No steam at maryleboNe (aNd at the momeNt it’s formal)

Word reaches us that Marylebone is currently off limits to steam, due to work being needed on a building near the station. That might not seem so much of a story. After all, steam has been a rare visitor for years and paths difficult, ever since BR’s rationalisation of the former Great Central terminus was followed by a boosted Chiltern timetable. Yet Marylebone will always have an important place in the story of main line steam in London and the south. For it was at a station that then still had semaphore signals and a much quieter schedule, that steam made a major return to the capital in 1985 and the years after that. The beginning came with a Royal Mail launch for ‘GWR150’, for which Sir Nigel Gresley appeared at the somewhat dilapidated GC station, complete with an oversized stamp on its ‘cod’s mouth’ casing. What followed was a regular series of trains to Stratford-upon-Avon using engines such as the then-Garter blue ‘A4’, Duchess of Hamilton and Clan Line. These days, the Chiltern main line is not such a big route for steam – charters being concentrated on lines considered impossibly glamorous in those pre-‘open access’ days – and those that do use it tend to run from nearby Paddington. Steam Dreams has run occasional Chiltern trips (the latest on July 1), and on November 24, an old friend returns to the climb over Saunderton for UK Railtours: ‘Merchant Navy’ No. 35028. Both of those trains, though, are from the Great Western terminus. Network Rail said in June that steam is “temporarily suspended” from Marylebone “as a result of weaknesses discovered in a neighbouring building that could be affected by their use.” The track operator says it is “working with our neighbour to rectify this situation as quickly as possible, although visits to the station from such locomotives are rare.”