Absent Friend

They probably don’t make tights like that anymore. The technology was obviously at an early stage. Though these girls may have been on the cusp of modernity in April 1969, the tights did not really do them any favours – wrinkly knees, Nora Batty style. Smart move, Paula.

The occasion was Sheila’s forthcoming emigration to Tasmania. We were playing football on “the dips” and the girls came down to join us so that we could say goodbye to her. Sadly, she was never to return and so this was the last time that we saw her.

I had intended to go on a bit about the railway on the embankment in the background, but it can wait for another time.

R.I.P., Sheila Culshaw, remembered with affection by her friends. [Photo with thanks to Dave Beck]

Deltics or Westerns?

Tricky. Deltics had an air of power and grandeur about them and did a lot of impressive throbbing. Westerns were easier on the eye - perhaps the most attractive diesels of all. I was lucky enough to see all the members of both classes [though, on reflection, I would have preferred to have copped all the Streaks and Kings].

D9005 The Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment of Yorkshire at York, 25/10/71.

D1030 Western Musketeer at Reading, 21/8/71.

Birkenhead North

Birkenhead North station was opened by the Wirral Railway in 1888, as Birkenhead Docks. It was renamed Birkenhead North in 1926 by the London Midland and Scottish Railway. Through electric trains to Liverpool began in 1938 via the Mersey rail tunnel. There has been recent upgrading to the original station buildings and a park and ride facility has been added.

We knew it as the junction for West Kirby line trains, on the few occasions that we went off to dabble in the Dee. Otherwise, it was because we had taken a West Kirby train home from Liverpool as far as North, rather than wait for a New Brighton train underground in the city - in other words, to break up the journey. Though the advantage would be daylight and comparatively fresh air, on the downside, the surroundings were visually a little depressing, and a cold wind could certainly howl along that platform from time to time, though that was certainly not the case on this summer’s day in 1971.

Between 1971 and 1978, the DMU services to Wrexham [previously from New Brighton and later from Bidston] terminated at the central platform here, which is why the Liverpool bound electric service is seen using the platform on the left.

The Borderers

Carlisle youth hostel, known as Etterby House, was on Etterby Road at the northern edge of the city. It had previously been the abode of a local magnate and came with its own fishing rights on the River Eden. We spent 7 overnight stays there, as part of 5 different Lake District short breaks between October 1964 and April 1972.

In April 1967, we travelled there by car but had to secrete it around a corner and out of sight, as YHA rules did not permit such things at that time. We invented a story, which no one would ever have believed had we seriously had to air it, that we were travelling by canoe. I think that my mum knitted my light-blue bobble hat, which is just in view. It was obviously as much of a ‘Wow” with the girls that we had met the night before as my anorak must have been. [Photo with thanks to Ian Hughes]

The hostel closed in 1997. The building has since been converted into several individual properties and renamed Eden Bank.  

Rather than fish, the attraction that this location provided was the view of Kingmoor sheds, as well as that from the bridge just to the south where the main line from Glasgow crossed the River Eden in its approach to Carlisle Citadel station. Our earlier visits coincided with the run-down of steam power, before it disappeared completely in 1968. By 1967, Kingmoor had become a hot-spot for the Britannia Pacifics already ousted from other parts of the network.

Type One No. D8120 is passing below the Etterby Road bridge on 25/3/67.

Type Two No. D5708 has just crossed the River Eden in Carlisle on 25/3/67.

Pullman Surprise

The only other time that I remember seeing one of the blue Pullmans was when the South Wales Pullman turned up at Aintree with a Grand National day special, on 27/3/65. As can be seen, the drivers of the blue Pullmans wore white coats. Its design was certainly very modern at the time, although I was a bit disappointed that a diesel unit adorned the front cover of my summer 1962 combined volume. I was obviously sufficiently impressed by its arrival, however, to devote a photograph to it.

In this view, race-goers were still streaming from another special train that had set down its passengers at a more westerly platform. The station was a hive of activity on this day. All the other special trains were locomotive-hauled and most of those arrived behind steam.  Having shed the punters, they quickly vacated the platforms to allow access for following special trains. Locomotives stabled their stock in nearby sidings and then went off to Aintree sheds, or elsewhere, for servicing.

