I have been reminded by my friend, John, that before we went to the K&WVR in February 1969, we had visited Lostock Hall sheds on the 12th of January. We found 13 steam locos there that definitely weren’t working any more and 7 diesels, including a Brush Type 4 and an English Electric Type 4, that presumably were. Again, I don’t remember being troubled by the authorities during our nose around. They must have become so use to trespassers like us coming along to pay our respects to the long-cold survivors that they just let us get on with it until all the locos had been dragged off somewhere else. Though the sheds had officially closed at the end of steam in August 1968, in reality, Lostock Hall had stayed open as a maintenance and refuelling depot for diesels but on a much-reduced staff.
Remaining Black Fives were primarily in evidence, with just
one Stanier 8F and one Standard Class 5 present. No. 73069 left Lostock Hall later
in February to become the last steam locomotive to be broken up at Cashmore’s at
Newport. South Wales. We had previously visited their scrapyard ourselves to
witness the dismantling of some of the Southern Pacifics.
Apart from the 15 Guinea Special on 11/8/68, the last steam working on a normal service that I photographed was on 16/3/68, 10 months before our Lostock Hall visit. We knew that some trains from Liverpool Exchange to Scotland via Preston were still steam hauled at that time, so we had gone out past Ormskirk in Andy’s car to catch one on the move. Sunday through trains to Glasgow Central were rostered for steam right up to 3/5/68, becoming the last scheduled steam hauled expresses on the network. Black Five No. 45411 was at the head of a rake of BR’s blue-era Mark 1 coaches heading across the SW Lancashire Plain.
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