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See also London Underground (including some foreign metro systems), Foreign Railways and Railway Disasters across the world.
Try these puzzles about Underground Distances, The XYZ of British Railways, and the Least-Used Public Railway Station Open in Great Britain.
See also my pages devoted to London buses, Trams and Trolleybuses, Green Line Coaches and another on Aircraft and Airports.
Click on any of the thumbnail images to see the pictures full-size. Links to video clips, of which there are quite a lot, are words in the text (blue), just like links to other web information but preceded by this 
icon.
And remember, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be!
The British Rail Class 41 was the original classification for the power cars of the prototype High Speed Train (HST) of 1972. The HST was later re-classified as a diesel-electric multiple unit, and the whole set became Class 252. Two power cars were built, 41001 and 41002.
41001 is still operational and based at the Great Central Railway (Nottingham) as part of the National Collection owned by the National Railway Museum (NRM) in York.
The BR Standard Class 8 was a class of 4-6-2 Pacific steam locomotive designed by Robert Riddles for British Railways. Only the prototype was constructed at Crewe Works in 1954 and was named “Duke of Gloucester”. Locomotive 71000, “the Duke”, as it is popularly known, replaced the destroyed Princess Royal Class locomotive 46202 “Princess Anne”, which was involved in the Harrow and Wealdstone rail disaster of 1952.
On the day “The Duke” was expected to visit Plymouth, this First Great Western High Speed Train pulled in from Cornwall and it didn’t sound too great... Check out this video. And you thought the days of smoke disappeared with Beeching. OK, so who filled it with unleaded?
There used to be a light railway, a Colonel Stephens line, called the Weston, Cleveland and Portishead Railway which ran near to the coast west of Bristol. (More in Branch Lines to Clevedon & Portishead by Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith published by Middleton Press.)
The 16 lines run by Colonel Holman Fred Stephens were small, and this one, like several others, had speeds restricted to 25 mph. It was 13.8 miles long with 19 stations or halts most of which had a small shelter and no platform. There were some 80 level crossings (including farm crossings), mostly ungated, with wooden cattle grids, which were painted white. Where there were gates, women were sometimes employed to open them, but otherwise the fireman would run ahead to open them, while the conductor closed them, and the train stopped twice!
At Portishead another line entered the town, a branch of the Great Western Railway from Bristol (Ashton), opened on 18 April 1867 originally by the Bristol & Portishead Pier & Railway Company.
But I digress; it is said, probably apocryphally that a lady arrived at the GWR station and asked a porter: “How do I get to Weston-super-Mare?”
He replied: “Well madam. You’ll have to go to the WC&P!”
See this BBC documentary programme from 1988.
The Kent and East Sussex Railway was another “Colonel Stephens” railway, indeed it was the first that was built by Stephens under the 1896 Light Railways Act, though he built two others before the K&ESR.
It is still in operation as a Heritage Railway.
The photograph above shows a train in South Eastern and Chatham Railway guise passing Bodiam Castle.
According to the caption this photograph was taken on the Kent and East Sussex Railway. The only reference I can find to locomotive LNER 376 (named The Staintondale) is that it was a D49/2 class with BR nº 62774 built in February 1935 and scrapped in November 1958; these locomotives were built with Lentz poppet valves activated by rotary cams. See also this photo; this might all be a red herring, with my investigations being way off-track!
While we’re in a light-hearted mood, here are some videos of amusing sketches, or in some cases rather silly things or unfortunate events.
From the Two Ronnies, British Rail certainly used to get it in the neck.
And more of the Two Ronnies.
A classic Two Ronnies sketch from the 1980s where the pair sing from the footplate of a locomotive before arriving at a fictional Welsh railway station.
CCTV captures a man, Nathan Barker, stopping a train on the tracks at Bentley station, South Yorkshire; he was under the influence of drink and drugs, and was jailed for 16 weeks.
LNER Thompson B1 61306 Mayflower struggles to leave Gloucester on 1st March 2015. Excellent work by the footplate crews delighted passengers and the watching crowds alike.
Here’s a catastrophic uncontrolled wheelslip which destroyed LNER Peppercorn A2 60532 Blue Peter at Durham in 1994.
Ever since the days when spent nuclear fuel rods had to be transported by road or rail, someone predicted a disaster of nuclear proportions. So model containers were built and tested to the limit; but this was not to the doubters’ satisfaction. Watch this film from 1984 where a 100 mph test train was smashed into a nuclear flask (filled with water and steel, of course).
Needless to say (but I will), the train carried no driver nor anyone else.
