Page 1 EDITOR : Gordon Bruce, 2 Sawyers Close, Costessey, NORWICH NR5 0SR (Tel. 01603 747256) DISTRIBUTION : Graham Smith, 7 Caistor Lane, Poringland, NORWICH NR14 7QT (Tel. 01508 492096) NEWSLETTER Vol 43 No 4 JUNE 1997 12345678901234567890 FORTHCOMING EVENTS Thursday July 17th - Visit to Little Melton, for a look at the new layout of the 2ft gauge rail way. To be followed by an informal social gathering. Meet 6.45 - 7pm - just turn up. Guests welcome, the more the merrier! Wednesday August 27th - Trip to London Underground Ltd’s Upminster Depot. Please contact Graham Kenworthy (01603 714479) as soon as possible if you want to go (members to make their own way there). Regular meetings resume on Opinions expressed in this Newsletter are solely those of the writers concerned, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Society as a whole. In this issue Meeting Reports with Mike Handscomb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Changing Face of London’s Railways (Part 1) Mike Handscomb begins a twopart look at the post-privatisation scene in the capital . . . . . . . . 3 From The Ken Mills Notebooks Recollections of a local trip from May 1955 . . . . . 5 The Audio-Visual Experience (Part 2) Gordon Bruce concludes his account . . . . . . 7 Drax & South Humberside Mike Fordham searches out freight up north . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Chairman’s Address . . . . . 11 Letter from Ernest Beckett 12
Page 2 Very British Railways of Egypt, Hellesdon and India A crowded Church Hall on 20th February enjoyed a ‘three-country break’ from the camera of Society stalwart and champion globetrotter David Wright. High spots of his trip to Egypt (apart from remains of the Pharaohs, that is!) had been the discovery of three distinct railways : standard gauge beside the Nile between Luxor and Aswan; a 2ft gauge sugar-cane system, where a battered Rumanian 0-4-0 diesel hauled equally careworn trucks over very suspect track; and finally, lengths of even more rickety 18in rails, provided for the archaeological excavations. At Luxor station on the main-line railway, David had been struck by the British atmosphere : fullheight platforms and gantries of lower-quadrant semaphore signals. Some 25 years back, a girl had surprised David by providing some slides she’d taken of railways in India; sensibly, he married her. Last year David and Jill returned to India for a holiday. It was not a railway-orientated tour, so between organised excursions David sneaked off to photograph stations and intriguing mixed-gauge track layouts. At Delhi’s Railway Museum he found an agreeably varied collection. Between broad- and meter-gauge steam relics of the Raj lay vintage electrics, a decrepit Dodge railcar and a peculiar monorail steam engine - in fact ‘monorail’ was stretching the truth a bit, as it needed a concrete strip parallel with the rail in order to support the ‘non-rail’ side! The museum boasted a multi-gauge turntable made in Ipswich, and a shop where you could buy decent railway books for £1 a time! Visiting school parties, though, preferred the unashamedly ‘toy’ railway running round the grounds. And Hellesdon? Well, for some, NRS evenings are incomplete without a Norfolk segment, so David revealed that he’d witnessed the very last train to visit the station - an ‘03’ 0-6-0 shunter and its track-recovery train. He showed slides of this sad sight, and some shots from the air of the Norwich end of the M&GN’s trackbed. MEETING REPORTS with Mike Handscomb Bohemian Rhapsody in Blue (Chris King & Paul Hudson) I t was the former East Germany which saw the start of the Plandampfs, that’s to say steam-hauled ordinary service trains, but rolling-stock incompatibility and the difficulty of keeping to service schedules mean that hardly any run there now. In the Czech Republic, though, they’re still a popular feature, and on March 8th Chris and Paul put on a joint slide show to give us an idea of the ‘Plandampf Weekend’ they had enjoyed last year. It had taken place on the main line between Chomulov and Karlovy Vary, in the north-west of the country. Their first trip was behind a 1955 Skoda-built 4- 8-4T, resplendent in black livery with a horizontal white stripe. Apparently this was the last new design of steam loco for Czech railways and only two were built. Even today, Chris told us, most locomotive and multiple-unit classes are quite small. And there are two electric voltages, so there’s a lot of variety to be seen. Several other locos were involved in the weekend’s programme, all Skoda products apart from one 2-10-0 built by CKD (I won’t even try to write that in full!). It was interesting to learn that the numbering system of Czech locos and tenders, once mastered, reveals details like axle loading and water capacity. To Chris’s dismay only one engine wore the traditional Czech blue livery (a Class 498 4-8-2 dating from 1946), so his cunning combination of song titles for the evening (see above) was less apt than he planned! One day was spent linesiding (photographing not just steam but also the diesel-hauled fire-fighting train!), and one behind an impressive pair of Class 475s on a return trip to Pizen (or Pilsen, home of the brewery to you and me!). Even their journey back to the UK was rewarding, for they found time to visit a German 750mm steam line and watch one of its resident 2-10-2s in action. Our thanks to Chris and Paul for a most entertaining evening.
