‘O2’ ACROSS THE H2O
Just add water… and fire. NICK BRODRICK takes a busman’s holiday across the Solent to discover just how those who look after ‘O2’ Calbourne are perpetuating its working exiled existence on the Isle of Wight.
Living with Isle of Wight ‘O2’ Calbourne
Calbourne is an engine to animate all senses. The reassuring thump of its Westinghouse brake pump, its deep, melodic Caledonian hooter and its steady, even and authoritative exhaust note – sweet music that has thankfully endured on the Isle of Wight half a century after it could have been silenced. Then there’s the look. Quite how the addition of the brake pump, air cylinder atop the left-side water tank and bulging extension to the coal bunker managed to successfully enhance its already joyous appearance is something that is quite baffling.
These elements, set off by the addition of neat little brass nameplates promoting a romantic village name, plus full passenger lining, make the Island ‘O2’ a surprisingly handsome and imposing machine.
Simply put, Calbourne oozes character.
And character is something that these former LSWR 0-4-4Ts needed plenty of. Far from being a retirement home for pensioned-off elderly engines, the Isle of Wight is where the William Adams tank engines put in the best work of their amazingly successful near-80-year working lifespan. ‘O2s’ were built for suburban traffic, so their demotion to hauling families of holidaymakers to the seaside might seem like being relegated to a quiet backwater. But the intensity, weight and gradients that faced these machines is a reminder of the serious nature of their employment.
If you might be doubting their ruggedness, allow this to settle for a moment:
Locomotives allocated to the Ryde Pier Head to Ventnor and Newport/Cowes trains in the height of the post-war summer season were asked to haul rakes of up to six bogie coaches which, when fully loaded, amounted to roughly 150 tons – some 50% more than the trains they would ordinarily haul when they were seven decades younger, on shallower gradients.
Their dutiful service, especially on the 4½ miles of suffocating 1-in-70/90 clamber between Sandown and St Boniface Down, made a mockery of BR’s discourteous ‘0P’ power classification.
With such comparatively heavy loads, there was no slack afforded to the Ryde St Johns-based footplate crews, who were asked to keep to the frighteningly sharp schedule of trains that pinballed in and out of the terminus above the pulsating waters of the Solent. In any given hour, Ryde hosted an average of ten arrivals or departures – one every six minutes.
In fact, such was the hectic nature of the timetable that, during these times, Smallbrook Junction, where the double track from Ryde diverged over the steep hills towards Ventnor and pastoral fields to Newport, was reckoned to be the busiest single junction on the entire Southern network.
BLACK ON WIGHT
There were once 23 ‘Bogie Tanks’ here out of the 60 built by the LSWR. Now there is one. Rarer than the red squirrel, the island’s other famous inhabitant.
It is a scenario unmatched anywhere else in British standard gauge preservation: the very same locomotive and carriages, running over its original railway, still calling at the old stations. It doesn’t get more authentic.
It’s preservation in the material, but also the spirit. For ‘O2s’ were so strongly associated with tourism – and, as visitors flock to the Isle of Wight Steam Railway every summer, No. W24 continues its age-defined role of hauling packed trains of happy holidaymakers. Grandparents perhaps reliving memories of halcyon holidays; grandchildren making new ones.
The perpetual working life of this lucky ‘O2’ has helped cement the class’ legendary status that peaked in the mid-Sixties.
Other LSWR engines have been preserved. A couple more 0-4-4Ts too. But Calbourne truly represents the bookend of the South Western lineage.
It – and classmate No. W31 Chale – were the final pre-Grouping engines to haul passenger trains on BR’s standard gauge anywhere in Britain. They even continued to run well into the very final year of Southern steam in 1967; a year otherwise defined by grotty Bulleids and Standards on the mainland. That was because Nos. W24 and W31 Chale were kept back for occasional engineers’ trains prior to the inauguration of third rail electric working in spring ’67.
The British Railways era perhaps didn’t define the ‘O2’, but it did enhance its historical importance.
As a child of the Fifties, lined black livery is the one to which class expert Len Pullinger, a genuine salt of the earth islander, has most emotional allegiance.
