A new light on old stock
If you’ve ever seen the classic Ealing comedy The Titfield Thunderbolt, you’ll no doubt have fond recollections of the astonishing train that was coupled to Liverpool & Manchester Railway 0‑4‑2 Lion. Sandwiched between the locomotive and a GWR ‘Toad’ brake van was an old railway carriage that had been hastily borrowed from its unknowing proprietor, Dan Taylor, in order to run the crucial inspection train on the fictional Titfield‑Mallingford branch as its future hung in the balance. The 1953 film was, in various ways, prophetic for what would become the first shoots of standard gauge railway preservation almost a decade later, when the Middleton and Bluebell railways ran their respective reopening trains. Ealing Studios could justifiably claim another piece of inspired foresight by the restoration of the vintage carriage body from its unkempt second life as a bachelor’s home and marrying it to available running gear – in much the same way that dozens of four‑wheel coach bodies have been resurrected since the 1980s, thanks to the fortuitous availability of redundant Southern van underframes. And so it was the Thunderbolt, and the ‘can do’ spirit which defines it, that sprung to mind when Steam Railway first revealed the astonishing train of four secretly restored and overhauled carriages dating to between 1864 and 1960 (SR473) – complete with a ‘Toad’ on the end of the train, as insurance for an unbraked ‘four‑wheeler’! As you’ll see in News, and the feature on pages 42‑49, it has required immense effort from four small teams of people to make the ‘train through time’ possible. Having been accomplished for a classic ‘will they, won’t they?’ Channel 4 small screen series, a significant injection of external cash was imperative to make the six‑month whirlwind rebuilds possible. Yet, if there’s a wider benefit to railway preservation from this ongoing Challenge Anneka‑style production (aside from the four restored vehicles themselves), it will be the introduction of a new audience to heritage carriages (as well as the usual
glamour machines) and the thrilling time travel that they afford at preserved railways across Britain. Further, it will hopefully have inspired fresh interest from would-be volunteers to get involved with many other such projects around the country. The valuable work of the Boiler & Engineering Skills Training Trust (BESTT) has been rightly praised for helping to give locomotives a sustainable working future, and there is plenty of scope for similar apprentice involvement with carriages on preserved railways. After all, there’s a range of transferable skills that can be learnt in the Carriage & Wagon department, including woodworking, upholstery and metalwork. A renewed enthusiasm may also be the catalyst to kick-start a foundering restoration, or even lead to one or two more wrecks being brought in from the cold for attention. As has once again been proven, preservation continues to have its ‘Titfield moments’ and long may it continue.
The new-build locomotives feature that was planned for this issue will now run in a future edition.