that the final Class 58s are coming off the production line and that at the end of March the last Mersey Rail class 503 had been withdrawn following the full introduction of the class 508s. In June we are told that on 17 May the first class 142 “railbus” was delivered.

Throughout the six months there is very little information about the Society or an apparent response from the members to the Editor’s request for contributions. However in May, by way of preparation for the half yearly AGM, there was a copy of the minutes of the January AGM attached to the Newsletter. A number of things struck me from reading these minutes:

- Despite the impression received by reading the 1984 Newsletters, as I commented upon in a previous review, that the number of rambles and trips appeared to have dropped away, the Society had in fact been out and about on eleven occasions in 1984, with three rambles and eight trips by various means of transport including, of course, the RT935. Destinations were South Wales depots, Haven Street on the IOW, the Ffestiniog Railway, Crewe works, the Severn Valley, the Bluebell, the Great Cockrow Railway and Pendon Museum/Didcot. Impressive!

- The membership at the end of 1984 stood at 66 and the average attendance at meetings during the year had been 34.5.

- The Society was now struggling to form the size of committee required. Apart from the Officers [Sid Penney – Chairman, Jim Sugg – Vice Chairman, Richard Green – Secretary and Howard Ray – Treasurer] only three other committee members were willing to continue (Peter Tran, John Clark and Bayard Arris). However two other members – Bob Williams and John Priest – expressed a willingness to serve and were elected. Subsequently, in the May edition, it was reported that Jim had asked to be relieved of his position as Membership Secretary and would be replaced by Mike Upton.

What was clear from the front page of each edition was that the Society continued to offer an interesting range of presentations at the twice monthly meetings. For the period under review there was a cine evening from current member Ian Clare on the Settle & Carlisle plus the 50th Anniversary of the Dutch Railway Society, a “European Travel Night” of films provided by our present Programme Secretary Roger Smith (projected by Rod Jennings, our regular projectionist), a slide presentation on Indonesian railways, a presentation entitled “Changes in BR Motive Power between the 60s and 80s from an ex-Derby employee, slides covering Tyrolean Railways & Tramways around Innsbruck, an illustrated trip from Ashburton to Totnes over the Dart Valley Railway, a cine evening entitled “Steam scenes around Britain” by a speaker from BR Research at Derby, another film evening from the Bream Collection entitled “An evening of American Railroads”, a slide miscellany from member Brian Selfe together with slides from the membership after the half yearly general meetings. What impressed me in considering this offering was the extent to which the presentations covered railway locations outside Britain.

Despite the Newsletter mentioning various Society trips, only one was reported upon in the Newsletter. This was a trip to the Isle of Wight in April. Again this was from my favourite contributor, Ken Dalton, under the title of “A Ticket to Ryde”. We read that 16 members participated, making use of “Persil Vouchers” to cover some of the public transport. To again make the point that not a lot has changed in thirty five years on the main line we then read of a “delay announcement” at Basingstoke. As a result the outward journey went from bad to worse necessitating changes at Eastleigh and Portsmouth and Southsea all of which resulted in a late arrival for the visit to Ryde works, very much the main purpose and highlight of this trip. Our correspondent reports that the 1929-34 units viewed were expected to last till 1992 when 1959-built stock would replace them. Clearly things did not go to plan! Following this visit we read that some decided to make the journey to Ventnor to photograph the St Boniface Tunnel portal. Having achieved this objective after “slogging up the 270ft climb from sea level”, the group then decided to “walk over the Downs and bus it from Luccombe”. Ken comments that the “climb to Ventnor Radar Station would have given Tensing vertigo”. There was then a change of plan with the group deciding to walk all the way to Shanklin. Was this trip billed as a shed bash or a railway ramble? As I was one of the sixteen I enclose some photographs taken that day.

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Other trips which took place without a report, were a visit to Bishop’s Waltham for a Meon Valley Loco Society “at home” evening and a visit to Woking Signal Box. Space was also given to publicising various open days, rail tours and Society trips being finalised for the second half of the year. At the end of one list of trips the Editor, in his inimitable style, has written “a suggest tha’ reets above in t’diary so’s tha’ misses nowt”.

I have already mentioned that a vast amount of news of the wider railway scene filled many of the pages of the six editions. You would enjoy reading all these pages (sadly the editions on our web site don’t go back that far), but given the space constraints in the current edition I can only include a few items that particularly caught my attention, a number of which were notable by the Editor presenting the piece in his unique style and with his attention grabbing item heading, which I have repeated and highlighted below in bold:

· GM4FY - we read that Foster Yeoman have placed an order for 4 GM 33000 HP Co-Cos to operate from Merehead.

· LITTLEBORO’ INCIDENT - we hear of the minimal damage done to the lining of Summit Tunnel following a gas-oil train explosion (see picture right). Our Editor comments that it was a good thing that the route was not approved for LPG conveyance which may have changed Summit Tunnel into a cutting!

· ELECTRA 225 - we learn of a new electric loco to be built initially for the WCML and later on the ECML and out of Paddington. We are told it will look like a “125 and class 58 combination”.

· NE-SW - we read of severe over-crowding on these HST services, probably due to excessive first class seating. I am pleased that they resolved this problem!!

· “HOGS” KILL “RATS” - we learn that Aberystwyth to London services are to be powered by 37’s instead of two 25’s.

RAIL ESTATE - a fascinating piece about the sale of Droxford Station and the constraints placed on any buyer. It reminds us that on 2nd June 1944 a train stopped there with a passenger list which included Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Smuts, Ernest Bevin, General Eisenhower, Charles de Gaulle and Field Marshal Montgomery.