“The livery it’s in at the moment is really well thought out and clever. It’s 20th-century graphic design at its best,” the volunteer and former chief engineer of the IoWSR tells Steam Railway.
Lined black may be what he and most others remember, but the time for that is now – and not for the next decade or so, because 1940s Bulleid Malachite green will soon be the order of the day.
That’s because Calbourne is being withdrawn from traffic in late September, so that it can be overhauled in time to star at the 50th anniversary celebrations to mark the reopening of the IoWSR in 2021, wearing the same colour scheme that it did when it hauled the reopening train.
“Malachite reeks of the horrible days when we were struggling like hell and there was this hell-bent attitude that it had to be green because nationalisation was the scourge of the railway,” he says. “It’s nice to see it green, but it’s not right!”.
But on the occasion of our visit, there was nothing but grinning appreciation etched on Len’s face, as he was rostered driver on Calbourne for the umpteenth time since 1975.
At first light on an already sweltering July 24 morning, the familiar sight of British Railways No. W24 warming through ahead of its day’s work on the five-mile line triggers Len to ask a question that hardly demands qualification: “this is perfect, isn’t it?” Prep work on the ‘O2’ is a reasonably straightforward task, excepting the awkward location of some of the oiling points between the frames.
Another of Calbourne’s old hands, Andrew Summers, the IoWSR’s rolling stock manager, comments that “if it’s not set up almost exactly, oiling up the crank axle is very hard. You have to be quite skinny to fit up through the rods, or very flexible!”
Today, however, Len is complaining of a bad back, meaning that his request for on chargehand fitter Alex Hull to step into the breach is greeted by typical shed yard frivolity and ribbing.
There’s also the ‘missionary’ oil trays that feed the driving wheel axleboxes. These were originally bolted to the front of the tanks for easy application, but the hurried nature of Southern Railway operation on the island meant that overflowing water would
contaminate the oil. The solution was to move them between the frames, with the resulting headache, often literally, that the man with the can would need to squirm up and over the motion, and stand on a connecting rod in order to reach them.
LIKE A ROCKET
Out on the road, you could be forgiven for believing that Pullinger was one of the names originally rostered to ‘O2s’ at St John’s Road shed, so in tune is he with every aspect of the engine’s behaviour. The truth though is that becoming a BR(S) engineman was never more than a childhood ambition, because “they went and closed it” before Len was old enough to sign up for the railway.
Instead, he became a telecoms engineer, but as one of the founding members of the Wight Locomotive Society and the line’s CME in later years, Calbourne has played an integral part in his life for more than 50 years.
“I grew up here and there were loads of them,” he smiles. “That’s all we had. So to me that’s what an engine should look like. Everything else is wrong. That’s my upbringing. There’s only one type of engine and it’s that. Everything else is a bit distorted!”
The opportunity to work on the preserved example was grabbed with both hands, and it was thanks to the tutorage of Calbourne’s original footplatemen that means there is no one alive today who knows this engine better than Len.
“You become at home on a footplate – and I really am at home on there. Put it all together, and I do wonder how many months I have been up there.”
The techniques have been passed down through the generations. “Ray Maxfield, who was one of Calbourne’s regular firemen in BR days, put me right with the firing, then Frank Ash, one of the old drivers, gave me a few days’ tuition.
“Then Ken West came along.”
Ken first knew Calbourne as a cleaner at Newport shed in 1944 and was one of its regular drivers for the last seven years of its working career. He was reunited with his old steed as a volunteer in 1993 and became a familiar and popular figure on the ‘O2’ with his original greasetop cap and cigarette in hand, and with a wicked ability to stop a train on a sixpence with just a couple of brake applications.
“It was refreshing to know that we couldn’t have been far wrong because he drove very much how we were all aiming for.”
Andrew Summers, who first worked on No. W24 in 1983, explains what the aim is.
“The way Ken taught people to drive was instinctive. He could operate the locomotive without even looking. He could operate
it just on the sounds it was making, which was one of the things you do learn.