Caught on camera – lorry crashes into railway bridge in Dunfermline, Scotland on 1st November 2014 (about ½ minute) [see left photo].
Twelve of the UK’s most dangerous level crossing near misses , featuring footage of totally crazy people putting themselves in terrible danger. Locations include: Llanelli (Wales), Essex, Kingsknowe (Edinburgh), Waterbeach (Cambridgeshire), Keighley (Yorkshire), Shoreham-by-Sea (Sussex), Manningtree (Essex), Langley Green (West Midlands) and more – the FGW one about two minutes in looked like fun! (about 2¾ minutes).
Manchester Victoria to Barrow in 1990 (2 hours) Euston to Milton Keynes Central in London
Midland class 350 EMU (½ hour) London Liverpool Street to Kings Lynn in 1989
(2 hours) Portsmouth Harbour to Eastleigh (¾ hour)
How do you fancy a half-hour trip around London’s railway stations? The video includes Paddington, Liverpool St, Barking, West Ham, London Bridge, King’s Cross, St Pancras, Hornsey, Watford Junction and Marylebone though I must have blinked when some of them were on. It was filmed on 14th February 2015.
Shrewsbury to Dovey Junction (Cyffordd Dyfi)
(1½ hours) An Hour at Dovey Junction – Trains, Tractors
and Wildlife! 2009 (10 minutes
[do Welsh trains travel near the speed of light?]) Dovey Junction to Aberystwyth (23 minutes)
Night Mail is a 1936 documentary film about a London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) mail train from London to Scotland, produced by the GPO Film Unit. It was made on a budget of only £2000. A poem by W H Auden was specially written for it, as was music by Benjamin Britten; commentary by John Grierson
Here is Auden’s poem recited by Britten
This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient’s against her, but she’s on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.
[Commentary here spoken by Grierson, then Britten continues]
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers’ declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart’s outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.
[More commentary here spoken by Grierson, then Britten concludes]
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman’s knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
See YouTube for the Poem (3 minutes 24 seconds)
or for the complete film in three parts: Part 1 (8 minutes 33 seconds), Part 2 (8 minutes 8 seconds),
and Part 3 (5 minutes 58 seconds with the poem).
There’s also a colour film (not of a real Mail Train) on YouTube including the Night Mail poem.
The Slow Train (3 minutes 4 seconds) (thanks to Dr Beeching)
Transport of Delight (2 minutes 13 seconds) (about a bus)
And another of their songs on the joys of having work done in the house on my Poems page.
Believe it or not, British Rail filed a patent application on 11th December 1970, which was granted in 1973 but lapsed in 1976, for a space vehicle powered by nuclear fusion. The Guardian’s Science reporter, Alok Jha , re-reported it under the headline The next saucer to Shoeburyness leaves from platform 5... in 2006. Needless to say, it never took off!
An announcement at Liverpool Street station many years ago:
“Platform 3, Harwich for the Continent;
Platform 4, Clacton for the incontinent”
– or so it’s alleged!
See National Rail Enquiries including timetables,
British rail enquiries journey planner,
or for buying British railway tickets, thetrainline.com.
The Hogwarts Express – it had to happen! Actually it’s a 4-6-0 Hall Class steam locomotive, GWR 5972 “Olton Hall”. It runs from King’s Cross, Platform 9¾ and is definitely not in GWR colours.
The 159 is a class of diesel multiple-unit trains of the ‘Sprinter’ family, built in 1989–1992 by BREL at the Derby Carriage and Wagon Works as Class 158. Before entering service, the original 22 units were modified to Class 159 to operate express services from London Waterloo to Exeter and replace locomotive-hauled passenger trains.
South West Trains is part of the Stagecoach group of transport operators, the second largest transport group in the UK after FirstGroup.
See 1938 Stock on the Isle of Wight ,
London ‘Ghost’ Station Found Hidden Underground After 100 Years ,
BR Class 20 in LU livery, L189 (or 20189) .
The new station on HS1 (High Speed 1 from London to the Channel Tunnel) is known as Ebbsfleet International and was apparently named after the traditional landing point on the Kent coast of the Saxons in 449 and of St Augustine in 597, as shown in these two OS maps. The left map shows the new station west of Gravesend, the right the landing south of Ramsgate.
