It was minus 4 degrees centigrade when we set off this morning to take our grand-daughter to school, reminding me of the coldest I have ever witnessed. That was at Ollerton roundabout a good few years ago now, on my way to work early one morning, when it was minus seventeen. John Dyer photographed this unidentified LNER Class 04 at Wallasey Docks Junction on 3/3/62, which looked a bit parky, too. What a great shot, though.
A highlight of the John Dyer collection of photographs is this series of images taken on the Birkenhead and Wallasey dock system. Unlike the Liverpool docks which run parallel to the river and were built out into the main channel, the Wirral system occupies a natural inlet of the Mersey – the old Wallasey Pool. The LMS, GWR and LNER and their predecessors all made sure their lines reached the docks here, either via the mid-Wirral former GCR route or the former joint LNWR and GWR connection that ran beneath the streets of central Birkenhead from Rock Ferry. All these pictures are from 1962 and 1963 and show the 0-4-0 and 0-6-0 steam locomotive shunters of the Mersey Harbour and Dock Board’s own fleet at work on the sharp curves that served the wharf-side and transit sheds. These dark and grainy photos, often taken in winter and not on the best of days, weather-wise, are reminiscent of scenes we must have witnessed many times as youngsters, when crossing the docks on the number 10 and number 11 buses that joined the two towns. I know that I certainly didn’t give them the attention that they deserved at the time, so I’m very pleased that John had the foresight to do so.
Our multies ran between New Brighton, Chester Northgate and Wrexham. The comparable service today to North Wales over the former GCR lines crosses the Wirral from the south only as far as Bidston, where there is an interchange with the Merseyrail electrics. We took the local multies a few times from New Brighton. Their only advantage as far as we were concerned was that if you got in the end that was not first class you could see the numbers of steam locomotives approaching without having to stick your head out of the window and risking a full-frontal lobotomy. For example, on 16/5/64, I went to Caergwrle and back for a walk up to the castle site with friends and was able to spot 92114, 5667 and 9608 from the train with unusual ease. John Dyer photographed his examples in 1962, at Shotton, Wrexham Exchange and passing Harrison Park in Wallasey.
At the time, I think we saw them as a means to an end, rather than anything of intrinsic value. The third rail electric 3-car multiple units usually ran as 6-car trains on the New Brighton, West Kirby and Rock Ferry links to Liverpool Central. We were actually very fortunate to have a convenient and regular service to connect us to the stations where we considered that our journeys really began – Hamilton Square for Birkenhead Woodside, James Street for Liverpool Exchange and Liverpool Central for High Level and Lime Street.
Much has altered since then, of course, including the
creation of the Liverpool loop, extensions of the electrified lines on the
Wirral and now another change in rolling stock. The Class 503s of our youth
were replaced by class 507 and 508, and currently by Class 707s.
John Dyer’s 3 photographs are from early in 1962 and show our ‘Leccies in various very familiar settings for us – the sandstone cutting outside New Brighton station as the line makes use of the raised red sandstone cliffs known as the Red Noses and where we were introduced to off-road cycling amongst the gorse, the approach to Grove Road station and by then through the sandhills with Harrison Park on one side and the “Dips” on the seaward side - both venues for park football, and the triangle of lines at Seacombe Junction, with Wallasey Technical Grammar School in the background and Wallacre Park in front of it, where park football would soon afterwards become “proper 11-a-side stuff” for us Old Wallaseyans.
Classified as 124s, these Swindon-built 6-car multiple units were introduced in 1960 and operated between Liverpool Lime Street and Hull Paragon. I took a return trip to Selby on one on 25/2/63. The event went unphotographed, in spite of the fact that this was my only solo trip to the east coast main line in the age of steam. I can’t remember if I took a camera or not but it would have been useless anyway because it was foggy all the time that I was on Selby station. It was also freezing cold and I spent most of my time there hopping in and out of the station buffet for a bit of warmth. I don’t remember there being any other spotters around at all. For the record, I saw 60151 Midlothian, D9018, 60026 Miles Beevor, D9007, 60144 King’s Courier, D9006, D9020, D9016, 60500 Edward Thompson, 60088 Book Law, D9004, D9000 and 60006 Sir Ralph Wedgwood in that order and through the murk, and 45578 United Provinces and 45571 South Africa at the Liverpool end of things. With sarnies finished by 11.00ish and all available cash soon afterwards, I probably only stuck it until mid-afternoon before clambering back onto the elongated DMU with the bulbous front end. I think it was probably quite warm, though. Luckily, John Dyer had raised his camera for one at Manchester Exchange 11 months earlier, on 24/3/62.