Page 3 T he final train operating franchise, ScotRail, was awarded on February 25th, and now not a week seems to pass without one of the new companies placing an order for rolling stock or unveiling a new livery to the press. It’s an unparalleled time of change for those of us with a railway interest. The fashionable reaction to the profusion of new colours is to sneer and say that the only people to benefit are paint manufacturers. But in the 1930s smartly-painted modern trains were seen as vital in raising the profile of rail travel and attracting business, and that must still hold good. Maybe it’s at a subconscious level, but I’m convinced some ECML travellers already think “when I go up north/down south, one of those super blue trains would be nice”. Wanting to see for myself what was happening, I decided to spend a day in London visiting several termini and travelling on a few lesser-known suburban lines. One Thursday in April, an Anglian Railways’ £16.50 ‘London Day Out’ ticket got me to Liverpool Street at 9.55am. As NRS members will know, the London Day Out comes complete with a LUL Zone 1 ticket, so once I’d supplemented this with a Zones 2-6 Travelcard (£3 - astonishing value!), public transport from Uxbridge to Upminster and from Hadley Wood to Coulsdon South was mine for the day. (The only problem was that the Zone 1 ticket wouldn’t open any of LUL’s entry/exit barriers. I activated the red ‘seek assistance’ message every time, and several ticket-barrier staff remarked “Oh, not another Norwich ticket. I wish they’d sort their computer out!”) I spent eight hours in and around London. No fewer than 20 of the 26 train operators, if you include the non-franchise London & Continental (Eurostar), serve the capital to some extent. Four of them eluded me : Virgin West Coast because I didn’t have time to visit Euston, and ScotRail, South Wales & West and Virgin Cross Country because their visits to London are infrequent. However I managed to catch at least a glimpse of the others. I’ve rigorously cut back the copious notes I made during the day (I can hear the sighs of relief!). Instead, here are some thoughts on the new companies and what I saw. WAGN Railway From the start of this year, WAGN has been run by Prism Rail. Prism, the brainchild of a group of bus operators, has acquired four rail companies. WAGN’s trains still sport Network SouthEast colours apart from the five 4-car 322s allocated to the Stansted service. Since last November these have been branded ‘Stansted Skytrain’, and at Liverpool Street I saw 322483, the first to receive a repaint (at Adtranz, Ilford), leave for the Essex airport. To my mind the grey-withyellow-stripe scheme is rather insipid, and less attractive than the previous grey-and-green which echoed BAA’s colours. Great North Eastern Railway As well as ordering eight tilting train sets, James Sherwood’s Sea Containers Group has put a lot of marketing effort behind the ECML service since it started operations in April 1996. Publicity material is branded ‘GNER Britain’s Fastest Railway’ and many of the Class 91/Mk4/ DVT sets, as well as the unique Class 89 (no longer called Avocet), now appear in a prestigious dark blue with a broad red band running below the windows. On the side of the 91s and DVTs a huge ‘GNER’ has been applied. When I visited Kings Cross the lettering on DVT 82204 was gold, while 82207 was white - presumably no final decision on this has been made (in case you’re reading this, Mr Sherwood, I prefer the gold!). The carriage bodysides bear the company’s circular heraldic device below the slogan ‘Route of the Flying Scotsman’. The device is not painted on, but a casting - tomorrow’s collectable? Once I’d left Kings Cross I imagined that would be the last I saw of GNER for the day. I was wrong - it had a sales-promotion stand in the middle of the concourse at Victoria. Now that’s something you wouldn’t have seen in BR days! Midland Main Line Although National Express took over MML on the same day that Sea Containers took charge next door, it wasn’t until this February that it revealed new-look IC125s. The colours are teal green and grey, with three tangerine stripes below the windows, and ‘MIDLAND MAINLINE’ next to a stylised leaping deer on the power cars. Internally the changes are just as radical. But after the innovations at Kings Cross, my perusal of the platform ends at St Pancras was disappointing - all the IN125s I saw still wore tired old InterCity colours. THE CHANGING FACE OF LONDON RAILWAYS : SOME OBSERVATIONS Mike Handscomb discovers the changing railway