I know the Gravesend area quite well, but nobody I know there had ever heard of “Ebbsfleet” (Gravesend) before; the River Fleet – now a dry bed – rose near where the A2 passes over the HS1 tunnel at a place marked Spring Head on the map (where there were once watercress and oyster beds), passed through Southfleet (just off the south of the map) and Ebbsfleet, entering the Thames at Northfleet; significant development is now taking place there, prompted by the new station. Here’s a video of the Eurostar (London St Pancras to Paris Gare du Nord) – Eurostar Class 373 on 31st March 2012. And here’s more about Ebbsfleet International.
There’s an informative video sponsored by the Bechtel consortium which managed the design and construction of Britain’s High Speed 1 Rail Line; it lasts 2 hours and deals with the construction of the new line and the restoration of St. Pancras station.
The initial batch of class 373 trains for the Eurostar services from London to Paris Nord and Brussels Midi were constructed by Alsthom and entered service from 1994. The rightmost photograph above shows the new Eurostar class 374 trainset near Sellindge in Kent, formed of units 4008/4007 and based on the Siemens Velaro series, near Sellindge, Kent.
The London Terminus of the High-Speed line (HS1) was initially Waterloo International, before the new line from Ebbsfleet to St Pancras was opened in 2007, and is now St Pancras [left], a magnificent piece of Victorian architecture. Compare it with its ugly 1970s-extended neighbour, King’s Cross [right], which was renovated in 2014. They made a somewhat better job of “renovating” it than they did with Euston, where they demolished the majestic doric arch.
[The aerial photograph is by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen – Own work by uploader, http://bjornfree.com/galleries.html, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30798816]
I’m reminded of the (probably apocryphal) story of an American tourist in London who was greatly impressed when he saw St Pancras.
He went in through the main entrance and, on seeing someone who looked like some sort of ‘official’, asked in a quiet respectful voice: “what is this building?”
“It’s St Pancras, sir,” came the reply. Believing it to be some sort of church or cathedral, the American asked in the same low respectful voice: “when is the next service?”
“It’s the 10:45 to Nottingham, sir”.
The much more controversial proposed HS2 line from London (Euston) to the Midlands and North has general information about it here, including the government’s maps (click on the green pins on the route map for very detailed PDF files, several megabytes each one).
For aficianados of Bank Holiday rail disruption and other unexpected rail closures [King’s Cross, Paddington...], here’s a video animation of the new National Rail London Bridge Station. The map shows the present station.
London Bridge station is undergoing a major transformation as part of a wider project to accommodate longer 12-car Thameslink trains and provide many other benefits. Three terminus platforms are being closed and three new through-platforms created to allow additional services to continue either to Cannon Street or Charing Cross, or to Blackfriars and onwards via the Thameslink route.
Also a new viaduct alongside the existing rail bridge over Borough Market will relieve the major bottle-neck that currently requires all trains to and from Charing Cross and Blackfriars to use a single line in each direction.
A new station concourse is being built to improve circulation; this requires the demolition of brick vaults between Stainer and Weston Streets, which will themselves become part of the new concourse. The space relinquished by the existing concourse will allow the adjacent bus station to be expanded, and new shops will be built into the existing western arcade, which will be re-opened and extended to link the Underground station and Joiner Street.
The increase in through-platforms will also allow London Bridge to function as an emergency terminus for services approaching the station from the west. To accommodate these alterations, the listed northern wall of the terminus train-shed is being demolished and replaced with a new retaining wall, and the listed bays of the roof over the terminating platform are being dismantled and stored.
Double-Decker trains are very common in many countries, but, because of the small loading gauge in Britain, they have never been used there. There was an experiment just after the Second World War, in which two four-car electric trains (units 4001 and 4002) were designed and built by the Southern Region of BR, designed by the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the former Southern Railway, Oliver Bulleid. They weren’t really double-deckers but one-and-a-half deckers, with the upper seats reached by stairs in a gap in the seating of the lower seats. It’s easier to look at the diagrams and photos than me trying to describe the layout!
These units were almost exclusively used on the Bexleyheath suburban line, between Charing Cross or Cannon Street and Dartford or Gravesend.
[Below] The 17:34 from Charing Cross on 30th June 1952 at Kidbrooke Station.
[Above] Unit 4001 (the middle train) outside London Bridge; headcode 71 indicates that it is on the Bexleyheath line on a service from Cannon Street to Dartford.
[Left] On 25th October 1970 this double-decker strayed from the Bexleyheath line, has just left Slade Green depôt and is passing North End Sidings at Erith. It will go to Charing Cross via Woolwich and Greenwich.
These web sites describe the trains and their backgrounds:
Locos and trains designed by Bulleid,
Kent Rail,
the Bulleid Double Decker Society
and the inaugural run, on YouTube.
