Freight train, freight train, goin’ so fast
SO sang Nancy Whiskey and the Chas Mcdevitt Skiffle Group on their 1957 hit record. The song was an American blues standard but for British audiences it was perhaps a scene like the one above that the song evoked.
The photograph is another from Bugle reader John Reohorn, and we thank him for sharing so many of his great railway images and memories.
About this picture, John writes: “At any hour of the day Bescot would have 8Fs and Black Fives in abundance, it being a principal freight concentration point with a large ‘hump’ marshalling yards and a vast engine shed.
“On the right in this shot from 1962, an 8F is threading its way through the complex point work with a mineral working. The fireman has just put a ‘round’ on, building up the fire, which suggests this to be a run-through.
“Over on the left the engine has a good head of steam, the Ross valves are roaring away and the driver has just been given the road; the clean first blast from the chimney being evidence of the regulator being opened and drawing on a good clean fire.
“In the background it is just possible to make out the ghostly profile of a G2 0-8-0 7F, a minerals engine dating from late Victorian times. This class was also a numerous Bescot resident.”
The Black Five and the 8F were designed by William Stanier for the London Midland and Scottish Railway. Between 1935 and 1946 852 8Fs were built, while between 1934 and 1951 there were 842 of the Black Five made. Given such large numbers it is perhaps unsurprising that they have fared better than most with 14 8Fs having been preserved, and 18 Black Fives.
The G2 locomotive was built for the London and North Western Railway, a precursor of the LMS. They were designed by H.P.M. Beames in the early 1920s, a development of earlier models. A large number of these locomotives survived into British Railways ownership but only one has been preserved