Page 4 The only sign of the new order, apart from TV departure screens and publicity material, is the poky travel centre, where green and yellow laminate half-heartedly reflects the new image. The main ticket office is as ill-lit, deserted and uninviting as ever. Presumably the station’s listed building status means that alterations cannot lightly be made to the lofty wood panelling, and it remains more like a gloomy museum interior than a place to encourage you to buy a train ticket. Chiltern Trains Chiltern is now run by a management buy-out company with backing from Laing. Like Anglia, its network is compact enough for a single pocket timetable (and it’s also been awarded a Chartermark). Its fleet of two-and three-car Class 165 ‘Network Turbos’, all still sporting NSE colours, run from Marylebone to High Wycombe, Aylesbury and Birmingham Snow Hill. Although the Turbos are only about five years old, Chiltern was the first of the private companies to order new trains : a fleet of 12 new Class 168 dmus will arrive in 1998 and bring the Marylebone - Birmingham journey time below two hours. Marylebone is as peaceful as ever, and I can discern nothing of a new image. The company logo (which pre-dates the new owners anyway) appears on the TV departure screens; it presumably represents the rolling Chiltern hills at sunset, but it looks more like a red ball bouncing on a spoon! I board a High Wycombe train as far as South Ruislip. At the centre of each carriage a permanently changing electronic display reminds passengers of the stations on the journey. It’s a useful feature, but has room for only 16 characters. When a lengthy message begins about unattended luggage or engineering works at the weekend, passengers probably doze off long before the end! Thames Trains This is a MBO/bus company venture, which, last October began serving such diverse places as Paddington, Hereford, Bedwyn, Oxford, Henley, Basingstoke and Gatwick. The bus partner is GoAhead Group, who began in the North-East but during the 1980s have established interests in Oxford, Brighton and London as well as being the dominant partner in the Thameslink rail franchise. One short line which comes under the Thames banner is the Greenford - West Ealing loop. It has always appealed to me. Once upon a time aged single-car diesels rattled intermittently between the two stations, but through trains now run every half-hour between Greenford and Paddington. I board 2-car Turbo no 165126 (still in NSE colours, as are all the Thames dmus I see) in its bay platform sandwiched between the Central Line tracks at Greenford. The Turbo burrows under the westbound track and heads south to Ealing. At the southern end of the loop we join the Paddington - West of England main line at a triangle. Inside sit two railway sites : one is a Plasser works, the other a depot where brand-new ‘Amey Railways’ yellow signs on the fence and vinyl stickers on the road vans announce that what was the Western Infrastructure Maintenance Unit has new owners. Between Ealing and Paddington there’s a lot of activity, as confirmed by the array of cameras and camcorders at Acton Main Line : 60077 on a train of ARC stone hoppers. 58042 in charge of Yeoman covered JYAs and 60011 on yet another stone train. All three bear Mainline Freight blue, which will, presumably, soon give way to EWS red-and-gold. We see the inevitable sleek Eurostar unit as we pass North Pole depot. Great Western Trains I arrive from Greenford at Paddington’s platform 14, a stygian afterthought at the station’s northern extremity and some way from the concourse. As I have to dash to the Bakerloo line to get to Willesden Junction as quickly as I can, I only have time to grab a Great Western pocket timetable and note that, of the HSTs sitting at the platforms, there are two in the attractive new dark-green-and-ivory (and fully refurbished interior, though I don’t have time to inspect that!). Whereas GWT, another MBO and with FirstBus among the backers, has incorporated the ‘InterCity’ name in its new livery, no other previous IC operator has done so. Is this brand name destined for oblivion? (To be continued)
Page 5 Date : Saturday 7th May 1955 Trip : Norwich to Kings Lynn via Thetford and Swaffham : Return via Dereham and Wymondham While the practice diminished slowly over the following years, in 1955 it was generally accepted that offices worked Saturday mornings until 1300 hrs, making a ‘long weekend’ almost impossible. Hence my trip to Kings Lynn commenced with a smart getaway from the office in Upper King Street, to enable me to have sufficient time to buy my ticket and board the 13.32 train to London (Liverpool Street), which in those days ran all stations to Ely, then Cambridge and Audley End, arriving in the capital at 17.00. Class B17 4-6-0 no 61643 Champion Lodge (named after the large country house near Maldon, Essex, owned by Sir Claude Champion de Crespigny) stood at the head of the eightcoach train, which I used as far as Thetford, where arrival was at 14.34. Connections at Thetford for Swaffham were made from services coming down from London and across from the Midlands rather than up from Norwich, so there was a 45-minute wait here until 15.20. At 14.42, the 12.10 exLiverpool Street (due in Norwich 15.28) duly arrived with another ‘B17’, 61635 Milton in charge, but the York to Yarmouth through service timetabled to arrive at 15.01 failed to show by the time our little Class E4 2-4-0 no 62789 pulled out of the spur at the west end of the station, collected its passengers and got under way. Behind the ‘E4’ and its three-car train had been standing a ‘C12’ 4-4-2T and two coaches, and this provided the 16.17 service to Swaffham. Chugging away from Thetford, our ‘E4’ took us nearly four miles back towards Norwich to Roudham Junction, still with its platforms intact, before collecting the single line tablet from the signalbox