“When you’re driving it, you’re not really listening for a chuffing noise at the chimney, you’re listening for the whistle down the steampipe as it rattles through the regulator rod.
“You’re not listening for the chuffs from the chimney, because if it sounds like it’s chuffing normally, then it means it’s got too much steam. You want a singing noise on the regulator rod that’s telling you that you’ve got the right amount of steam being used.”
Yes, Calbourne says ‘thank you’, in its own mechanical language, for treating it properly.
“If you give the ‘O2’ too much, she’ll be off. She’s not a slow engine. It’s about keeping it in control. She’s very good at doing what she does.
“We no longer use the old BR running notch on the reverser quadrant, the reason being that you do pick up speed too quickly; she just wants to go like a rocket ship. We’re normally one out, which also reduces wear on the valve spindles.
“BR traffic was much faster than our 25mph. I remember when Ken started volunteering here, Len took a little while trying to get him down to preserved railway line speeds!
“You could almost pull away notched up and it wouldn’t fault her.”
And that was almost precisely how Len drove Calbourne on July 24, with his fireman providing him with all the steam required to shift the archetypal train of five ex-SECR and LBSCR bogie carriages. In fact, from leaving Smallbrook, he only touched the regulator and reverser twice before having to shut off 1½ miles later at Ashey summit.
Talk to anyone in the shed yard at Havenstreet and you’ll hardly hear a bad word about working on No. W24, but there are aspects that keep some drivers on their toes, including Andrew.
“I find myself, as a driver, doing an awful lot of extra moving around the cab to drive the ‘O2’.
“I’m slightly shorter than some people, so sometimes I find it’s quite a hike round the cab. When we ran it with the original, short bunker, I found it easier because I could see out of the back windows, but now we’ve got the taller MacLeod bunker, I can’t see out of the back windows in the position where I’m holding the regulator. To see outside, I’ve got to take a step across the cab.
“Operating the Westinghouse brake is at fingertip control, so I have to kneel up onto the toolbox, otherwise I can’t quite reach. There’s almost too much space on the driver’s side; everything’s not quite at hand. You need to be stood in the right place for the individual controls to operate them.”
And Calbourne is an engine that also requires very careful handling. Keen observers of the ‘O2s’ may have noticed an eyebrow-raising tendency for the engine to be moving, even if the driving wheels aren’t. It’s something that Andrew is only too keen to highlight.
“The way I explain it to trainee drivers is you’ve got to remember that 50% of the wheels aren’t braked; so half of your engine. It does lock up quite easily.
“It’s a pleasure on a dry day. But in very light rain, when the rail tops are slippery, it can be a handful in terms of adhesion.
“If you’re stopping with a fitted train, there’s no problem at all, because it’s helping you brake. If you’re stopping unfitted, you have to plan way ahead.
“We try not to send it out on too many unfitted goods trains for that reason, because you can, if you’re not careful, lose your feet and pick up the wheels.”
The ‘O2’ is fitted with a quick release valve on the driver’s right-hand side at hip level, which, if used carefully, is one of the tricks of the trade that can help get you out of a sticky situation – but isn’t taught as a matter of course so as not to encourage lazy habits.
SOUTHERN SUPERSTITION
Firing Calbourne, meanwhile, is an uninhibited “pleasure”.
“It’s a very spacious cab. You can see the fire, the injectors are very easy to use and it steams very freely. It’s just a pleasure to fire. Everything works just as it should do.
“Being an older engine, the running plate being low means that climbing up and down for uncoupling is nice and easy,” something that Isle of Wight enginemen have to do a lot.
But like any Victorian engine, the ‘O2’ will bite you if you’re not familiar with it.
Take the front damper, for example.
“If you open it when it’s moving, it gets caught up round the crank axle, goes ‘clatter, clatter, bang’, snaps the damper rod off and chucks it on the floor. We’ve had that happen.
“It’s because the firebox had to be fitted in so close to the axle. You only open it to ash out.”
Living with Calbourne requires plenty of first-hand experience. But its minders also believe that there are other intangible factors.