The Mini Dress

Our first holiday away as a couple was exploring the Cambrian coast line between Aberystwyth and Pwllheli. We stayed at Borth, Corris, Llanbedr and Harlech youth hostels between the 26^th and 30^th July 1969. Chris was sixteen and she had made her own mini dress. There would not have been much of an outlay on the amount of fabric required. She had recently won the needlework prize at her girls’ grammar school.

Corris was the only hostel that we could not reach by train, so we took our haversacks on the bus. It was in the old village school building and it looked quite forbidding and spooky. Overnight, it was pitch black, the wind blew through the rafters, the fittings creaked and Chris was the only one in the ladies’ dormitory. She has never forgiven me for strictly adhering to the separate dormitories rule. After all, I did not want to get kicked out of the YHA.

At Harlech station, waiting for the train home, on 30/7/69.

A DMU heading for Machynlleth, in the southbound platform at Barmouth station, on 27/9/69.

An early morning pick-up freight enters Llanbedr station [then known as Talwrn Bach] behind a Brush Sulzer Type 2, on 29/7/69.

The Colour Maroon

I’m not sure that I’ve ever got as worked up as some folk about locomotive liveries. Maybe that’s because our time came well after the independent companies had ceased to exist in 1948. I know that the rivalries established prior to that change spilled over into the BR regional set-up amongst those who were already in one camp or another.

My own interest has always been aesthetic, but rather on design as a whole, rather than just colour. Are they nice to look at? In the early days, it was pretty clear that some steam locomotives were a lot more attractive than others and that was also true of the new diesel and electric types that replaced them. Yet, I know that a lot of attention was nevertheless afforded to liveries. I would guess that preferences eventually reflected familiarity.

Our big steam engines were always red or green and so that is how we still like to see them today. I remember the curiosity and even a degree of bewilderment that surrounded the new Western diesels when they started appearing in desert sand and golden ochre, as well as maroon and green – now that did seem to be revolutionary.

We also witnessed the arrival of some experimental engines, which we just viewed as complete curiosities, like Falcon, Kestrel, the all-white Lion, DP2 and GT3 - the box shaped creature with an outline and dimensions more like those of a main line steam tender engine. Most of these became regulars at Crewe. We saw them all at one time or another, but I had no idea what their essential mechanical characteristics were, what it was that made them special, or the ways in which they represented any significant technological advance. For us, they were unusual one off numbers to be spotted and any attraction was in their uniqueness.

The west bound Bristol Pullman in Bath Spa on 7/8/64. These units were known to us as the “blue Pullmans” well before British Rail had its own blue period.

All Change at Crewe

Crewe was a location which often required a change of motive power type during the various stages of electrification and so the northern-most platform end on the station was a particularly popular haunt for spotters throughout the early and mid-60’s, with steam, diesel and electrics all in the mix. Some of my clearest memories are of watching the remaining steam giants backing down from the direction of the old Crewe North sheds to take over northbound expresses and possibly, in the case of the Britannia Pacifics, right up until 1968.

Though our first love was steam, I think that in the overall hierarchy of our home territory on the London Midland Region it is fair to say that we also preferred diesels to electrics. We referred to the English Electric Type Fours simply as “Type Fours” to tell them apart from the Peaks and from the Hawker Siddeley Brush Type Fours, which we called Brush Type Fours.

Namers from the Type Fours and Peaks were obviously more interesting than those without, and the shipping company ocean liner plates on the former class were really quite attractive, if a bit on the small side.

Two-tone green Brush Type Four No. D1908 is at the southern end of Crewe station on 26/8/66.

God Only Knows

A few years ago, I remember seeing a photo of Paul McCartney meeting Brian Wilson, backstage. Paul has a coat over his arm and he is leaning forward, almost reverentially, towards Brian, who is seated.

The rivalry between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones was made much of in the media at the time but it was about style and youth culture rather than about musical quality and development, where there was really no contest.

The band the Beatles themselves took note of were the Beach Boys - and therefore - Brian Wilson.

On my way back home from the gym in the car this morning, I flicked through my favourite Beach Boys tracks, from the just over two minutes of concentrated and energy packed exuberance of “Darling,” to “God Only Knows,” which still sends a shiver down my spine every time I listen to it, and which was lauded by Paul, himself, allegedly, as “the best song of all time.”

Then I happened on a line from “When I grow up to be a man,” which asked, “Will I dig the same things that turn me on as a kid?” How prophetic was that? 

Trains, football, music, girls – the list is pretty much the same as it always was. My wife and I met for the first time 50 years ago this spring. As Brian Wilson so succinctly put it, “God only knows what I’d be without you.”