I saw all 200 of these as they became our staple diet out of Liverpool Lime Street. I was in right at the start, as my Dad was a member of the Merseyside Civic Society and they arranged a trip to the new Edge Hill signalbox and the electric depot at Allerton. The photo shows me with Dad in the cab of one of the new locos at Allerton, sporting my light blue bobble hat, which my Mum had knitted for me. I gradually weighed it down with sew-on cloth badges of scenes in the Lake District [Mum again] and then a collection of metal pin badges from youth hostels we had stayed in. I jacked it in when it got too unwieldy and the pins started to rust. It may also have no longer been a trendy item by that time, though that fact could just have passed me by. My track record for sartorial elegance is not great, a characteristic that I have managed to maintain for about 70 years now, though I was only 13 at the time the photo was taken. John Dyer’s pictures show E3010 at Crewe in July 1963, E3027 at Crewe on 22/5/61 and again in July 1963 and E3094 and E3013 at Rugby Midland on 9/5/65.
I’d forgotten just how impressive Lord Street was. Its fashionable peak, renowned for bespoke shopping and imposing Victorian buildings may be well behind it now, but the layout remains – a long, broad, majestic, tree-lined, canopied swathe - the boulevard effectively separating seaside resort from modern, pedestrianised town centre.
We took a walk along Lord Street to find the Cheshire Lines station.
Its tracks had approached the centre from the coastal side and the surviving
frontage is now part of a Travel Lodge hotel. The Lancashire and Yorkshire
Railway’s main station building was knocked down as part of the same type of
now notorious post-war redevelopment that has blighted many a town centre, being
replaced it in this case with a depressing slab of concrete and some shops.
Lines to Liverpool and Manchester remain, but the third prong - to Preston - was
abandoned in 1964.
Spirits were raised at the Atkinson. Two Grade II listed
buildings facing Lord Street have been physically joined to create a quite
splendid cultural centre, with museum, library, art gallery, performing arts
workshops, theatre, café and gift shop. It was clearly well used and it had a
lively, purposeful buzz about it. As well as a vibrant Cuneo painting in the
art gallery, the museum holds the original artwork completed by Fortunino
Matania for the most recognisable of his series of designs for quad royal railway
posters. They were commissioned in the mid-1930s by the London Midland and Scottish
Railway to promote the town as an all-year-round resort.
They are stunning, extravagant pictures, so colourful and attention-grabbing. Matania was a distinguished war artist who later illustrated historical stories for the women’s magazine, Britannia and Eve, in his lavish but detailed and accurate style. His image of well-to-do theatre goers emerging from the Garrick art deco venue into a wet night in Southport is a wonderful study. More recently a bingo hall, the former theatre is now completely closed down. Walking past the frontage, it’s easily overlooked, sadly - blank, ignored and forlorn. Like Southport as a whole, its surely got too much going for it for that situation to last indefinitely.
One-off curiosities pretty much sums up how we viewed them, I think - DP2, GT3, Lion and Kestrel. They all popped up from time to time. John Dyer photographed DP2 at the head of a train from Liverpool Lime Street bound for Euston on 13/6/62. It looks like he travelled behind it as far as Rugby, at least, where his second shot was taken.
Railway people are generally very knowledgeable about their stuff. That certainly puts the pressure on when you commit to print. Get your facts straight. Every now and then, I cock-up. I described an 0-6-0 tank as an 0-6-2 in a blog and was rightly pulled up, and I was told I’d mis-identified a very dirty Standard 9F 2-10-0 from a 1964 photo, which was probably the case, too. You get the drift. You have to be spot on in this sphere and that maxim usually keeps me on my toes.
In a late-night email [I’m hardly at my sharpest then, and also
partly traumatised by another Everton defeat], I mistakenly and momentarily
deprived the town of Bruton of its railway station, something Dr Beeching did
not actually manage to do – though it has been an unstaffed halt since 1969. My
friend, John Beck, who is currently residing there, soon put me right. The present
station at Bruton is nothing to write home about. It has a couple of “bus
shelters” and no through trains to London Paddington, in spite of its being on
the direct route to Taunton and the West Country. However, John found one of
the lovely old GWR platform benches in chocolate and cream with art deco
roundels. How solid and dependable they look and still so plentiful on the old
Western Region.
Bruton had a modest-sized signalbox on the south side of the line, built in 1875 immediately west of the station and opposite the goods yard, now long gone. It became obsolete after 1980s re-signalling in the area. Today, there are two structures of signalbox design, one used as a garage [West End Garage, Station Yard – adjacent to the station at the west end and north of the line] and one constructed by an architect as his office and now occupied by an estate agent [Lodestone Property, Station Road - also west of the station and north of the line]. John kindly provided these splendid pictures of all three items, two of which were taken on a recent moonlit walk with Archie the dog.
John Dyer’s only Deltic photo shows D9002 at York on 12/4/62, and I photographed another member of the class at Edinburgh Waverley on 30/5/72. Right on cue, No. 55019 Royal Highland Fusilier was hauled into the platform by a diesel shunter at Loughborough Central station this morning for a wash and brush up.
