LIVING WITH... ‘7Fs’
Driving and firing the S&D 2-8-0s
What is the most beautiful sound in the railway world? The throaty purr of a large three or four-cylinder express engine on song? The soothing ‘clickety-clack’ of wheels on jointed rail that’s now rapidly being consigned to history? The equally evocative rattle of buffers as a locomotive couples up to a rake of 16-ton mineral wagons? The list is long even before you add the spine-tingling howl of a Bulleid whistle. In a tunnel. For some West Country footplatemen another contender could be the exhaust of a Somerset & Dorset ‘7F’ 2-8-0 at full pelt. It’s a lovely, crisp and yet at the same time slightly soft bark that, once the engine gets into its stride on a long bank, merges into a stirring, galloping rhythm worthy of the title ‘iron horse’. Happily, thanks to Barry scrapyard, it’s a sound that you can still hear daily in the hills of Somerset – not on the class’ original ‘Serene & Delightful’ stamping ground (at least, not yet) but the West Somerset Railway, currently home to both surviving examples. Over 50 years after the last Bath Green Park crews toiled over the Mendips with ‘7Fs’, a new generation of drivers and firemen are privileged to be working, day in, day out, with these treasured relics from one of the most revered – and lamented – railways in history. For a fireman, that exhaust note is music to the ears. ‘7Fs’ have never been easy to fire, even in their S&D heyday, and keeping on top of one requires skill and experience. But when the roar from the chimney is at its height, it means that he’s got everything spot-on; the fire is the right shape, the pressure is holding near the red line even with the injector on, and all is well with the world.
MAKING THE GRADES
Despite being intended for freight work, Nos. 53808 (owned by the Somerset & Dorset Railway Trust and based on the WSR) and 53809 (currently on loan to the line) are doing exactly the same job into which they and their classmates were pressed in the 1950s – hauling heavy trains of happy holidaymakers to the coast over a long, twisting railway with punishing gradients. In BR days, using ‘7Fs’ on such duties was taking them well out of their depth. For their normal goods workings, “they were just right,” in the words of Dennis Gooding, a passed cleaner at Bath Green Park from 1956-59 who, on the day of my visit to the WSR, just happened to be enjoying a footplate ride on No. 53809. “They’d plod up and down to Evercreech Junction all day long.” Mike Wightman, the driver of No. 53809 on my visit, remembers the class from his spotting days at Bristol, saying simply: “We always knew them as ‘Hill Climbers’… that’s what they did.” With their 4ft 8½-inch driving wheels and 35,295lbs of tractive effort, the ‘7Fs’ may have seemed an attractive choice for summer excursions, being permitted to take ten coaches over the S&D’s 1-in-50 grades without the help of a pilot engine.
But, as Branksome fireman Peter Smith pointed out in The S&D 7Fs Remembered: “While the ‘7Fs’ could get ten coaches up to Masbury Summit unaided, one should perhaps ask if they could run them to time. The answer – rarely.” He further explained that while the ‘7Fs’ proved to be good steamers and economical on coal on their normal freight duties, this was because of the much slower timings allowed for loosecoupled goods trains – not to mention the assistance of ‘Jinty’ 0-6-0Ts as bankers over the Mendips. Attempting to keep passenger schedules with up to ten coaches, on the other hand, would push their boilers – both the large and small versions – beyond their limits. As legendary S&D photographer Ivo Peters wrote, when Bath Green Park shedmaster Arthur Elliott first authorised their use on passenger trains in 1950, it was “with great reluctance and some foreboding”, and was only done because, on a busy summer Saturday, there was simply nothing else available. Yet, on a preserved line – even a ‘Premier League’ operation like the WSR – the pace is more relaxed even than the genteel S&D and, in many ways, a ‘7F’ is ideally suited to the 20-mile Bishops Lydeard-Minehead line. Perfectly happy to canter along at 25mph, it has plenty of power in reserve for anything that a normal day is likely to throw at it; service trains generally load to a maximum of seven or eight coaches, but being permitted to haul 12 it’s capable of taking the four-coach ‘Quantock Belle’ dining set on top if necessary, not to mention incoming main line charters. Driver Stuart Nelhams testifies: “I had No. 53808 on a railtour of 11 coaches – including some Pullmans, so probably equivalent to 12 or 13 Mk 1s – and it walked away with it.”
RAISING STEAM
“They’re wonderful engines – very tolerant and very strong,” praises Fireman Jeff Price, who reminds us that they were quite modern locomotives for their time: “The design was state-of-the-art in 1914.” With all the valve gear on the outside and ‘get-at-able’, and the driving axleboxes fed by a mechanical lubricator, it’s a very simple machine for the driver to oil round. Unlike the West Somerset’s GWR engines, with their inside Stephenson valve gear, he only needs to go underneath a ‘7F’ to oil the pony truck and a couple of points on the compensated spring gear. “They’re the best engines on the railway for oiling,” enthuses another driver, Colin Henderson. “A ‘Hall’ is a pretty large engine to climb up into from underneath…” Not everything on the ‘7F’ is state-of-the-art, however; like many of their Derby-designed ilk they were given outdated, short-travel valves and their undersized ‘4F’ axleboxes were prone to running hot – something that, in BR days, was only exacerbated by letting them loose on passenger trains. But the GWR-oriented West