In Porthmadog, to pick up an original painting by Robert Dafydd Cadwalader of the brig, Gomer, on which Chris’s great, great grandfather learnt to sail. The trains, on this occasion, were just around the corner.

The Old Silk Road

The first train to China left the World London Gateway Terminal at Stanford-le-Hope in Essex last week on a 7,500-mile journey, bound for Zhejiang Province. It was laden, amongst other things, with soft drinks, whisky, pharmaceuticals, vitamins and baby products.

This was after the first train from China had arrived in Barking, East London, in January. It had taken 17 days to make the trek from Yiwu City, via Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Belgium, France and the Channel Tunnel. Operated by Yiwu Timex Industrial Investments, it carried 34 containers of Chinese exports worth a total of 4 million GBP, including clothing.

The developments prompted comparisons with the old Silk Road [or Silk Route], by which China established trade networks with Western Europe over two thousand years earlier. Apparently, Chinese exports then included silk, religion, philosophy and the plague.

Well, who would have thought it? Cheaper than by air and faster than by sea, this is surely globalisation in a nutshell, or, rather, in two trainloads.

We certainly wouldn’t have seen that coming as young spotters on the platform end in the early 1960s. There would be more chance of a man on the moon, or a flying pig……………

Steam Tug Daniel Adamson

The steam-powered tug, Daniel Adamson, was built at Cammell Laird ship yard in Birkenhead, in 1903. Then named the Ralph Brocklebank, she hauled barges on the canal systems that connected inland Cheshire and the Potteries with the port of Liverpool.

In 1922, she was bought by the Manchester Ship Canal Company, whose colours she still displays today. Her lower saloon was re-fitted in 1936, using the same Art Deco style as the ocean-going liners built around that time. She was renamed in the same year. Her other role, as a hospitality vessel carrying VIPs, became increasingly important. 

Withdrawn from service in 1984 after the closure of Manchester docks, she suffered a period of neglect, but was eventually saved from going for scrap by a group of supporters who bought her for £1, in 2004. The Daniel Adamson Preservation Society, with help from the Heritage Lottery Fund, restored her to full working order, in 2016.

Our recent trip on “The Danny” began at the Ellesmere Port mooring, adjacent to the boat museum on the Manchester Ship Canal. It took us first to Eastham Locks, the River Mersey entrance to the MSC, and then headed as far as the Stanlow oil refinery, in the Manchester direction. 

With access to all areas of the vessel except the bridge, including optional and supervised hard hat visits below decks to see the engine room in action, the whole experience was a delight. The friendly, enthusiastic and informative volunteer crew members seemed to be just bursting with pride at their achievement - and with good reason.    

Ffestiniog, with the girls

Prompted by British Rail’s decision to ban any further steam workings on the national network after 1968, we were faced with the need to break new ground to find some alternatives.

The girls were coming away with us by then. Whether the pursuit of steam on our joint holidays was fully explained to all those concerned before we set off, or whether we just winged it as we went -  along the lines of “Oh, look, there’s a steam railway. That’s a surprise. Let’s stop and have a look,” I’m not absolutely sure.  

The Ffestiniog Railway was already the best known narrow gauge railway in Britain when our mixed group of eight made a first visit there in September 1971. The old slate carrying line had re-opened for passenger traffic across the Cob in 1955 and reached Ddualt in 1968. The new deviation from the original route that was required to by-pass the Tanigrisiau reservoir was completed in 1978. Trains returned to Blaenau Ffestiniog in 1982 and the extraordinary feat of rebuilding the whole line was accomplished.

We travelled by car from Wallasey, paying for our petrol, the hire of sheet sleeping bags [as required] and the 2 over-nights with “the new money” that had been introduced earlier in the year.

We stayed at Llanberis youth hostel on the 3/9/71 and Llanbedr YH the following day. The photographic record suggests that we did not enjoy the best of weather, either down at the coast or up in the mountains.

Linda at Porthmadog station.

Linda enters Tan-y-Bwlch station.

Double Fairlie Merddyn Emrys at Porthmadog station.

Bloomin' Diesels

Well actually, it was more likely to have been, “Bloody diesel,” to be honest, or simply, “Oh no, not another one.”

This might have been accompanied by a little barracking or some booing and a “thumbs down” directed at the driver. I bet they were really upset by that, sitting comfortably in the warmth of their weather-proof cab. The drivers had actually never had it so good.