· LE TRAIN MAINTENANT STANDING AU PLATFORM TROIS – there then followed six lines of information in French. It closes with a piece in brackets saying “if vous ne speak pas le Franglais, inquirez a la Editor”!! I didn’t appreciative that John was fluent in French as well as Scottish!

· BR NEWS – a simplified fare system is to be introduced in May!!

· LOAD OF OLD BULL - our Editor reports that following the Scottish derailment last year, BR are now fitting cowcatchers to its 14 push-pull trains. They cost £8,000 each having been designed to withstand an impact with a 2,000 lb cow at 100mph. He goes on to add that it is rumoured that BR conducted tests at Old Dalby using withdrawn class 25s and a herd of Herefords with the results of the tests sold to Fray Bentos as Catering Packs!! [Note - this was not in the April Newsletter!!]

· PIPELINE ON WHEELS – this was a substantial and very detailed piece written, I suspect, by the Editor who was I believe at the time, a Shell employee. The writer explains that at that time Shell held the UK record for the largest regular oil train consisting of 18 x 100 tonne railcars employed on the Stanlow to Teesport working. However following a Californian acquisition Shell were looking at introducing trains consisting of 72 cars weighing a total of 12,000 tonnes and stretching for more than a mile, to replace other much slower methods of transportation.

It was surprising to read just how many problems, incidents and issues were detailed in the “mainline” general news section.

It was also noticeable that over the whole six month period there was only one true “Article” in the Newsletter. This was a piece entitled “King Arthurs on Tyneside” which explains why during the war ten “King Arthurs” were shedded at Heaton Depot in Newcastle. Sadly the author is not mentioned. Was it another item generated by our worthy Editor?

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Finally, having commented upon what was happening in our Society and on the railways what was happening in the wider world in the first half of 1985? Just a few reminders:

Margaret Thatcher was our PM.

The first mobile phone calls in the UK were made.

The C5 was launched by Clive Sinclair.

“Eastenders” debuted.

The UK miners’ strike ended.

56 die in the Bradford City football stadium fire

Everton won both the football league and the European Cup Winners Cup.

CDs were Introduced.

The wreck of the RMS Titanic was located.

The Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was sunk by French Agents.

The first .com was registered.

The first version of Windows was released - Ver 1.0.

The Cold War period of 1985–1991 was just beginning with Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Union.

A selection of Howard’s photographs taken on the Society’s eventful trip to the Isle of

Wight: clockwise, Ryde St. John’s Depot; former London |Underground stock at the

depot; an Isle of Wight ferry and St. Boniface tunnel portal.

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REVIEW OF VIRTUAL MEETING ON 24 JUNE

The Settle and Carlisle with David Brace

David has a large number of transparencies and has been scanning them over a period into digital format including during the coronavirus lockdown. Among these and from more recent photographs he compiled a digital presentation over Google Meet for members with Internet access which he made on 24 June. I and twenty eight other members accessed the session with Iain Henshaw acting as host and giving an introduction and explanation of how this first session should proceed. All went well and the Committee has subsequently decided to run another session on 22 July, the second Wednesday in July and what would have been a regular Society meeting. Anyway, enough of the technicalities.

David and family had holidayed at Horton in Ribblesdale in 1981 and had made several other visits to the S and C over the years. His presentation started with images of that first holiday. With two young sons and a third child expected, at times it was quite a challenge making sure the young boys stayed close by and activities weren’t too strenuous for Sandra..

David took us down the line at a time, of course, when the S and C was under threat of closure. Stations were closed and Ribblehead viaduct needed repair, the cost of which BR was overestimating in support of it’s arguments. Along the line we saw the layout and signal box at Blea Moor, Dent Head viaduct and Dent Station (the highest in England) before stopping at Garsdale, formerly Hawes Junction, for a chat with the signalman in his signal box. At Hawes Junction (the original name of Garsdale) you would, before the line's closure in 1959, have taken the line to Northallerton and the ECML. Hawes station was readily accessible at the time of David’s visit as we saw. The line between Northallerton West and Redmire is now restored and operated by the Wensleydale Railway. In 1984 at Ais Gill summit and Ribblehead we saw 46229 Duchess of Hamilton passing by.

On July 29th 1981, the family also took a trip from Lancaster, with 850 Lord Nelson taking over at Carlisle, for steam over the S and C on the Wedding Belle (Charles and Diana being married that day) with a stop at Appleby for half an hour giving time to photograph a Class 47 passing through, probably bound for Leeds from Glasgow. Next up was the Cumbrian Mountain Express from Skipton to Carnforth behind Black 5 no. 5407. We saw how, at the time, Carnforth was more a locomotive preservation centre than the Railtour HQ that it has become.

The Cumbrian Coast Express, also behind Lord Nelson, was the reason for another visit up to Seascale, dropping off passengers for the Ravenglass and Eskdale. David then showed us some of the geological wonders of the area - the limestone pavements at Malham Cove and Swaledale Buttertubs - and also visiting the memorial at Chapel le Dale to those who lost their lives building the S and C.

David brought his session to a close with shots of his 2006 cab ride courtesy of EWS from Gascoigne Wood to Carlisle giving a different perspective to the journey passing through the 1981 locations and seeing them in a different light, thriving and, at times, too busy.

The session brought a favourable reaction from those engaged with it and everyone appreciated David's and Iain's efforts in bringing the talk together and making it happen. Well done all round.

WHERE AM I?

1. After passing through those tunnels on the route of the former Midland Main Line the next terminus I would reach was Buxton. I received just one reply with that conclusion so well done Ian Copplestone, the Editor of the Meon Valley Locomotive Society’s newsletter.

2. My photograph was taken at Crewe and congratulations to Ian Francis, Malcolm Bown and Dave Orchard for getting it right. But where am I in this picture?