SIR PETER HENDY: MY MEMORIES OF ‘1T57’
One of the passengers aboard the ‘Fifteen Guinea Special’ was Sir Peter Hendy, now chairman of Network Rail.
Speaking to Steam Railway, he remembers the day “like it was yesterday.” Although he toured the south of England a year earlier when steam on the Southern Region had ended, he remarked that he hadn’t previously been on any of the final enthusiast tours in the North West “because it was a long way away and I was only 14.” And yet, his mind was swayed when he saw an advert for the August 11 run at his local station in London: “I thought ‘that might be something to go on and tell your kids about’.
“There were posters everywhere. They were posted all over the railway system and BR was clearly worried about whether they could fill it up or not. I went back to my dad and said ‘here’s something I’ve really got to do’ and he paid for it.”
Sir Peter managed to get his ticket signed by the driver, fireman and guard from all four steam-hauled legs and he keeps the ticket and personalised certificate in a frame (pictured below) at his Waterloo office. “It was a great day out. I’d never been over the ‘Settle & Carlisle’ before and I didn’t know much about the line, but it was brilliant. I was caked in soot because everything was dirty.”
The atmosphere on board, he recalls, was celebratory rather than one of doom and gloom: “It’s quite unusual because there weren’t many special trains so actually it was a really special train. British Rail had to make an amazing day out and I think they must have found some decent locomotives, because the staff made a pretty strong attempt to show what steam could do.” Another of Sir Peter’s biggest memories was how many people came out to photograph ‘1T57’: “There wasn’t a moment from the start to the finish when you couldn’t see people taking pictures. It was astonishing, up the ‘S&C’ in the middle of nowhere. There were literally hundreds of people taking photographs.” “It was the most amazing day out because it could never be repeated. You couldn’t do it now because it just stopped twice in the middle of nowhere and people got off and wandered around the railway. It stopped on the main line at Rainhill and everyone got out and admired the sign for the Rainhill trials; then it stopped at Ais Gill and everyone got out and admired the signal box.”
I HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO KEEP THE SHEDPLATE (10A, CARNFORTH) ON THIS LAST JOURNEY AS A SOUVENIR