Nevertheless, that is exactly how we were likely to have responded to them when they rumbled into view at Preston, Chester, Crewe or Shrewsbury stations in the early 1960’s. They were not welcome at all as far as we were concerned. We wanted steam. Yet from the time we started spotting in 1960, diesels had always been around. The story of the following decade, which coincided with our initial involvement, was really the unfolding of their eventual take over.

A two-tone green, Hawker Siddeley Brush Type 4 powers north through Ludlow on 12/4/65. The main line through the Welsh Marches - from Bristol via the Severn Tunnel and the Maindee Triangle at Newport to Shrewsbury - was still the preferred inter-regional route for SW to NW traffic at that time. We were on a youth hostelling and cycling holiday, reaching the Cotswolds and Oxford during our school's Easter break.

Wimping it at the Triangle

I was always a bit of a wimp and Merseyside was probably not the easiest place to be growing up as a less than rugged adolescent. I concluded early on that the best way to avoid trouble was to keep clear of the dodgier parts of town. Isn’t it extraordinary how well we got to know our own patch, our own meaningful urban geography, by the time we are about twelve? After all, it could be a matter of life or a smack in the face. We knew which bits we were likely to be OK in, and those where some risks would be taken just by being there. The name “Seacombe,” itself, sounded vaguely threatening to me, at around that time. We knew the names of legendary bad boys who came from there, whose reputations for violence and mayhem went before them. I feel a shudder of apprehension now, as I dredge their names up from the distant past. I dare not print them here for fear of reprisals.

That area between New Brighton and Liscard that was sometimes referred to as Upper Brighton was generally alright, though even there I had once been captured by a gang on my way home from Vaughan Road Junior School. They had detained me for half an hour in a hut which they had built out of rubble on wasteland at the corner of Sutton Road.

On that occasion, I had been forced to drink sour milk from a pint glass bottle, but it was only when I had burst into tears that I had been released to scuttle home. My captors had not been quite sure how to respond to raw emotion, or maybe it was just their tea-time.

That miscalculation apart, we knew our immediate environment well and could name all the streets for miles around. A cohesive group, we knew all our peers and as we progressed into our teens we felt comparatively comfortable and confident in our own neck of the woods. The trouble was that we had also become very interested in railways and their more interesting bits tended to be in somewhat rougher districts that were less well known to us. What made ventures that were outside our comfort zone a physical possibility was the ownership of a bike. Mine was an Elswick Hopper.

There was another problem. We were grammar school lads. Our dads commuted to white collar jobs in the city. Our mums stayed home and met our every need [almost]. When we ventured into railway territory - the terraced streets that characterised the immediate environment of engine sheds, sidings and marshalling yards, we stood out like a sore thumb. We might actually have got by a bit more easily with stronger regional accents.

I had a taste of how uncomfortable meetings with strangers could be when I was intercepted by a boy who was at least as old as me when I was on my return home from Birkenhead Woodside station, clutching my new Western Region Timetable. That had taken quite a lot of explaining - more like grovelling, in truth - before I had been allowed to proceed homewards. He obviously did not share my interest in the timings of the expresses to Paddington.

The nearest railway location to home of real interest was the ex-GCR Bidston shed, coded 6F. It not only had ex-LMS types that we were familiar with on our rail trips to Liverpool, Chester and Crewe, but an allocation of three ex-LNER J94s and the possibility of seeing ex-GCR classes like the Robinson 2-8-0s. Bidston’s allocation of BR Standard 2-10-0s worked the John Summers iron ore trains from Bidston Dock to the steelworks at Shotton.

To get to Bidston shed, we had to cycle across the boggy Bidston Moss along a cinder path, eventually crossing the electrified third rail New Brighton line by carrying our bikes over a footbridge, before reaching Bidston station. I did not realise it at the time, but where that path skirted a large pond that we knew as the Triangle, we were taking the track bed of the former direct link between Seacombe station and New Brighton. This third link, which used to complete the triangle when added to the Seacombe to Bidston and Bidston to New Brighton lines, had long been removed, but, of course, it had given the pond the name we knew it by – the Triangle.

The pond itself was all that remained of the former Wallasey Pool, a tidal creek from the River Mersey, into which ran the River Birket. Together, they served to almost cut Wallasey off as an island at the top of the Wirral peninsula. The creek had been transformed into the Birkenhead dock system, the last and most landward addition to which was Bidston Dock. After that had been constructed, all that was left of the former natural creek itself was the pond at the Triangle.