here and turning away northwards to call at Wretham & Hockham, Stow Bedon, Watton and Holme Hale, before arriving in Swaffham at 16.03. Eastern Region timetables for 1955 show two Sunday services on this line, leaving Swaffham at 16.23 and 21.50, returning from Thetford at 17.50 and 23.19. Sunday trains were unusual on secondary branch lines, but I can only assume that they were utilised chiefly by the RAF personnel stationed at Watton, which was an important camp at the time, especially as the 23.19 ex-Thetford connected with the 20.24 from Liverpool Street, enabling squaddies to use a 48-hour pass to the fullest extent. There may well have been road transport from Swaffham for forward connection to RAF Marham, another busy ‘drome of the day. Connections at Swaffham for Kings Lynn left me with a further wait until 16.42, due to arrive at Kings Lynn at 17.10. In the meantime, no 62789 had run round its train and departed at 16.23 for Thetford, running tender first. Fortunately this engine was provided with a tender cab for this very duty. Class D16 4-4-0 no 62608 took me on to Lynn with three coaches and two bogie vans. Crossing the old A47 road on the level between Narborough and East Winch reminded me of an incident there some years later. I had been returning to Norwich from a trip to Scotland, and had left Edinburgh late in the evening, travelling overnight and arriving at Peterborough around 4.00 am. In those days, before the demise of the M&GN line, there was a handy 5.10am train to Kings Lynn from Peterborough which only stopped to set down passengers. If you were lucky and the train wasn’t too full, there was only one real stop at Wisbech. Our ‘4MT’ made excellent time into Lynn, where a smart transfer to the Derehambound railcar was made. It was a foggy early morning, and at the A47 crossing our railcar ran into the crossing gate which had in turn been hit by a lorry, the force of the impact pushing one of the gates into our path. The upper timber support of the gate collided with, and slightly penetrated, the thin front end of the railcar. Sleepy from my overnight travelling, I woke quickly to see the driver jump up as the gate hit the train, After 25 minutes or so, when the gate had been extricated from the train and set beside the track and the driver had recovered sufficiently from the shock, we proceeded slowly to Dereham and thence to Norwich. Back to the trip at Kings Lynn, and a brief visit to the loco shed here revealed : Return to Dereham from Lynn was by the 18.23 service, composed of Class C12 4-4-2T No 67374 with the ‘Hull & York Spare’ push-pull carriages, the engine running bunker-first at the rear of the two-coach set in true push-pull fashion. Arrival in Dereham was at 19.27 after seven stops. In the loop at East Winch was another ‘C12’ running light to Kings Lynn after From the Ken Mills Notebooks A new series in which Ken Mills continues his
Page 6 working the 16.17 Thetford - Swaffham passenger train. Wendling station saw our ‘C12’ cross the 19.11 Dereham - Kings Lynn service with ‘D16’ 4-4-0 No 62592 at the front end. Noted on Dereham loco shed as we passed were the following engines :- It is interesting to realise that 65567 still exists in preservation as LNER 8217 in York Museum. Eight minutes later I was on the last leg of the journey, picking up the 18.42 from Wells-on-Sea, booked to leave Dereham at 19.35 with arrival at Thorpe station at 20.23. Motive power was ‘D16’ 4- 4- 0 62540, hauling three coaches and a van. I made some notes of the cost of the tickets for the afternoon out, and these reveal some surprising inaccuracies in the fares structure : Still, I had travelled 100% behind steam locomotives, and the total cost of the trip was less than £1. If this sounds cheap, place it against the fact that my wages as an office youngster were probably £3 per week. Undeniably, it was a pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon and evening. 2-6-0 Class 4MT 43095, 43142 4-4-2T Class C12 67374, 67386 4-4-0 Class D16 62518, 62526, 62545, 62559, 62573, 62582 0-6-0 Class J15 65359 0-6-0 Class J17 65501/19/20/21/30/32/44/49/82 0-6-0T Class J69 68498, 68545, 68635 2-6-0 Class K3 61880 4-4-0 Class D16 62553, 62584, 62608 2-4-0 Class E4 62787, 62788 0-6-0 Class J15 65469, 65472 0-6-0 Class J17 65567, 65570, 65573 Single Norwich Thorpe - Thetford 30½ miles 7/- 2.75d/mile Single Thetford - Swaffham 22¾ miles 4/8d 2.46d/mile Return Swaffham - Kings Lynn 29 miles 2/8d 1.10d/mile Single Swaffham - Norwich Thorpe 33¾ miles 5/- 1.78d/mile Follow-up to Ken’s Article on the 1952 football train to Reading in the last issue Norwich won 1-0 with a second-half goal from Johnny Gavin. Crowd 19,891. Norwich team : Nethercott, Morgan, Lewis, Foulkes, Holmes, Ashman, Gavin, Kinsey, Ackerman, Ratteray, Summers. (RJA)