Calbourne was permanently shipped to the Isle of Wight on April 26 1925 and has been scuttling over its lines, including the preserved five-mile section, ever since.
It’s for this reason that another of Calbourne’s brethren, Steve Smart, firmly believes “it knows where it’s going. It always knows”.
Steve’s love affair with the island and the ‘O2’ started much like the holidaymakers of the post-war era, only a generation later, while on a pilgrimage to the island in the early Eighties.
Steve, originally from Barnet, is what would be described by locals as an ‘Overner’, but it’s fair to say that this volunteer driver and IoWSR’s trustee’s self-confessed “love affair” with the 0-4-4T is nothing but genuine. So much so, that a day on the engine will always begin with a friendly chat.
“It knows who you are,” he says. “It begins from when you arrive in the morning and start going round with a rag. ‘What did yesterday’s driver do to you?’ I’ll ask. ‘Look at the state of you!’
“You end up having this conversation with the locomotive out loud, and they’ll all laugh at me.
“Things like the Westinghouse pump; we always have a little chat: ‘how are we going to get on today? We’ll get on well, won’t we?’ Then give it a nice clean and it’ll behave for you.
“You see drivers who don’t give any respect to that pump and it’ll play up all day long.”
Such superstition is infectious.
“One of the crew thinks that if he puts a copy of the Daily Mirror, a packet of ten fags and some matches on the engine for Ken, that he’ll have a good day firing.”
Ken died in 2012, but his memory is honoured with a traditional homemade driver’s plaque in the cab, in the handwritten style that helped personify these faithful machines.
FLAGSHIP ACROSS THE SEA
The fact that Calbourne maintained its working association with people like Ken for so many years after steam ended was remarkable. But in 2012, something extraordinary happened that
allowed men from another far-flung corner of the Southern Region to be reunited with the footplate of an Adams ‘O2’.
It started with an invitation from the Bodmin & Wenford Railway to borrow the engine, and was followed by the end of its 87-year unbroken exile on Vectis.
Unsurprisingly, Len was sceptical.
“I felt that it was of great value that it had not been off the island and I think we lost and spoiled that. You only live once, I suppose, but it was a wrench.
“The board approved it and they asked ‘would I go with it?’ I said, ‘yes, I don’t agree with it going, but I’ll make damn well sure that it’s looked after.
“I don’t know what I would have done if it had gone off the island without me. I would have cracked up I reckon.
“Well, we got there. My God, this bloody railway. It seemed so stupid. 1-in-40 or something, climbing up onto a moor. “Thankfully, the driver was Tony Hallworth, who was brilliant.” Tony, who died in July (see News), was another master of the art of driving and firing, having been brought up on a diet of Beattie well tanks, ‘T9s’, Bulleids and ‘O2’ tanks at Wadebridge shed in the 1950s. Despite having not worked on one of the Adams 0-4-4Ts for half a century, “he knew the engine inside out” Len recalls.
“We got onto running trains and we had to let them use it four times as hard as we use it here. I thought, if this is the way they want to play it, then I’ll damn well enjoy it and let’s go for it. And it was bloody good fun.”
Calbourne’s air brakes made it incompatible with the standard mainland vacuum apparatus, meaning that the ‘O2’ could assist hauling trains as a pilot engine, but couldn’t help in stopping them.
On one of these runs on the climb from Bodmin Parkway to Bodmin General, the train engine, ‘T9’ 4-4-0 No. 30120, lost its
footing in a bout of persistent slipping. The ‘O2’, however, took the strain “and didn’t miss a beat”.
“It’s the hardest I’ve ever seen that locomotive worked. The locomotive wasn’t in the peak condition that it is now, because its valves were shagged [since rectified], but it did alright.”
But another episode served as a stark reminder of the virtues of experience.
“They wanted to see the ‘O2’ on its own, pulling up the grade, so we took empty coaching stock with a Mk 1 and a brake van; bearing in mind neither vehicle was fitted.
