Six Eff

As a young train spotter living in New Brighton on the Wirral in the early 1960s and with hardly an ounce of historical awareness to call upon, it never crossed my mind that we had anything much to do with the former Great Central Railway. We simply saw ourselves as being enveloped by the London Midland Region of British Railways. In practice, that meant that engines beginning in “4” and the various Standard classes were our main fare. Any Western and Eastern Region locomotives we encountered on our Sunday morning trips to Birkenhead sheds were regarded as rare visitors to be savoured.

The only “6’s” we saw regularly were the three J94 tanks, Nos. 68063/5/6, which I probably imagined had been ex-communicated from the Eastern Region to Bidston sheds for some perceived inadequacy elsewhere. I did not really give much thought to what they were doing there. They were viewed as vaguely interesting idiosyncrasies, often visible from the electric trains that took us to Liverpool. In fact, of course, they were earning their keep on the tight curves that threaded through the Birkenhead dock system.

 

The Great Central Railway was actually much closer to home than I ever imagined as a youngster. When the money had run out for the Wirral Railway’s planned 1880’s connection between Hawarden Bridge and Bidston [to be known as the North Wales and Liverpool Railway], the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway and the Wrexham, Mold and Connah’s Quay Railway Company took it over between them and duly completed the task during the following decade. Their aim was to establish a link to Birkenhead docks. The GCR gained control of the double track set-up in 1905 and with it, the 1897, MS&LR built, two-road Bidston engine shed, which we knew as 6F.

I must surely have had an inkling that in previous times there had been many more ex-LNER locomotives regularly employed on the Wirral. As early as 1898, GCR trains from Wrexham had run over Wirral Railway metals from Bidston as far as Seacombe, which was a relatively short bike ride away from home for us, throughout our youth. The penny only dropped later on that the former GCR had actually been a near neighbour all through my early life. In the mid-1950’s, for example, I had followed the trails of smoke from trains that were passing through the cutting below my junior school playground at Poulton. Those passenger services to Seacombe ended in 1960 and I started my serious interest in railways later that year, as an enthusiastic member of Wallasey Grammar School’s railway society. It was led by maths teacher Jack Dugdale and his right-hand man and a senior pupil at the school, John Dyer.

Class J94 No. 68066 on Bidston sheds 3/7/1960. Photograph: John Dyer.

John was a few years older than me and so his practical interest in railways went a little further back. This meant that not only did he start taking railway photographs before I did, but that he was sufficiently organised to record some of the older classes at work on the Wirral before the industry was much affected by the modernisation that would eventually sweep them all away. That would have included various ex-GCR, as well as other ex-LNER and ex-GWR, locomotive types.

To say that I lost touch with John after he left school for a career in the RAF would be a bit misleading. There is no reason why John Dyer would ever have known me from Adam, or even recognised me, either then or now. I almost certainly appeared as just another rather excitable small boy in short trousers amongst the many who scuttled around in his wake during visits to York and Crewe and around Gorton and Oswestry works. To John and Jack, I owe a considerable debt of gratitude, such is the enjoyment that I have derived from our hobby in the years that followed.

To cut a long story short, I managed to establish contact with John Dyer in recent times. He very kindly allowed me to look through his considerable collection of mainly black and white photographs that record some of the instantly recognisable locations of my youth, but they portray steam locomotive types that I am struggling to remember seeing there myself. He allowed me to share some examples with my friends and subsequently for me to use them to illustrate some of my own written efforts. So, it is that some of his excellent work accompanies this article.

 

Robinson Class 04 No. 63719 at Bidston sheds, 4/9/1960. Photograph: John Dyer.

Bidston sheds closed in February 1963, when I was still thirteen years old. I’m so glad I got there a few times before it disappeared. The site became a steel rolling mill and then a supermarket. Its locomotive allocation went to Birkenhead Mollington Street [6C then 8F], including the Standard Class 9F 2-10-0s that we remember very well, hauling the trains of imported iron ore from Bidston Dock to John Summers Steelworks at Shotton. We regularly cycled to Birkenhead MPD on our bikes to see them, until all the steam had gone.

I watched the last Standard 9F hauled Shotton iron ore train take the southwards curve at Bidston Dee Junction from our sixth form library, the school having moved out to new premises at Leasowe in the summer of 1967. My [already wavering] attention had been attracted by an enormous plume of steam and smoke through clear, cold, November air and also by No. 92203’s bright red buffer beam that I assumed had been specially painted for the event and not just in recognition of its being “flower power” year.

In 1971, the year I started teaching in a large mid-Wirral comprehensive school, the steel works traffic was still running past me daily, up the valley of the River Fender between the Woodchurch and the Ford estates. Generally, and for my own safety, I thought it best not to take my eyes off the rows of pupils in front of me for too long at a time. After all, I was only missing English Electric Type 4 diesels by then.

Class J39 No. 64738 at Bidston sheds, 26/6/1960. Photograph: John Dyer

The former LNER-controlled Wrexham line was transferred to the London Midland Region soon after nationalisation in 1948, so as young train spotters I think we could be forgiven for overlooking the sequence of events that had brought the “6s” to 6F. Eventually, things fall into place.

The ex-GCR route from Bidston to Wrexham remains open today as the Borderlands Line and there is talk of incorporating at least some of it into the developing Merseyrail electric network, as mid-Wirral commuter-land continues to expand. The railway scene never settles for long. Its dynamism is one of its inherent characteristics. At least I’m a little better placed than previously to take it all in and make some sense of it.