Page 7 I n the first part of this article I recounted my musical upbringing and explained the significance of music in my life, detailing how it led to my first audio-visual presentation to the NRS in 1992 (Lowestoft Station) together with the inspiration for a description of the demolition of Norwich Locomotive Shed in February/March 1994 aided by Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony. By this time, I had committed myself to doing a full-length talk to the NRS later that year. Still rather short of ideas but acknowledging the reaction to my Lowestoft effort, I knew that I had to try to do something here. Furthermore, it was being expected of me - I was being asked if I would be “doing Norwich shed” at the informal meeting that year! But, although I had plenty of material taken over the few weeks it took for 32A to disappear from the landscape, I still had to make the slides fit the music. The middle section contains a theme which sounds a little more optimistic, more hopeful, more reflective - an obvious point for a flashback sequence. Trouble was, I didn’t have any slides of my own showing locos on shed when 32A was alive. Richard and David to the rescue - the middle section of the presentation uses their material. The section builds to a climax where the reverie ends and we wake up again - back to the demolition shots. But the real climax was still to come - I needed something really dramatic for here. I had managed to capture a ball swinging through an end wall one day, but I was pointing towards the sun and there didn’t seem to be that much rubble crashing to the ground! Still, it had to do so in it went. The music at this point is so devastating - it sounds like a broken man committing hara-kiri - that the images were brought to life in a way that a commentary just could not. Magic! In the end I prepared three sequences for my talk, but only used two. The ‘32A’ set obviously had to close the proceedings, but whilst deciding just what to talk about I decided to attempt a ‘musical introduction’, in order to prove that the music formula could apply to general scenes whilst encompassing musical styles that were far removed from the heavily-emotional classical type. What I ended up doing was selecting a number of slides in which, in my opinion, I had come closest to finding David Pearce’s ‘picture’ and set them to a piece of soothing, new ageambient-music-art - namely, the opening track from the Cocteau Twins’ album “Victorialand” entitled “Lazy Calm”, which title I gave to the set. This attempted to portray a dawn-to-dusk sequence, although there was a fair bit of artistic license involved! This was the total opposite to the two other shows - the music was ‘background’ but so were the images : a set of pictures designed to set a scene. In fact, I dug out so many slides which I wanted to include that I had to play the music through twice! The third sequence I prepared was a ‘strategic reserve’ - in spite of the rather large number of slides I banged through the projector that evening, there were still quite a lot thrown out! Some of the night-time shots were hastily assembled into a sequence to be accompanied by the ultimate piece of night-time mood music - the love theme from the soundtrack of the film “Bladerunner”. In the end I didn’t get around to showing that sequence until a members’ slides evening in 1996. The year previous to that was the NRS’s 40th Anniversary, which culminated in an Open Day at Ipswich Road United Reformed Church, when there were to be many different things going on. I thought that I would give another airing to the audio-vids I had already shown but also try and put together a new one. I had a piece of music in mind - the third movement of Górecki’s Third Symphony, a work that had become phenomenally popular following heavy exposure on Classic FM and which had led the field in the promotion of mood music. I had discovered the piece after playing another Górecki work with the Norwich Philharmonic, and became entranced with its hypnotic simplicity. Built on a few repeating phrases, the music seemed to be a perfect antidote to today’s stress-ridden society, and yet the subtle harmonies and plaintive vocal still evoked an air of extreme sadness. My first idea for using this music came after the tragic fire at the Assembly Rooms. I rushed off The Audio-Visual Experience (Part 2) Gordon Bruce continues the story of his popular music & slide shows
Page 8 the best part of two rolls of film on the day after the fire, but sadly the views I wanted were not obtainable. So, instead, I decided to root through my slides and look for scenes of railway decay - an idea which worked pretty well. My main worry was the length of the piece - 15 minutes of (musically) very little, with a ‘false ending’ three minutes from the end. Would the audience stay awake that long, or would they think I’d gone a bit too far? In the end, the entrancing sounds made even more poignant the sad views of derelict ‘Peaks’ at March, the decline of Broad Street Station, the Vic Berry pyramid and desolation at Nottingham London Road, and your kind reception persuaded me to repeat the showing in 1996 - appropriately, in the church itself. And so to 1997. I did not have any intention of doing another sequence, as I felt I had exhausted the possibilities and did not want to let the previous ones go stale. The previous summer I had been over at Toton hoping to find some Class 31s, only to be greeted by a sad line of derelict, vandalised machines standing right alongside a public footpath. Only five years ago, the Class 31s seemed to be omnipresent in Norfolk - true maids of all work which could work