If you are looking for historical Railway Timetables, I can suggest nothing better than Bradshaw’s; the Newton Abbot, Devon publisher David and Charles has published at least three complete reprints (April 1910, July 1922, July 1938), including all the fascinating advertisements for holiday accommodation, etc.
On 19th October 1839, soon after the introduction of railways, the world’s first compilation of railway timetables was published in Manchester. It cost sixpence (6d/2½p) and was a cloth-bound book entitled Bradshaw’s Railway Time Tables and Assistant to Railway Travelling, the title being changed in 1840 to Bradshaw’s Railway Companion, and the price raised to one shilling (5p). The original publications were before the limited introduction of standardised Railway time in November 1840, and its subsequent development into Standard time. In December 1841, Bradshaw reduced the price to the original sixpence, and began to issue them monthly under the title Bradshaw’s Monthly Railway Guide. In April 1845, the issue number jumped from 40 to 141. The publisher claimed this was an innocent mistake, although it has been speculated that it was a commercial ploy, where more advertising revenue could be generated by making the publication look longer-established than it really was. Whatever the reason for the change, the numbering continued from 141. The last edition, No. 1521, was dated May 1961.
The Great Britain Passenger Railway Timetable is available at most large stations and at W H Smith and John Menzies bookstalls on station concourses. Price around £12. It is available by post (postage and packing extra) from:
Teamwork Handling, 6 Chessingham Park, Dunnington, York, YO19 5YA, telephone +44 (0)1904 481140, fax: +44 (0)1904 488572. Also for current UK rail times, see the National Rail Enquiries including timetables web.
There’s a web-site committed to “bringing you the latest in train travel news, history of UK railways and engines”, and you can even buy train tickets there. Timetables for Sale (mostly 50p each, working timetables cost more; plus postage).
I have found plenty of working timetables and other similar operating documents for sale at railway events, and I have quite a few British Rail and London Underground timetables, which are quite fascinating. They show, for example, where it is necessary to have an extra train driver available at rush-hours so that tube trains can be dispatched as quickly as possible after arrival at a terminus – usually the same driver would walk to the other end of the train to take it on its return journey – at rush-hours he/she may well take out the following train to arrive. A web-site that describes itself as “The Online Collection of Historical Timetables and Maps from Around the World”.
For tips on travelling abroad see this site (which was even recommended to me by the French Tourist Office in London! They say that if you live in the USA or Canada, you should give Afghanistan as your location, otherwise you get directed by other web-sites to expensive sites for purchasing tickets!) For information about European rail travel, the best source is Deutsche Bahn (in English) as they give useful connections; the Spanish web-site is awful – they only give direct trains (so if you want to go by high-speed train from Barcelona to Seville, they don’t even mention that you can get there by changing at Madrid).
Timetables for other forms of transport are more complicated. Typically, for buses you need to know the name of the company running the service and look up their web-site. Transport for London is useful, for London only of course.
Magnificent “diamond” track layout at the eastern end of Newcastle-upon-Tyne Central station before development in the late 20th century
Track diagrams can be fascinating, at least to me. The Quail Map Company produces an excellent range of plans, as do Network Rail (multi-megabyte PDF files). GA Pryer and AV Paul used to produce a series of “Track Layout Diagrams of the Southern Railway and BR S.R” (and other areas); these may still be available. Their advantage is that they show the historical development of lines – when sidings were added or removed, for instance.
See the Signalling Record Society site for a large number of references about many aspects of British railways.
The preserved Isle of Wight Steam Railway still runs this Coach and O2 class Locomotive; see also The Freshwater, Yarmouth & Newport Line.
See this interesting 12-minute clip from the Isle of Wight Steam Railway on 12th April 2015 including W24 Calbourne on a passenger train and Southern Railway A1X (Terrier) Class 0–6–0T W11 Newport at Haven Street shunting its freight.
The Freshwater, Yarmouth and Newport was a 12-mile-long railway that followed a route westwards out of Newport, Isle of Wight through a series of remote villages along a scenic route to the coast. Incorporated in August 1880, it opened to traffic in September 1888 and was renowned for its friendly staff; it was, nevertheless, always an impecunious line.
Initially, services on the line were operated by the Isle of Wight Central Railway (IWCR) under the terms of a mutual agreement. However, relations between the IWCR and FYN deteriorated in 1913 to the point that the FYN was forced to purchase its own locomotives and rolling stock, and to build a new separate station in Newport.
The company was absorbed into the Southern Railway in August 1923 and British Railways closed the line in September 1953.