“I was a bit wary. Tony was the driver and I said, ‘alright, we’ll give it a try, but we’ll have to be damn careful because she’ll lose her feet – and at Bodmin Parkway the line steers towards the HSTs on the GW main line!
“So we went down this 1-in-40 on the handbrake and it was gathering speed, but we weren’t able to get the handbrake on much harder. So we whistled up for a bit more from the guard.
“He screwed it down, and we’re calling for ‘more, more, more’, but we were grinding round those curves.
“We weren’t going very fast, but it was a bit hairy!
We pulled into the platform and ground to a halt and I looked at Tony, who said: ‘I think that was enough, don’t you?’
“We looked down and there was blue haze coming up from the brake blocks. They were absolutely scorching – burning all the paint off!
“Someone at the shed asked us if we were going to run a repeat of the ‘Brown Trousers Express’. Answer: No!”
On reflection, Len admits that its Cornish holiday “has got to be the most spectacular thing that we’ve ever done with 24”.
The sheer rarity of an ‘O2’ on the mainland made it a natural target for other railways before it made the return voyage. Thus, with the Isle of Wight’s blessing, Calbourne added Swanage, the Mid-Hants and Quainton Road to its ‘world tour’. This ad hoc roadshow afforded some hitherto unthinkable sights: running double-headed with a Drummond ‘M7’, rubbing shoulders with an English Electric Class 50, and the opportunity for Len to stand over Calbourne on the former Cowes footbridge, now at Medstead & Four Marks, from which he once watched the ‘O2s’ at the age of three, with his uncle.
But even when the Bluebell came knocking in 2018 ahead of this year’s LSWR-themed branch line gala, it was still hard for the island to let go, resulting in a paradoxical situation when the ‘Overner’ in Steve Smart feels uncomfortable with it coming ashore.
“When it’s gone, part of you feels like there’s something missing. It should be here, it shouldn’t be on the mainland. The island is where it belongs.
“When it’s away, the whole demeanour of this place changes. It’s just not right that the ‘O2’s’ not here. And everyone breathes a sigh of relief when it comes back.
“When Calbourne went over last time, it spent the night in Gunwarfe and I thought ‘crikey, it’s going to be on bricks when I come back in the morning!’ I live in Portsmouth so I had a drive past to make sure it was OK.”
The very fact that it has only gone back to the mainland twice in the past 94 years is proof itself of how jealously guarded Havenstreet is over its “prized possession”.
RETIRED – BUT KEEPING ACTIVE
In any other field, such mentality might be viewed as paranoia. But Andrew, Len and Steve all recognise that they are custodians of a unique, antique survivor; a responsibility that weighs particularly heavily because of the potentially conflicting aims of conserving while operating the locomotive.
And there’s no getting away from the fact that Calbourne, at 128 years, is now a very old lady indeed.
But in the early preservation days, there was little scope for running it in a pragmatic way. Calbourne spent the first two decades under continual pressure to bear the brunt of the IoWSR’s peak trains – just to keep the railway running. Initially, it was the only operational machine, then it was the opening of the 3½-mile extension to Smallbrook Junction in 1991 which put No. W24 in the firing line as the railway’s only powerful locomotive.
“I got to know it intimately,” Len remembers. “All the years that it had a bad firebox, and the stays were leaking like hell, I used to know them all by name. It would be a case of, ‘oh, not you again!’. It was a constant battle.”
However, the arrival of ‘Austerity’ 0-6-0ST Royal Engineer from the Army in the mid-1990s changed the whole complexion of Calbourne’s operation, just in the nick of time too, as the railway had recently tripled its track mileage.
“It meant we could start to spread the mileage over more engines,” Andrew recounts. “Now, we’ve also got the two Ivatts in service [SR481], meaning that we can again reduce the mileage on our historical engines.”
Thus, the railway believes that it has found a happy medium for the way that it demonstrates the ‘O2’.
“We reduce the mileage to keep as much original material on them as possible, otherwise I could foresee a time where you look at it and think ‘this isn’t actually the ‘O2’.”
In recent times that has meant that the Adams engine is regularly matched with the line’s lighter rake of four-wheel coaches, leaving the more historically appropriate-era bogie coaches for special events.