There was a second triangle of lines a little closer to Bidston, formed by the Bidston to Birkenhead North, Bidston to New Brighton and New Brighton to Birkenhead North lines, though, to my knowledge, that space was never occupied by a pond. It, also, was part of Bidston Moss - low, flat and marshy ground. The railway layout was completed with the addition of the more recent sidings which served Bidston Dock from the early 1950’s and allowed bulk carriers to be unloaded into the trains of ore hoppers bound for Summers’ steelworks at Shotton. This relatively new link was made between the two triangles and initially ran parallel to the old Seacombe branch.

The Triangle was already well known to us. It was a bit of a fishing location and certainly a wildlife haven. We were not without interest in both activities. The Triangle, however, came under the description of dodgy territory, as explained above. There could easily be gangs of lads there that we did not know. They could have been from Seacombe or Poulton, which we also thought of as a bit rough and therefore just as risky. This meant that I discounted it as a potentially relaxing location for a bit of fishing, which was inevitably going to be a time-consuming activity. However, it was just about possible for a “surgical strike” type nature hunt, looking for frog spawn, frogs, toads and newts, if we were feeling particularly brave. It was, after all, the nearest bit of wild landscape to our homes, apart from the shoreline, in what was a markedly built up area, overall.

My friend, Ian Hughes, has reminded me that we had at least one bad experience at the Triangle. “We were taken hostage by a large gang of lads with a very wide range of ages. They were so-say concerned about our jar of frogs and newts. When we attempted to make a getaway on our bikes, one of them threw a pointed stick through my back wheel which stopped me momentarily and broke a couple of spokes. We went straight to Elleray Park "Police Station" to report what had happened but did not receive much sympathy from the constable. On another occasion, myself and another friend had our bikes stolen down there but with the help of some adults, we gave chase and the bikes were dropped onto the rough ground by the young thieves, who then made a run for it”

Elleray Park police station was the smallest possible police presence, though the nearest one to our houses. It consisted of a rectangular concrete block-house at the junction of Hose Side Road and Rockland Road and it looked more like just a door in the wall. It was only rarely manned and we would have been fortunate to find a constable in residence and even more so to find one who was the slightest bit interested in anything we had to say.   

However, and in spite of these previous experiences, we were prepared to run the gauntlet presented by whatever youths [or smaller children in large numbers] were present at the Triangle, in order to get to Bidston shed. It would be an exaggeration to say that we accomplished this mission with regularity. We probably managed it two or three times altogether, holding our breath as we sped along the cinder path alongside the Triangle pond itself. We could have chosen a long way around by road but that would have meant wandering into the north end of Birkenhead, so, enough said.

We felt quite safe once we reached the sheds. We found out early on that the sort of lads who caused trouble at the Triangle, were not the sort of lads who went train spotting. That was true wherever we went thereafter. We had effectively joined a new tribe that was defined by shared interest rather than territorial claims, one I still feel part of today.

The shed closed in 1963 and its allocation was transferred to Birkenhead [6C then 8H]. Birkenhead shed is another story altogether, but that’s quite enough exciting reminiscences for now. I think its time to go for a little lie down. Oh, and if you come from Poulton yourself and you have some questions to ask me, before you tap me on the shoulder out of the blue, I’d like you to know that I’m getting on a bit now and I have to wear glasses. And anyway, it wasn’t me. Sorry mate, I wasn’t even there on that day.

BR Standard Class 9F 2-10-0 No. 92046 at Bidston MPD on 16 April 1961 in a photograph taken by John Dyer. I am very grateful to John for allowing me to include it in this article. The Bidston trio of 92045/6/7 were regulars on the Shotton iron ore trains and could also be seen at work on freight trains in the Birkenhead dock system.

[This article is adapted from one published in the current edition of the Railway Antiques Gazette. I am grateful to the editor, Tim Petchey, for its inclusion here as well.]

Quick out of the blocks

Amongst the first enterprises to be up and running on the standard gauge preserved railway scene was the Dart Valley Railway. We called in for our first visit there during August 1971, as part of a youth hostelling holiday by car to the south coast of Devon and Cornwall.

Now known as the South Devon Railway, the former branch line originally ran between the junction station at Totnes - on the ex-GWR main line from London Paddington to Penzance - and Ashburton, via Buckfastleigh. It was opened in 1871, closed by British Railways in 1962 and re-opened as a preserved steam railway in 1969.