[Left] Freshwater, Yarmouth & Newport Line. At Newport, trains had to reverse to gain access to the original Isle of Wight Central station.
[Right] A1 Class Terrier locomotive “Freshwater” in Southern Railway livery at the Isle of Wight Steam Railway. This locomotive was originally London, Brighton & South Coast Railway 646 “Newington” and later London & Southwestern Railway 734 from 1903 before it was purchased by the Freshwater, Yarmouth & Newport Railway in 1915. Renumbered W8 in 1932, her career on the IOW ended in 1949 and she returned to the mainland for work on the Hayling Island branch until 1963. In 1979 an agreement with the former owners saw her return to the Isle of Wight for preservation and in two years she started hauling trains on the private rail network. She is now back in service following a £35,000 boiler replacement; her boiler ticket expires in 2019.
Other notation used: Pass.–passenger train; Freight.–freight train; M. C.–miles and chains;Shanklin or Sandown–through train to or from Shanklin or Sandown;
F–stops when required (Watchingwell was a private station that was commissioned by Sir John Stephen Barrington Simeon, 4th Baronet and MP for Southampton).
See also Working Timetable for the Jubilee Line.
The string of winter storms in 2013–2014 were only the latest in many weather-related problems suffered by British railways. (All these video clips of storms were taken in one week in February 2014.)
Recent storms have been battering the sea wall at Teignmouth and Dawlish causing much damage. The last major storms that caused significant damage along this famous stretch were in 1993. The tail end of Hurricane Floyd hit the South West on the 13th September – believe it or not, there are trains on the tracks beyond these waves. A witness said “I ventured out and grabbed these few shots. They include 37416 heading to Laira, and 47467 in large logo livery with I think the Penzance to Leeds parcel service”.
Another video: Dawlish Sea Wall: Before & After The February 2014 Storm
UK storms Dawlish; sea wall collapses under the railway line. The police have declared a major incident in Dawlish , which is between Exeter and Cornwall, after a section of sea wall under the railway line collapsed. Network Rail said it had pulled all repair staff away from working on a 50 metre section of track at Dawlish.
A First Great Western HST slowly edging its way along flooded Somerset levels from Bridgwater to Taunton on 7th February 2014.
A First Great Western HST is stranded in the middle of the track , near Moorland, Somerset, after heavy rain and flooding on 7th February 2014.
Cambrian Coast rail flood repairs at Barmouth and Pwllheli to take months. The Cambrian Coast railway line may not fully reopen for another four months as repairs after tidal storms continue, Network Rail says.
I have quite a large collection of railway books, and can recommend some of them to you.
Middleton Press publications:
London Suburban Railways series:
Charing Cross to Dartford (North Kent Line via Greenwich), Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith
Country Railway Routes series:
Andover to Southampton (including the branch line to Longparish), Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith
Fareham to Salisbury via Eastleigh, Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith
Southern Main Lines series:
Woking to Southampton, Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith
South Coast Railways series:
Ryde to Ventnor, Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith
Branch Lines to Newport, Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith
Southern Steam on the Isle of Wight, Tony Fairclough and Alan Wills (D. Bradford Barton)
Rails in the Isle of Wight, P C Allen and A B MacLeod (George Allen and Unwin)
Rail Centres: Clapham Junction, J N Faulkner (Ian Allan Publications)
The Railways of Winchester, Kevin Robertson (Platform 5 Publishing)
The Transport for London web includes maps of tube, DLR and bus routes
“The UK’s only Main Line Heritage Railway” is how this line, now based in Loughborough, describes itself. Its origins lie in the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, which, under its entrepreneurial chairman Sir Edward Watkin, built an extension to London (Marylebone), this being the original Great Central Railway.
Watkin was also a director of the Metropolitan Railway and of the South Eastern Railway. He had ambitions to construct a tunnel under the English Channel, thereby creating a trunk route from the north of England through London to the continent of Europe. Parts of this original system are still in operation by national and underground railways.
The photograph shows No. 1744 Great Northern Railway N2 Class 0-6-2T which was built at the North British Locomotive Works in Glasgow in 1920. It was withdrawn 1962 and acquired by the preserved GCR in 1975. It returned to traffic in 1978, was then withdrawn in 1994, and returned to traffic for the second time in 2009.
The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) Class A3 Pacific steam locomotive No. 4472 Flying Scotsman (originally No. 1472) was built in 1923 for the LNER at Doncaster Works to a design of Nigel Gresley. It was employed on long-distance express trains on the LNER and its successors.
