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Contents Listing - Articles & Features in this issue
UNSUNG HEROES: LLANTRISANT SHED - By Bryan L Wilson FOURUM - Summer at Eastbourne - Something of the tremendous variety to be found at a south coast resort at the dawn of the 1960s. 'W.O.' - By Richard Hardy - Richard Hardy's tribute to an old friend, Walter Owen BenUey. Famous for his wondrous cars, he was less known for having been a Premium Apprentice at the Plant Works of the GNR at Doncaster. One of H.A. Ivatt's personal pupils, he knew Gresley and Bulleid and Ralph Talbot, the pupil who lost his life when firing to Driver Fleetwood on 276, the GN Atlantic in the Grantham disaster of 1906. A wonderful warm story that encompasses the famous 'Bentley Boys', who raced for 'W.O.' at Le Mans, Britannias on the Essex Coast Express, the blue DELTIC, N7 tanks on the 'Jazz' out of Liverpool Street, West Country Pacifies and even the Isle of Man TT. DIESEL DAWN - Tale of the Unexpected - Two pictures from Cyril Golding, faced with a very unexpected cavalcade at Trafford Park in 1957 - two views from "the cinder path that led to the shed'. WAR REPORT - Somewhere in Europe - Two more extraordinary aerial photographs showing something of the terrible damage wrought upon the railways of Europe in the Second World War. There is an extra poignancy to these views, taken on 7 May 1945, the day that complete surrender had been signed... THEN AND THEN - The occasional antidote to those endless 'then and now' features, nearly twenty years separating James Stevenson's two photographs of an Ivatt 2-6-0 at Manchester Victoria. EVENING GOODS - By Peter Rose - It requires now something of a wrench of thinking, in order to visualise just how the bulk of the nation's goods used to be transported. Though its decline had begun (in the sense of those tiny mammals we are told about, eating the dinosaurs' eggs) about the time of the First World War, the whole fantastic edifice that was the freight transport system of this country disappeared between the end of the Second World War and the 1960s. What remained (and it wasn-'t much) had been revolutionised almost out of recognition. Today, goods great and small still have to be trundled round the country to the ultimate destination, the customer, but road has won out completely - so let's take ourselves back to (he comforting days of 'wagon load' and 'smalls' traffic, despatched in a frenzy of activity in the early evening and seen off by a grateful workforce, already looking forward to a well-deserved pint on the way home. HARWICH FOR THE CONTINENT - King's Cross, 15 October 1951 - Notes by Heather Kavanagh - More lorries, posed at King's Cross in the year of the Festival of Britain, to Point The Way Forward. All those ancient Commer vans would give way to modem shiny Austins, complete with HARWICH FOR THE CONTINENT banner (pasted on in paper unfortunately) to show just how 'with it' BR was. THE OTHER 0-4-2TS - Some Thoughts on the Z4 and Z5 Aberdeen Dock Tanks - By Colin Spurle - Colin Spurle never saw the strange little 0-4-2Ts at Aberdeen and it never ceased to annoy him, in a mild way. Like many, for years his only knowledge of such things was the trusty lan Allan Combined Volume and by the time expeditions to see such marvels in the flesh became possible - it was too late. Exorcising his demons, comes this leisurely little piece on die (admittedly rather uneventful) history of this attractive quartet. The Z4/Z5 tanks hardly ever left their home, Kittybrewster shed (doubly true, for there was often not enough work to do down at the docks) and this is also a welcome opportunity to illustrate in a small way this stone-built, 'open' roundhouse, a style of engine shed rare in this country. Dear Harold James, in one of his many lively talks, was always assured a laugh by recounting the (probably apocryphal) story of a friend (rather like Colin Spurle possibly whose mother agonised over his lack of interest in girls. He. of course, had eyes only for steam but his mother was much comfoned to leam that he had been seeing 'Rose Grove" and 'Kitty Brewsler"... A READER WRITES A LIFE OF STEAM Cover photograph - the view over the wall (smeared with greasy gunge to discourage trainspotters) at Bristol Barrow Road, early a 1960s.
Article Snippets
Welcome to British Railways Illustrated Volume 7 No. 10. The great fold-out went down very well last issue, though at the time of writing BRILL readers have demonstrated a frosty attitude to all things European, however closer we may be drawing to our Euroland brethren in other spheres. The final verdict on Schmalspurbahn Hunting, Ja/Niet, Da/Non, comes next issue. Maybe we should restrict coverage to the British Empire... In any event, we return to good old yeoman stock to begin this issue, a workaday, unsung shed in the midst of the South Wales valleys. In its (hardly glamorous, it must be admitted) heyday it had an Aberdare 2-6-0 for the Swindon coal run and then a couple ofex-ROD 2-8-Os but in latter years it settled for a handful of 2-8-OTs and some panniers, many of them resident for decades. It was that sort of place.
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