TRIBUTE TO DEDICATED 9466 OWNER DENNIS HOWELLS
Memorial outing will honour the life and legacy of the railwayman who saved ‘94XX’ pannier tank.
Dennis Howells, owner of GWR Hawksworth-design 0-6-0PT No. 9466, died aged 78 on August 18. He was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year. His final driving turn had been on No. 9466 at the Mid-Norfolk Railway on July 15. His railway career began in 1955 while he was on a footplate ride with his uncle Bill. They were stopped at a signal box and he saw a telegraph linesman at work. “That’s when I knew what I wanted to do,” Dennis said.
He joined BR at Watford as a 15-year-old apprentice, and worked on the West Coast Main Line for 37 years. He was then appointed S&T Engineer General, Southern. After that he became Railtrack’s Testing and Commissioning Engineer in Southern’s Major Projects Division. His most challenging post was as Divisional Signalling Engineer (General) Southern with the remit of achieving signalling and testing staff’s independence after the Clapham disaster.
He was also involved in the resignalling and electrification of the Euston-Crewe section of the WCML in the early 1960s, and the more recent upgrade of the route for tilting trains. He said: “When four-aspect colour signalling was commissioned in 1965, I wanted to let a Camden ‘Duchess’ loose to see how fast it could go.” Unfortunately, the last of the Stanier ‘Pacifics’ had been withdrawn the previous September. In the 2002 Queen’s Birthday Honours list, he was awarded an MBE for services to the railway industry. His preservation career started in 1973 as working party leader on the restoration of ex-Barry GWR ‘King’ No. 6024 King Edward I, a position he held until May 1977 when he purchased No. 9466. After eight years and a complete strip-down and reassembly, the pannier was returned to steam. It became a fixture at the Underground steam events and Dennis joined the organising team, becoming their footplate inspector. At Didcot, Dennis was the Locomotive Manager and Footplate Inspector, in addition to leading the restoration (apart from the boiler) of No. 6023 King Edward II, and the Railmotor’s motor bogie project. He was also the Mid-Norfolk Railway’s steam superintendent and the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre’s locomotive inspector.
Since 2010, Dennis led a team at the NRM in York, cataloguing their archive of around 36,000 Swindon drawings. He claimed that his team could identify 70 in a day. A memorial train hauled by No. 9466 will operate on Saturday October 20, from Castle Bar Park to Princes Risborough and return with No. 9466 serviced at Chinnor. News and tickets will be available via the Mid-Norfolk Railway’s website www.mnr.org.uk and any profit will be donated to St Luke’s Hospice (Harrow & Brent) where Dennis passed away. The link for readers donations is: www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ dennis-brynley-howells-mbe ‘Steam on the Underground’ in March 2019 will also be commemorating Dennis with tickets available in the usual way via London Transport Museum.