Breakdown

I drove to our local garage, arranged an imminent service and MOT, reversed out of the parking space and stalled the thing. I turned the key. Nothing happened. The battery had died. I left the car there and walked back home. Well, I thought, if you are going to break down what better place to do it than at the garage – unlucky and lucky at the same time.

I got to thinking about the improved general reliability of cars over the years, and my mind - as it has a tendency to do - moved quite quickly from there to trains. The only two occasions that I can remember when trains I have been using on the national network have failed completely were geographically very close together but separated by a few decades. That would still have to qualify as quite a coincidence.

Coming back from a family holiday in the Lake District in 1962, our Stanier Black Five failed just south of Penrith soon after we had got on and before it had worked up the energy to attack Shap. We were rescued by another locomotive of the same class, that had obviously just dawdled down from Carlisle, a couple of hours later.

In April 2004, the lads took a steam special to the same city behind Princess Class No. 46201 Princess Elizabeth. After Penrith - so a little further north along the West Coast Main Line than previously, and going well up to that point - the locomotive failed in rather dramatic fashion.

We were told at the time that she had “popped a cork.” This apparently led to a loss of lubricating oil on a bearing, resulting in over-heating and buckling of a connecting rod that became detached and which dragged over the ballast until she was brought to a halt. Our train was eventually taken on to Citadel station by a diesel locomotive, but the Prinnie obviously required some serious attention.

The only derailment that I can remember witnessing was while we were on holiday in France. The leading bogies of SNCF diesel No. 67480 had left the rails when running around the coaching stock at St Gilles-Croix-de Ville station, in the Vendee. A crowd of holiday-makers gathered to watch as the engineers endeavoured to re-rail her, as illustrated in the photographs below.