WHAT’S IN THIS MONTH’S EDITOR’S PICKS...

Steam Railway has again teamed up with Unseen Steam - the online and DVD home of rare and captivating railway footage - to bring you some fantastic scenes of three classic BR-era locomotive classes and locations. Passenger traffic on the Kent & East Sussex Railway (KESR), with the exception of hop-pickers’ and railway enthusiast tours, had ceased long before the line was closed in the early 1960s. At the end, a number of enthusiast specials ran using the famous ‘A1X’ 0-6-0T ‘Terriers’ . Both members of the class and the KESR survived into preservation, and here we feature activity on both the KESR itself at Robertsbridge and the last rites on the Hayling Island line. The two ‘Terriers’ in use on the latter, Nos. 32650 and 32670, would both go to the KESR shortly thereafter and enjoy new careers as preserved machines. Steam in the North East of England survived into 1967, mainly on the North Sea coastal lines between the rivers Tyne and Tees. Our selection of shots taken in the last days of the North Eastern Region takes us to locations such as Penshaw North, where a Peppercorn ‘K1’ runs through with a train of empty hoppers. Other main line steam locomotives are seen moving long trains of mineral wagons at Hartlepool Junction, some working tender-first. The BR ‘3MT’ 2-6-2Ts were conceived by the Western Region as a standardised version of their well-known ‘Large Prairies’ and 45 of them were built at Swindon. They proved to be useful on many parts of the BR network and can be seen at work on the former Severn Valley line at Eardington, on the Sidmouth branch, at Bath Green Park and on the line out from Clapham Junction to Kensington Olympia.