The locomotive set two world records for steam traction, becoming the first steam locomotive to be officially authenticated at reaching 100 mph (160.9 km/h) on 30th November 1934, and then setting a record for the longest non-stop run by a steam locomotive when it ran 422 miles (679 km) on 8th August 1989 while in Australia. It retired from regular service in 1963 after covering 2,076,000 miles (3,341,000 km). Eventually after several attempts to save the locomotive from being scrapped, Dr Tony Marchington bought the locomotive in 1996 and had it restored over three years to running condition at a cost of £1 million (which bankrupted him) and 4472 is now preserved at the National Railway Museum in York.
The Flying Scotsman passenger train service is an express train that has been running between Edinburgh and London, the capitals of Scotland and England since 1862. It is currently operated by Virgin Trains East Coast.
Originally introduced in 1960 two are still, over 50 years later working for Chiltern Railways and (this one) for Network Rail, formerly Railtrack. Note the pair of black exhaust pipes and the plated-up headcode box. The Class 121 DMU (diesel multiple unit) cars were built for use on the Western Region of British Rail. They were used on various lightly used branch lines, including the Looe and other branch lines in Cornwall, the branch lines off the main line in the Thames Valley, the Severn Beach line in Bristol and the Greenford branch line in West London. More here.
London, Midland and Scottish Railway Jubilee Class 4-6-0 5699 was built at Crewe in 1936. As BR 45699, Galatea was withdrawn from service, and sent to the scrap yard at Barry to be cut up. Here she was left to rust away, and when a shunting accident left her derailed, it was simpler to cut one of the driving wheels in half rather than re-railing her.
However the story of the Barry locomotives is well-known, and like most of the locomotives in store there, she was eventually rescued, and sent to Kidderminster, as a source of spare parts for sister locomotive 5690 Leander. Few seriously considered that she could ever run again. Eventually she was moved to Tyseley, where she languished for a number of years. By 2008 she had been moved to Carnforth, where a new set of wheels was cast for her. Finally in April 2013 after a full overhaul she made an appearance on the main line, running under her own steam for the first time in nearly fifty years.
Kirkby Stephen station is on the Settle — Carlisle line. This line was for a long time threatened with closure as it didn’t serve any large communities; it was a genuine triumph of British 19th-century design and civil engineering skill. The line was built by over 6,000 navvies, who worked in remote locations, enduring harsh weather conditions. Large camps were established to house the navvies, most of them Irish and their families; many dozens died (the true number is unknown).
However sense prevailed, the closure plans were torn up and the beautiful scenery is still accessible for all to see. The Ribblehead Viaduct is one of the most majestic in Britain.
Stephenson’s Rocket was an early steam locomotive of 0-2-2 wheel arrangement. It was built for, and won, the Rainhill Trials held by the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in 1829 to choose the best design to power the railway. It was designed by Robert Stephenson, and built at the Forth Street Works of his company in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Located between Bromsgrove and Barnt Grenn, the Lickey Incline is the steepest sustained main line railway incline in the UK. The climb is a gradient of 1-in-37 for a continuous distance of two miles. Some trains still require banking locomotives to ensure that the train reaches the top!
Colas Rail class 37 37175 passing Barnt Green on 22nd July 2015.
The British Rail Class 37 is a diesel-electric locomotive also known as the English Electric Type 3. The Class 37 became a familiar sight on many parts of the British Rail network, in particular forming the main motive power for Inter-City services in East Anglia and within Scotland. They also performed well on secondary and inter-regional services for many years.
The magnificent blue class A4, one of the class which included Mallard. (Mallard is the holder of the world speed record for steam locomotives at 125.88 mph [202.58 km/h]. The record was achieved on 3rd July 1938 on the slight downward grade of Stoke Bank south of Grantham on the East Coast Main Line, and the highest speed was recorded at milepost 90¼, between Little Bytham and Essendine.) This locomotive entered service in 1937, numbered LNER 4464 and named Bittern; it was renumbered 60019 after the Second World War, and withdrawn on 5th September 1966. In 2000 Bittern was bought for a major restoration and now resides at the Mid-Hants Railway.
The second locomotive, nearest to the camera, is BR Standard Class 9F 92212. It was built by British Rail in 1959; with its 2-10-0 wheel configuration, the class was intended for use on fast, heavy freight trains over long distances. This example was scrapped in 1968; restoration was completed in September 1996, and the engine is now based at the Mid-Hants Railway.
