Birkenhead Sheds - A Home from Home

At our recent, festive, railway club knees-up, someone asked me what my favourite train spotting memories were. It is at such times, that rather than getting into gear and accelerating from 0 to 60 in milliseconds, my brain chooses, instead, to go for a cup of tea.

I dread the moment when I turn a corner and come face to face with a live TV interview team, poised with a pertinent question of the day, leaving me either totally speechless or mumbling nonsense until someone decides that this one’s a dud and they move swiftly on. By the time that I get home, of course, I would probably have been able to come up with something, but by then it is much too late.

I think this is why I write rather than speak. It gives me time to think. My very quick-witted friend, Ian, has all the spontaneous good ideas, and my role in our little partnership [about which, he is possibly unaware] is to embellish his jokes and - if I’m feeling particularly sharp – try to take them on a stage.

My first answer to my railway club colleague should have been, “Birkenhead sheds by bike on a Sunday morning.” Of all the places that we went back to, time and time again, that became the place that we thought of as our home turf – though we very rarely saw any other spotters there, at all. We were sufficiently familiar faces there to be recognised by the foreman - even welcomed in - though with the same insistence, each time, that we should tell him when we were leaving. This had become the location that underpinned our affection for steam, as we bonded with the slumbering giants, all neatly lined up on their day off.

At Birkenhead Sheds in the mid-1960s, photograph with thanks to Ian Hughes.

Most were stone cold, some were still simmering and providing an acrid curtain of haze for us to walk through, a few appeared to still be in steam, and one or two might even have been visiting the vast concrete coaling stage or taking some water, prior to an afternoon passenger duty to Chester.

So, it was, that just a week after our Christmas trip to London, we found ourselves back at 8H, as it had become by then. I have checked my notes to confirm that we never went train spotting as early as New Year’s Day, in any year before or since the 3^rd of January 1967, now half a century ago. This is what we saw then:-

2-6-4 tanks – 42087, 42133, 42548, 42606, 42613, 42647.

Crabs – 42727, 42765, 42782, 42859, 42942.

Stanier Class 5 – 45042.

3F tanks – 47324, 47447, 47533, 47659, 47674.

Standard 2-10-0s – 92019, 92020, 92029, 92032, 92046, 92047, 92049, 92059, 92073, 92085, 92086, 92088, 92092, 92100, 92103, 92108, 92120, 92121, 92122, 92131, 92134, 92151, 92166, 92167, 92247,

Diesel shunters – D2372, D2388.

We were certainly providing a home by that time for many of the 2-10-0s that were unwanted elsewhere. My only cop on the day was 92073.

A typical view of Birkenhead sheds in the last years of steam.

My new year’s resolution? To have my wits about me and a prepared opening remark up my sleeve, in the event of my bumping into any roving reporters.