almost any train. Even an A1A Charters tour to Norwich in April 1996, which brought a pair back to the city, did not seem out of the ordinary. And yet, seeing all these knackered machines - many in ‘one-off’ liveries and all still ‘stored unserviceable’ on BR’s books - brought immediately to mind a piece on a tape with the title “Someday We Will All Be Together” - a moving, vibrato-drenched string-synth interpretation of Pachabel’s Canon in D. This piece is one of those Baroque works, like Bach’s Air on a G String and Albinoni’s Adagio for Strings, which are more intense the slower they are played, and thus Claire Hammill’s Pachabel interpretation seemed perfect. And yet - I had to stand back. What was gestating here was almost identical to the Górecki set which I had only just shown to the Society. I couldn’t do the same thing again, and so the idea was shelved. Until late 1996, when the NRS planned a second Open Day. Mike Fordham simply came up to me and said “Gordon, you’ll do one won’t you”. Fortunately I knew Mike well enough to know what he meant by “do one”, but against that I had never done one ‘to order’ before. And apart from Toton I had no other ideas. Richard Adderson had asked me if I could do an up-tempo sequence as a change from all the Tchaikovsky-Górecki wallowings - this I accepted as a challenge, knowing that the music still had to fit the images and not just be ‘wallpaper’. The solution turned out to be a ‘mixed bag’ of what ended up as eight sections, and allowed me to include a few of my own personal eccentricities into the bag! I also used many more styles of music than I had used before, including, for the first time, pop music. I decided that I needed an introduction, so used the “Lazy Calm” formula of general scenes. Some had trains on them, but many featured boats. The music I used was called “Floating”, from a CD entitled “Voices of Tranquillity”, so this was a perfect excuse to show some water vessels! From then on, the music/slide connections started to get increasingly vague. I found a bit of Dixieland jazz on an old cassette which was used to depict the Jazz Lines today (scenes at Stratford) plus a former Jazz lines engine - ‘N7’ No 69621 - at work in preservation. From that we switched to a set of railway scenes which all had one thing in common - electricity pylons. My opinion of pylons is that they’re there, just like trees and buildings, and they’re nothing like as unsightly as some people make out. After all, the great Colin Gifford used them in some of his pictures! These pics were accompanied, appropriately, by Gary Numan’s eternal question “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?”. Time now for a complete change of scene. Some people have seen me on Castle Meadow at lunchtime and hence know that I also point my camera at buses, so let’s try and have some buses in. But what on earth do you play to accompany buses? I adamantly refused to use the On The Buses TV theme - that would be just too naff, but what I ended up with wasn’t far short in the inanity stakes - a little piece called “Salute to the Olympians”, which accompanied, of course, Leyland Olympians. The tune was found on an ancient tape and the sound quality was dreadful, but it was a rather iffy connection in any case! After that mercifully short bustitution, I moved onto a song I wanted to use just for the musical pun - John Lennon’s “No 9 Dream”. The trouble was, I found I had only ever taken eight slides of No 60009 Union of South Africa, so they all had to go in regardless of quality. Even only playing one verse of the song, the slides went through very slowly! I was realising that this was turning out to be a rather light-hearted compilation, so I decided to really wake everyone up, with a snatch of the 1996 chart-topper “Firestarter”. I had to keep this short owing to the nature of the music - it’s a good job I didn’t have too many pics of engines setting fire to the landscape! Ending with the Channel Tunnel portal at Coquelles and Mike Fordham’s picture of burntout lorry carriers being shunted, you are probably right to think that I had descended into outright bad taste! To rescue things I led into a total contrast - the Toton/Pachabel sequence finally saw the light of day. And very effective it was too. Determined not to end on a downer I found a piece called “Stately Occasion” by Ernest Tomlinson, belonging to the category of music referred to at the beginning of this article. This is