A video of a helicopter ride from Brighton to St Pancras showing the progress of the Network Rail Thameslink Programme.
Llangollen is a small town in north-east Wales situated on the River Dee and on the edge of the Berwyn mountains. The famous Dee Bridge, was built by Bishop Trevor of Trevor Hall in 1345. It is a scheduled ancient monument and was widened in the 1960s to accommodate modern traffic. Llangollen also hosts the world famous Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod every July.
Opened in 1862 the Ruabon to Barmouth railway steamed its way through the Welsh countryside. At one time it was possible to board at Llangollen Station and travel to London without a single change! The railway closed to passenger traffic in 1965, and to goods in 1968; over the next seven years nature closed in on the buildings and track bed. However steam trains are once more to be seen in Llangollen Station thanks to the efforts of the Llangollen Railway Society .
A group was formed to renovate and reopen part of the line in September 1975, with just 60 ft of track which has now grown some 7½ miles along the Dee Valley passing wonderful scenery and giving a glimpse of what the 65-mile journey must have looked like in its heyday. Trains now operate during weekends virtually all year and daily from June to the end of October. During the summer, steam trains are mostly used. (The nearest national railway stations are Ruabon and Chirk.)
The Llangollen Canal (Welsh: Camlas Llangollen) is a navigable canal crossing the border between England and Wales. The waterway links Llangollen with Hurleston in south Cheshire. In 2009 an eleven-mile section of the canal from Gledrid Bridge near Rhoswiel through to the Horseshoe Falls (a weir on the River Dee 5 km from Llangollen), which includes Chirk Aqueduct and Pontcysyllte Aqueduct at Trevor, was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO because of the bold civil engineering solutions needed to construct a canal with no locks through such difficult terrain.
From Llangollen Wharf you can embark on a 45-minute horse drawn trip or a two-hour trip on the traditional Canal narrow boat, which takes you through the Vale of Llangollen and across Britain’s biggest aqueduct. Towering 126 ft above the river and built by Thomas Telford Pontcysyllte Aqueduct is a masterpiece of engineering.
“Painting the Forth Bridge” is a colloquial expression for a never-ending task, coined in the erroneous belief that at one time in the history of the bridge repainting was required and started immediately on completion of the previous repaint. Apparently such a practice never existed, although under British Rail management, and before, the bridge had a permanent maintenance crew. A recent repainting of the bridge, with a contract awarded in 2002, for a schedule of work which was completed on 9th December 2011. It involved the application of 230,000 m2 of paint at a total cost of £130M. This new coat of paint is expected to have a life of at least 25 years, and perhaps as long as 40, thus removing the need for frequent repainting. The work involved blasting all previous layers of paint off the bridge for the first time in its history, allowing repairs to be made to the steel.
The Jacobite Steam Train is run by West Coast Railways, a company based in England that runs some other railway lines. They have only been operating the Jacobite since 1995. The journey goes through some of Scotland’s most splendid scenery. Starting in Fort William, it travels along the shores of Loch Eil, stops for half an hour at Glenfinnan and continues to Mallaig, where there is a ferry service to the Isle of Skye. The highlight of the journey is when the train crosses the Glenfinnan viaduct, where passengers get a stunning view towards the Glenfinnan Monument and Loch Shiel.
A legend long-established attached to the Glenfinnan Viaduct was that a horse had fallen into one of the piers during construction in 1898 or 1899. In 1987, Professor Roland Paxton failed to find evidence of a horse at Glenfinnan using a fisheye camera inserted into boreholes in the only two piers large enough to accommodate a horse. In 1997, on the basis of local hearsay, he investigated the Loch nan Uamh Viaduct by the same method but found the piers to be full of rubble. Using scanning technology in 2001, the remains of the horse and cart were found at Loch nan Uamh, within the large central pylon. The viaduct crosses the Allt a’ Mhama, or Mama Burn, just before it flows into Loch nan Uamh, a sea loch to the north of the Ardnish peninsula.
The London and South Western Railway (LSWR) 0298 Class or Beattie 2–4–0WT was a class of British steam locomotive, originally built between 1863 and 1875 for use on passenger services in the suburbs of London, but later used on rural services in South West England. Out of a total production of 85, two locomotives have been preserved in an operational condition.
Here’s a video of 34067 Tangmere with the Dorset Coast Express passing through Sway on 27th August 2014.
The Southern Railway (SR) gave the designation 5-BEL to the five-car all-Pullman electric multiple units which worked the prestigious Brighton Belle trains between London Victoria and Brighton. These units survived long enough in British Rail ownership to be allocated TOPS Class 403. Between 1933 and 1935 the units were designated 5-PUL (the ‘PUL’ code was then used for the 6-PUL units).