Improvements to the A38 trunk road soon scuppered a return to Ashburton. The Friends of Ashburton Station group was set up to protect the surviving buildings on the old station site. Supporters promote the long-term future re-instatement of the railway to the town, though this would necessarily mean a deviation from the original alignment between there and Buckfastleigh.

At the other end of the line, the current railway service stops short of re-joining the main line at Totnes, because the costs incurred by running into the main station were prohibitive. Instead, locomotives reverse on a run-round loop at Totnes [Riverside], where a platform was constructed, known for a time as Littlehempston, after the nearest village. Riverside station has no road access but can now be easily reached on foot from the town centre and the main line station via a footpath and footbridge.

Buckfastleigh remains the railway’s operational HQ and both of these pictures of ex-GWR tank engines were taken there in the summer of 1971.

Over the hills [and then round them]

Over the hill? Well, we were on Saturday 25^th March. Our Winter Cumbrian Coast Express took Shap in fine style behind Royal Scot Class No 46115 Scots Guardsman, reaching the summit hauling eleven coaches at just under 30 m.p.h. Circumnavigation of the English Lake District offered splendid sights throughout, with snow-clad mountains never far from view and a magnificent sun-lit coastal vista as far as the Isle of Man after the lunch stop, all enjoyed with no more than a turn of the head.

We started our day together at Crewe and as I hung around on platform 6 waiting for my friends to arrive, my mind went back to an evening over fifty years ago when I had lost consciousness on the bench immediately outside the buffet, when sleep deprivation from the previous night finally took hold after a mammoth South Wales train spotting bash. My friends carried me home to Wallasey and I woke up in bed half way through the next day, initially very mystified as to how I had got there.

But wait. Who is that sitting on my bench this morning? Its Jeremy Corbyn, no less, looking wide awake and planning his day ahead with frequent mobile phone calls, interspersed with exchanges involving his three companions. Wherever he was heading, it was unlikely to be on the 09.38 Railway Touring Company’s charter to Carlisle, along with the lads - though we might have all got along OK. He was also a grammar school boy and he is the same age as us. Tim Pickard of The Financial Times even described him as being “a train obsessive” and tweeted that he was a “borderline train spotter.” [https://www.ft.com/content/7d242bcc-3126-11e5-8873-775ba7c2ea3d#axzz3gLc6R4I1]

Blue electric No. E3137 whisked us off up the West Coast Main Line for our rendezvous with the Scot at Carnforth, followed by that spirited climb of Shap. We located the best fish and chip shop in Carlisle and ate al fresco at the pavement tables.

It seems that instead of joining us, Jeremy ended up at the inaugural Momentum conference in Birmingham. At least he is not out on his feet, as I was when I was lifted from that same bench at Crewe station many decades before.

 

Photo with thanks to Dave Beck.

Royal Scot - at last!

I finally caught up with the Royal Scot on Tuesday 4^th April. She was in the loop at Newark Northgate station, waiting for her path southwards back to Southall, following a visit to the North York Moors Railway. I had never seen her before because she spent her last active BR days based on former Midland lines at Nottingham, when we were doing most of our spotting on the West Coast Main Line at Crewe and Preston. Now I only need to see 4 Scots out of the total of 71 class members, which, of course, is not going to happen.

There was quite a crowd on the station, as is often the case on such occasions. The station staff at Newark are generally very helpful and welcoming in permitting access through the barriers to the platforms for the viewing of steam specials. It is obviously good PR for the industry, reflecting the continued, widely held affection for our railway heritage amongst the public at large. I noticed a number of commuters who were clearly surprised by her presence but who also bothered to stop to take their own photographs of her on their phones, presumably to share later with friends and family.

Rail fans often bring children and grandchildren to such events, nurturing an interest that will surely help to maintain the railway preservation movement in the future. An added bonus on Tuesday was the arrival of Deltic diesel No. 55018 Ballymoss, returning to its old stamping ground at the head of the extra working, which also included two ex-BR Mark 1 support coaches.

The Deltic left the rest of the formation behind to head south alone, before Royal Scot departed in a cloud of steam that was so all-enveloping that you could almost claim that she disappeared in a puff of smoke. It was good job that there had been plenty of time to take photos before her shrouded exit from the scene.

