Return to the SVR

Not content just with a visit to Carnforth, we were soon off on our travels again, this time back to the fledgling Severn Valley Railway at Bridgnorth. Until 1974, passenger trains only went as far south as Hampton Loade. Ex-LMS Stanier 2-8-0 Class 8F No. 8233 and Hunslet built ex-Manchester Ship Canal 0-6-0 tank The Lady Armaghdale were both in steam in May 1971.

Steamtown Carnforth

Steamtown Carnforth was the name given to the former LMS and British Railways locomotive depot between 1967 and 1997. It was one of the main railway museum sites in the country during that period, holding open days with engines in steam at a time when they were banned from the national network. As such, it provided a much sought-after location for enthusiasts deprived of steam elsewhere. Today it is the base for the West Coast Railway Company, which runs heritage steam and diesel-hauled trains on the national rail system. 

In its various guises, Carnforth has been an attractive venue for us for over 50 years. We called in a few times to see surviving steam locomotives that were still at work in the north west of England in the mid-1960s, usually on our way to youth hostelling holidays in the Lake District.

We got some of our occasional “steam fixes” from Steamtown during the 1970s. Our first visit, illustrated below, was in April 1971. In more recent times, we have enjoyed the splendid station museum and the Brief Encounters themed tea room, as well as taking part in rail tours behind steam over Shap and Ais Gill provided by the WCRC.

Barclay Industrial Number 1 Horwich at Carnforth, April 1971.

 

Ex-LMS Stanier Black Five No. 45407 in Furness Railway livery, Carnforth, April 1971.

Ex-LMS Ivatt Class 2 2-6-0 No. 6441 at Carnforth, April 1971.

A gleaming ex-LMS Black Five 4-6-0 at Carnforth, April 1971.

Narrow Minded

I had virtually ignored the narrow-gauge railways. After all, they were, well, kind of small. Also, their locomotives were generally not listed in my favourite book [my combined volume], although I knew that there were one or two exceptions to that. Nor were they part of the national network that I had devoted my time to, up to that point.

I employed the same rather feeble reasons for ignoring the many industrial networks across the country, which also continued to operate steam locomotives after 1968. The consequence was that we never got further than Birkenhead and Liverpool docks for industrial steam - and even then, it would have been in passing rather than with intent.

However, now that our beloved standard gauge steam had been so cruelly taken away from us, it was time to branch out a bit. In June 1970 and most likely at his instigation, Andy drove us to the Welshpool and Llanfair Railway’s headquarters at Castle Caereinion, in his Ford Cortina OMA259D.

Here, we were re-acquainted with the two 1902-built, ex-WL locomotives that had been taken under BR Western Region control from 1948 until the closure of the line in 1956. We had seen them with their ex-GWR numbers of 822 and 823 on a school railway society visit to Oswestry works. That had been prior to 822’s return to the line after overhaul in 1961, and in preparation for the re-opening of a section of the original route.

1 The Earl at Llanfair Caereinion, Welshpool and Llanfair Railway, June 1970.

No 2. The Countess at Llanfair Caereinion, Welshpool and Llanfair Railway, June 1970.

Ex-Zillertalbahn Railway locomotive on shed at Llanfair Caereinion, W&LR, June 1970, with the Bagnall, Monarch, behind.

No. 2 The Countess at Llanfair Caereinion, Welshpool and Llanfair Railway, June 1970.

April 1970 at the Severn Valley Railway

The embryonic heritage railways were very different then. It’s amazing to think that we have been going there at fairly regular intervals for getting on for fifty years now. The relaxed attitude to visitors wandering over the tracks while steam locomotives were operating has disappeared into the past, with the spread of health and safety legislation. Who would have thought that this young man with his hands in his pockets would end up being entrusted with the lining out of these same carriages today?

Scenes at Bridgnorth in April 1970 of Ivatt Class 2 2-6-0 No. 43106 and 2251 Class No. 3205.

What shall we do next?

The end of steam in 1968 left us at a bit of a crossroads. No one else in our group was prepared to go off looking for diesels. The focus of our collective activities had changed. Girls now monopolised our activities as well as our thoughts.

What we actually did was travel extensively within Britain. Two things made this possible – the Youth Hostel Association and access to cars. This was theoretically a problem, because the YHA was initially opposed to people travelling around by car. I think we were amongst the pioneers, who, by our brazen flouting of their number one rule, eventually encouraged the organisation to change their policy.

To start with, YH holidays were lads only – after all we very much hoped that we would meet new and different girls from those we were already getting to know back home. As we moved towards having steady girlfriends, going away to meet other girls probably became a bit contentious. We relented and went off together thereafter in a mixed crowd - and sometimes quite a large one.

Steam took a back seat, but was not totally overlooked. The KWVR and the SVR were quickly out of the blocks as far as the standard gauge heritage railways were concerned and we visited both early on. In Haworth yard at the KWVR, on a cold bright day in February 1968, ex-LMS Ivatt 2-6-2 tank No. 41241 was complete with crimson livery, tarpaulin and a covering of snow.