Page 9 a slow, stately piece of orchestral music that steadily builds to a grand climax, and in view of its title was used to accompany shots of GWR ‘Halls’, ‘Castles’ and ‘Manors’ on preserved lines and ending with those two most stately of engines Duchess of Hamilton and Duke of Gloucester. I would obviously rather have used shots of the ‘Duchess’ on the main line rather than the GCR, but if you ain’t taken them . . . . . Aired on January 18th this year, the ‘mixed bag’ became another success, thanks to you members! I really do feel that I have just about exhausted the audio-visual idea now, but it has been interesting to reflect on the last five years and how I have chosen to interpret some of my slides. As I said earlier, with each set that I have shown I have had reservations about just how the audience would take it - was Gordon just being too pretentious for his own good, or simply trying to cover-up some of his naffer slides? Fortunately I have been proved wrong each time, but, having said that, please don’t think that I can just rush one of these presentations up. As you have seen, most have been driven by inspiration and some musical imagination, but there is no doubt that they have also been fun to compile. I have kept all of them intact, just in case I’m asked to show one of them again (no, that’s not a hint!). Perhaps now some other members might try to search their musical souls and try to compile something themselves. Honestly, it’s not that difficult if you’ve a little imagination. I would really love to see just what images Mr Adderson could put to Bruce Springsteen!!! F our Society members drove up to Lincolnshire and the county formerly known as South Humberside on Thursday 13th March, with the intention of photographing some freight trains. After stopping for a large breakfast at the Farm Shop at Holbeach, we arrived at Barnetby station at 9.30am, just missing a ‘60’ on iron ore empties. Barnetby is on the Doncaster - Grimsby line, just off the A18. The station has lost its brick shelters which are now replaced by bus-style shelters, but it still retains a footbridge over the four tracks linking the platforms. The East signalbox is near the platform end, with nine or more semaphore signals visible in that direction. Half a mile or so to the west is Wrawby Junction, with its own large signalbox and 14 semaphores protecting the four-way junction, with lines to Scunthorpe & Doncaster, Gainsborough Central, Lincoln and Grimsby & Immingham. We spent 2½ hours at these two locations which offered tremendous photographic opportunities, and during this time seven Sprinters (156s or 158s) passed on service trains together with eleven freight workings hauled by Class 56s or 60s - these consisted or iron ore and coal MGRs between Immingham and Scunthorpe steelworks, Tioxide to Drax & South Humberside Mike Fordham goes seeking out freight
Page 10 Immingham and oil tanks from the Lincoln direction. There was also one light engine - EWS -liveried 60042. The locomotive liveries were very colourful, being an assortment of Transrail (either threetone grey or Dutch plus branding) and several English Welsh & Scottish (red/yellow) - these now sport large numbers (for the benefit of shortsighted spotters!), although several 60s had lost their names. There was even one Class 56 in grey undercoat, looking rather bizarre at the head of a rake of very dirty MGR hoppers! We then set off towards Scunthorpe, stopping only at Wrawby cutting to watch 56022 on steel coil empties. As there was not much to see in the steelworks we headed west along the M180 towards Drax and Eggborough power stations, pausing at a pub in Hirst Courtney for lunch. Suitably refreshed, our next stop was Hecks level crossing on the Knottingley - Goole line, where ¼-mile to the west the East Coast main line crosses on an overbridge. The earthworks of a closed curve linking the two lines from the Selby direction provided a good photographic base, with Drax to the north-east and Eggborough to the west. The main reason for our visit was to see some of National Power’s six Class 59/2s - these powerful Canadian-built General Motors Co-Co diesels, with a tractive effort of 113,550lbf, are used to keep the massive Drax power station supplied with coal and limestone. Within ten minutes of arrival, the bright blue shape of 59205 passed with its large blue/grey coal hoppers from Drax. 56048 passed in the opposite direction with coal in the smaller HAA coal hoppers, followed minutes later by 59202. During our 50- minute stay, action on the ECML consisted of four HSTs, two 91s, 37706 light engine (EWS red/yellow livery), a ‘56’ on oil tanks and a ‘60’ on steel flats. Liveries have started to change here too, with one complete IC225 set in Great North Eastern Railway deep blue livery and several HSTs with one power car so adorned. The road to Drax crosses the reception tracks and gives very good photo opportunities, so it was at this point that we stopped. The timings below help to show how much coal is consumed by the boilers. How time flies when you are having fun! Out of the six National Power Class 59/2s we had seen four in 90 minutes. The 59/2s are based at Ferrybridge power station, working trains from Gascoigne Wood to Drax and Eggborough. Comprising 17 hopper wagons with a capacity of 1,270 tons, these work 22 hours a day, the remaining two hours being left for examination at Ferrybridge. Limestone trains are also operated by the 59/2s, running on a daily basis from Tunstead to Drax. The trains are crewed by Transrail or Loadhaul crews (now under the aegis of EW&S Railways). Now it was time to head for home and plan the next trip - can we visit the inside of Drax? 3.50pm 59201 inside Drax yards unloading 3.50pm 56098 arrives with coal 3.50pm 56048 leaves with empties 4.00pm 59202 arrives with coal 4.22pm 59201 departs with empties 4.31pm 59206 arrives with coal