The Steam Yacht, Gondola

In my collection of carriage prints is this image of the steam yacht, Gondola, on Lake Coniston in the Lake District. It is one of 24 commissioned in 1951 by George Dow from the railway painter and author, Cuthbert Hamilton Ellis, for the London Midland Region of British Railways. They became known as the “Travel in” series, as each example was assigned to a particular year. They illustrated scenes from some of the constituent companies that eventually made up the London Midland and Scottish Railway, the predecessor of the LMR. Gondola, belonging to the Furness Railway, was chosen to represent 1885.

Ellis was a prolific writer on railway topics and his carriage prints are very colourful reminders of the varied liveries of the old railway companies. By comparison, his figures appear rather wooden, as can be seen in this example. He was not the first competent railway artist, nor will he be the last, to have trouble bringing passengers and by-standers to life.

The steam yacht Gondola was built in Liverpool by Jones, Quiggin and Company for the Furness Railway, in 1859. She was taken out of service in 1936 and converted for use as a house boat. In 1979, and by then having been abandoned and in a derelict state, she was re-built and returned to the lake as a tourist attraction by the National Trust.

On a very wet day at the end of March 2017, we came across the Gondola quite by chance, when we visited John Ruskin’s house, Brantwood, on the eastern shore of Lake Coniston, which is also run by the NT. She was being prepared for the new tourist season, due to begin the following weekend. She called briefly at the dedicated Brantwood landing stage while we were there. Now getting on for 160 years old, it is perhaps worth noting that when John Ruskin was looking out from his window for inspiration from his idyllic Lakeland surroundings, he would also have watched the Gondola steaming elegantly by.

Gremlins

At GW Railwayana Auction’s Pershore event on Saturday 1^st April, the gremlins certainly got into the works. At least four interruptions had halted the proceedings in their tracks before the auctioneer announced that he would “have to go manual.”

Like cars, computers are a great asset as long as they are working properly. When things go wrong they can be a nightmare. The trouble was apparently to do with a software programmes with an itchy, over-sensitive trigger finger that was on the look-out for incoming malware, but which frequently jumped in to block proceedings, freezing the computers on the rostrum and for the support staff. The live link provided for internet bidding was not the problem and the public-address system in the hall was unaffected.

During one of the enforced breaks, the auctioneer added, somewhat ruefully, that he had only recently paid for the troublesome antivirus software package. By then, we were still only up to lot 178 and the clock already showed 12.57 p.m. It was going to be a much longer day than anyone had expected. After a series of urgent phone calls, presumably to the software providers, had failed to solve the problem, the team reverted to that old pre-digital recording system – pen and paper, to see them through. They will hardly have been the first to be inconvenienced in this way. We have all been there, though usually in the privacy of our own home. It’s a bit different when you have several hundred people in front of you expecting something like continuous action, plus a few hundred more waiting patiently at home for a resumption.

In the event, it just gave folk a prolonged opportunity to chat and to take lunch a little bit earlier than they might have first planned. The social side of railwayana auctions cannot be underestimated. The regular punters are also a generally good-natured bunch, including many retirees, who, like myself, have given up hurrying as part of their revised third age arrangements.

Had that been me in charge of events, however, I imagine that by 1.00 p.m. I would have been a quivering wreck, with my head in my hands and with both between my knees, like Basil in that scene from the Fawlty Towers episode entitled The Psychiatrist, when it all goes horribly wrong once more and he finally throws in the towel and simply gives up looking for a way out of his predicament and retreats into his shell. It gave me a cold sweat, reminding me of occasions when the planned video failed in front of classes of troublesome teenagers. 

Instead, Simon Turner never lost the plot. Un-deterred, he steadied the ship and ploughed on in the old way, with the tried and tested implements that most of us relied on for so long, until the computer revolution overtook us. It was an impressive performance, which will do GWRA no harm at all. Gremlins will no doubt be vanquished from future events and GWRA’s reputation as a friendly, efficient and developing, specialist auction house that is always prepared to make changes and to try new things, will continue to grow.

Stuff happens that is sometimes beyond our control. It’s not the technical circumstances that one is judged on, but on how well one responds to unexpected challenges. There will have been a lot of sympathy for Simon on Saturday, but he won’t need it because he showed that he is a robust character who would not be thrown off course by unfortunate occurrences. The auction results were all online during the same evening, on their clear and well organised website. It is already business as usual.

He will be back – on Saturday 15^th July, in fact.