  

Bunker Hill

At the top of Cockett Lane and just before the junction with Kirklington Road, there is a bus stop. The bus stop is at least half a mile from the nearest house. From the bus stop, no settlements are visible. I have never seen anyone at the bus stop, nor anyone get on or off a bus there, and we have been passing it regularly since we moved to the village more than 30 years ago.

There is a lay-by near the bus stop, with a few fence posts and a small concrete block at the edge of a field. Previously, there was also a small brick building that looked like a garden shed and one or two metal pipes, all of which disappeared many years ago.

Someone once told me that this was the site of a Cold War nuclear bunker. I imagined, perhaps a little fancifully, that this meant that in the event of a nuclear war, our leaders would hastily turn their backs on pressing matters of the day at County Hall and head for the bunker at the top of the hill. Presumably they would be coming by bus. The Sherwood Arrow Bus service from the city is every two hours, so they could have been waiting nervously for some time, if they thought a nuclear strike was imminent.

Would they have bothered with a return ticket? Would they have asked the driver to “Make it snappy,” whilst maintaining an air of nonchalance, so that they did not arouse the suspicions of their fellow passengers? Would they have a change of clothes with them or were such things taken into account in the nuclear bunker’s inventory?

When the shed was knocked down, the green metal pipe-work was removed from the location and the ground immediately behind the gate post was cleared of any remaining evidence of the formerly disturbed surface. Whatever had been going on there had obviously been abandoned. I had no idea if what was underground was removed, filled in or just covered up and ploughed over. Perhaps there are multiple packs of tinned baked beans and crates of bottled water still down there, past their use-by dates and slowly rotting underground.

It caught my eye in passing once again this week, so I decided to take a closer look. I climbed the hill on my bike to have a nose around. I found that the sole remaining concrete block, also painted in Nottinghamshire County Council green, actually has a small brass plaque on the top, which has already become quite weathered.

IN THIS FIELD STOOD THE

ROYAL OBSERVER CORPS POST OF

B GROUP [COVENTRY] 22 POST FARNSFIELD

RE-SITED HERE IN 1943, FOR REPORTING AIRCRAFT

AND AS A “GRANITE POST” TO AID FRIENDLY A/C

BUILT UNDERGROUND SEPT 1961 FOR NUCLEAR REPORTING ROLE

CORPS STOOD DOWN 30-9-91 POST DEMOLISHED 1992

14 LOYAL VOLUNTEERS MANNED THE POST

LED BY C/OBS P.K.J. ROBINSON B.E.M.

Back home on the computer, as is so often the case these days, reality is laid bare by the internet within minutes. 

 www.subbrit.org.uk/category/nuclear-monitoring-posts was a useful starting point.

No trains this time, but heritage at every turn.   

Return to Selby

Fifty-four years and eighteen days after I stepped down from the all green Trans-Pennine unit from Liverpool to Hull and set foot on Selby station for the first time, I was back on the same platform.

I had just turned 14 years of age and I was on my tod when I made that journey, in a quest to add to my tally of ex-LNER Pacifics and to get one over on my train spotting mates, in a competition that they were not necessarily aware of. I disembarked into freezing fog, which hung on relentlessly all day. 1963, you may remember, was a very bad winter and there were remnants of previous coverings of snow on the ground and more than that in the hills, on the way across.

I did not leave the platform that I had arrived on until it was time to go home again. I had probably thrown in the towel by mid-afternoon. I spent the whole time I was there hopping in and out of the station buffet and treating myself to mugs of hot tea and sausage rolls, my picnic lunch having been devoured, as was usually the case on such occasions, by 11 a.m. at the latest.

Until yesterday, I did not have much of a clue as to what the town itself had to offer, including the impressive 11^th century abbey, some fine old buildings in the central area and the waterside mills. I did not even know what the station façade looked like.

The through tracks between the platform loops are now just an open space. The well-known swing bridge over the Rive Ouse, with its control house perched on the top, is still there, though I could well have missed it completely through poor visibility in February 1963.

The East Coast Main Line has been diverted away from the town altogether in the interim, though there is still a regular train service to a range of predominantly northern destinations advertised on the VDU. The station café is still going strong and appears to be well used.

In my mind’s eye, I could still see Miles Beevor and Edward Thompson, Book Law and King’s Courier bursting out of the mist with their London expresses. Interspersed with them were the Deltics, no doubt the villains of the piece on the day, though appreciated since in their own right.

I stood and thought about all the water that had gone under the bridge since I was last there. The gradual accumulation of qualifications, a whole career that has come and gone, all that energetic scampering around on playing fields and in sports halls, the arrival of children and grandchildren and all those “sliding door” moments where critical choices had to be made. It suddenly felt like it had been no time at all.