Page 11 F ifteen members braved the weather (-8ºC) to attend the first meeting in the New Year, to hear the Chairman’s Address “The Runaway Toffee-Apple”. The meeting was a very informative account of Peter Gifford’s early employment on the railway during the 1960s at Norwich, where ‘32A’ changed from steam to diesel. In 1961 Norwich had conductors on red buses, Bassetts and Boulton & Paul were thriving companies, a gallon of petrol cost five shillings and the annual TV licence was £4. Peter’s career ambition, when leaving school in 1961, was to become an engine driver. Soon he was on the ladder to achieving this ambition by being interviewed by the Motive Power Chief, Mr Geoffrey Ford (the governor of Bill Harvey), and was offered an opportunity at 32A. Peter started at Norwich Shed on 11th September 1961. This was two days after the last rostered steam-hauled Norwich to Liverpool Street service. On his first day, B1s, J39s, J15s and L1 tanks occupied the shed and the adjoining yards. His first acquaintance at the shed was a very experienced fitter, Ossie Clarke, who, as a staunch salvationist, soon had Peter on the right track!! Peter’s first impressions of the depot layout and operations were described with references to ‘old Four’ and ‘Parker’s Pit’. Oil, smoke and industrial scrap instilled the atmosphere, but all of this was soon to change. March 1962 saw the end of steam at 32A. In the month preceding this final event, engine no 65567 was specially prepared for the excursions on branch lines commemorating the end of steam, and Peter’s duties extended to servicing the engine. By the end of 1962 his duties covered the servicing of the extensive range of locomotives and diesel multiple units operating from Norwich : 26 27-ton Derby Lightweight dmus; 20 31-ton Metro-Cammell dmus; Diesel Shunters of 0-4-0 and 0-6-0 configurations; Paxman 800hp BTH Type 1s; North British 1100hp Class 21s; Sulzer 1160hp Class 24; Brush 1250 ‘Toffee-Apple’ Class 30; and English Electric 2000hp Type 4s. Chairman’s Address 2nd January 1997
Page 12 Peter made reference to the performances of the new motive power compared with the steam engines they replaced. The estimated 1800 horsepower at the drawbar of a ‘Britannia’ could not be equalled by the Type 4s. Experiments to improve the performance of the Brush Class 31s were embarked upon with engine upratings to 1600hp and 2000hp - this culminated in the Mirrlees engine failing, and with extensive premature crankcase failure of the standard 1250hp and 1365hp members of the class, thus resulting in the entire fleet being re-engined. The English Electric ‘D’ engine, rated at 1470hp, was chosen, and proved to be an instant success, with many diesels of Class 31 giving more than 30 years of service. It was an incident involving the prototype of the Class - D5500 - which prompted the title of Peter’s address. In resolving difficulties with the fuelling system on the locomotive, the engine decided to move, leaving Peter in the cab to stop it. The increasing momentum caused one of the fitters to emerge from the engine compartment to activate the Toffee-Apple’s emergency brake, this avoiding possibly many thousands of pounds of damage! Specific mention was made of appearances of the prototype 2700hp Brush No D0280 Falcon on the Liverpool Street - Norwich service. This was the forerunner of the Brush Class 47s of 2700hp. These appeared in number at Norwich from 1965 onwards. A comparison of the diesel-rostered duties in 1961 (pre-Beeching) with those of a diminished 1966 network was made. A subject of relevance was the 1961 pilot duties at Wymondham (for King’s sidings), Dereham, Melton Constable, Norwich City, Norwich Victoria, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. (Apologies to Chris for the late appearance of this article. - Ed) Richard Adderson recently received a letter from former member Ernest Beckett, which may be of interest to older members. “I had a bad year in 1996 - fell from a ladder, resulting in a week’s slog in hospital and then regular visits to the physiotherapy department. Having received clearance from the orthopaedic surgeon, I enjoyed two weeks’ freedom from hospital before going back in for surgery to remove a mole and some lumps. The consultant forecast 4 or 5 days in the ward, but it was three weeks before they allowed me home. I finally finished with visits from the district nurse the week prior to Christmas. “I have just resumed days out to observe the local railway happening. Rugby station is usually very interesting on Saturdays - in addition to the normal passenger workings, Class 37s and 31s arrive to stable for the weekend permanent way ballast trains. I have noted two 37s in EWS livery, and last Saturday 90137 towing 33025 proceeded north while 31163 came through towing one nuclear flask going south. From 0945 to 1145 I noted 22 locos, plus one HST and 7 EMUs. “I hope to visit my cousin in Norfolk this year, as I had to cancel all holidays in 1996.” GREAT EASTERN RAILWAY SOCIETY (NORWICH) SATURDAY 14th JUNE 1997 DRIVING DAY AT YAXHAM - COME AND DRIVE LOCOMOTIVES ON 2ft GAUGE. All participants will have the opportunity of driving, signalling and acting as guard on the extended layout. Cost £4, preperation and driving from 9.30am. Contact Richard Joby, 116 Gowing Road, Norwich (01603 429883) for more details.