The SR Merchant Navy class (originally known as the 21C1 class, and later informally known as Bulleid Pacifics, Spam Cans or Packets), is a class of air-smoothed 4-6-2 Pacific steam locomotives designed for the Southern Railway by Oliver Bulleid. They were built at Eastleigh between 1941 and 1949.
The locomotives were originally intended for the Golden Arrow and other trains serving the channel ports, but were used on the express South Western trains from Waterloo to Southampton and Exeter, and on the Bournemouth Belle Pullman train. They were all named after shipping companies that had called at Southampton Docks.
Originally a London, Brighton and South Coast Railway Class E4 0–6–2T locomotive named “Birch Grove”, 473 became part of the Southern Railway fleet. It is now owned by the Bluebell Railway.
Here it is seen shunting some Pullman coaches, possibly at Horsted Keynes to form the railway’s Golden Arrow train. The Golden Arrow (French: Flèche d’Or) was a luxury boat train of the Southern Railway and later British Railways. It linked London with Dover, where passengers took the ferry to Calais to join the Flèche d’Or of the Chemin de Fer du Nord and later SNCF which took them on to Paris.
This locomotive was built in 1898 and arrived at the Bluebell Railway in 1962. It returned to service in January 2010 in 1920s Southern Railway livery following overhaul. The locomotive returned to service in August 2014 after repairs to the firebox were completed; its boiler ticket expires in 2019.
The SR West Country and Battle of Britain “Light Pacific“ classes (informally “Spam Cans“) are air-smoothed 4-6-2 Pacific steam locomotives designed and built for the Southern Railway by Oliver Bulleid.
The Great Eastern Railway’s Y14 class was designed by T W Wordsell and this example (then numbered 564) was built at Stratford Works in 1912 and based at Lowestoft depôt. The Y14 was a small locomotive for hauling light freight trains, and had a 0–6–0 wheel arrangement.
When the GER became part of the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) in 1922, the Y14s were reclassified J15, and this example was renumbered 7564 and then 5462 in 1946; British Railways (BR) prefixed a 6 (to 67564) on nationalisation of the railways. It worked occasionally on the Leyton–Epping–Ongar section of the former GER branch, which became part of London Transport’s Central Line. It was withdrawn from service in 1962, and bought for preservation.
The Midland and Great Northern (M&GN) Joint Railway Society is the supporting charity of (and major shareholder in) the North Norfolk Railway, which operates a 5¼-mile heritage railway from Sheringham to Holt. The locomotive is currently undergoing an overhaul.
Where else could this photo have been taken but on the Bluebell Railway?
The BR Standard Class 4MT 2-6-4T class worked on a wide range of duties, including commuter trains, general passenger trains and on branch lines.
The Cathedrals Express was a named passenger express on the Western Region of British Railways. It ran between the cathedral cities of Hereford and Worcester to London Paddington. The service was introduced on 16th September 1957 and ran six days a week until 12th June 1965. It left Hereford at 7:45am with a return from Paddington at 4:45pm. Coaching stock was in the GWR chocolate and cream livery, not the BR standard maroon of this period. The service also stopped at Oxford, another cathedral city, although this was already well-served by other London services. In later years it served several other places.
The Wymondham South Junction signal box is at Wymondham Railway Station, Wymondham, Norfolk. It is a Grade II listed building.
This locomotive was built at Swindon in 1952 and withdrawn in November 1965. It currently runs on the Strathspey Railway in northern Scotland, which runs ten miles between Aviemore through Boat of Garten to Broomhill.
45407 “The Lancashire Fusilier” is a preserved Black Five owned by the East Lancashire Railway which loans it out to several other heritage railways
The LMS Stanier Class 5 4-6-0 was a mixed traffic locomotive, 842 having entered service between 1934 and 1951. (The British Railways Standard Class 5MT 4-6-0 was one of twelve standard classes of steam locomotive built by British Railways in the 1950s. It was essentially a development of the “Black Five”; 172 were built between 1951 and 1957.)
Introduced in 1934, the LMS Class 5 4-6-0 is almost universally known as the Black Five. Built as a mixed traffic loco, 842 of these these ‘do-anything go-anywhere’ engines were built with 18 surviving into preservation.
And a great piece of film showing how the steam train footplate crews of days gone by used to enjoy cooking a “Full English Breakfast” on the footplate on the coal shovel (this of Black 5 45212).