“The ‘Terriers’ and the ‘O2’ can now take things much easier… We want to maximise the life of the engine,” Andrew reports.
“We want to always keep the locomotive in serviceable condition, even if it means we decide to postpone motion work, for instance, and do it the following winter. That’s how we’ve been doing jobs on historical engines, rather than take them out for three or four years and get everything done, but get them back in a reasonable timeframe and then plan the other work for a later date.”
Because of this gentle workload, the engine clocked up just 1,700 miles in 2018, somewhat short of its average post-2010 overhaul total that averaged between 3,000-4,000 miles. And when you consider that it clocked 6,400 miles in 1995, you get a tangible sense of just how seriously the railway takes its commitment to best conserve the ‘O2’, while maintaining it in active service.
Andrew emphasises the point. “We want to keep it in good condition. You’re only a custodian of something for a certain time before you pass it on to future generations. I’m looking to
maintain it so that it can be passed on to others to look after.”
That also means there is more time on show in the railway’s Train Story display building, so Calbourne is usually accessible to the public even when it’s not hauling trains.
ALL IN THe DeTAIL
And it’s an engine that is worth taking the time to explore. For this is an engine that proudly displays its engineering and social evolution that ranges from its outshopping at Nine Elms right up to its withdrawal 76 years later.
That means the engineering team at Havenstreet have the opportunity to celebrate its unique history – particularly the years that it has spent on the other side of the Solent. And it’s a period of history that Andrew, Len and Steve are obsessive about.
One of the instant visual triggers of an Isle of Wight engine is the extended bunker, originally fitted in the early Thirties at the instigation of the Southern Railway’s assistant to the island, A.B. MacLeod, to reduce wasted mileage and time returning to shed to take coal. It allowed the ‘O2s’ to run 200 miles without topping up.
“If you look at the ‘O2’ now, you’ll see the cracked paintwork where the MacLeod extension was added,” as Andrew points to the masonry-like L-shaped hairline fracture that runs along each side.
“They weren’t replaced as a complete bunker. In old pictures, you can clearly see where the extension was – and that’s something that we replicate. When we did the platework on the bunker, we could have just put a one-piece plate in there and not had that crack in there, but we thought it was an important part of railway history so we left that bunker extension to be shown.”
The attention to detail goes further still. When the back sheet of the cab was replaced, all of the original fittings were transferred over to the new one, including the bracket that was used to hold the single line token for the Ventnor West branch, even though it has been practically redundant for 67 years! Elsewhere in the cab, you may spot the ‘24’ brass numerals that were added as personal touches by Ryde crews and a Southern Railway carriage droplight handle that opens the footplate crew locker.
Even so, some of these original elements are naturally at risk of being compromised as part of the engine’s working life cycle.
A major overhaul in 2010 restored Calbourne’s steam making capabilities, thanks to the major renewal of its ex-Meldon Quarry ‘G6’ boiler. But it also meant one of the original identifiers of the locomotive’s history had to go – namely the 1925 patch on the firebox backplate that blanked off the now discarded vacuum brake pipe that ran through the boiler. This was considered to be a necessary compromise.
“We’re trying to keep it to the Isle of Wight period. Yes, we will change things, but we won’t change things for the sake of it,” Andrew stresses.
Otherwise, ‘24’ has survived largely intact as an historic artefact. But one dilemma facing Andrew at the upcoming overhaul, or soon after, is the possible need to replace the tanks because they have been used so much that they continually leak.
Replacement of these consumable components is accepted practice in preservation, but the ‘O2’s’ tanks are, nonetheless, worthy of careful consideration.
Like the famous dinosaur fossils scattered round the Isle of Wight, Calbourne’s tanks display the telltale imprints of their former lives: the infilled nameplate mounting holes that show each was taken second-hand from scrapped classmates. One is reckoned to be from No. W28 Ashey, the other from No. W36 Carisbrooke.
Then there are the welded patches that run along the bottom of the tanks. These were a neat, if unmistakable, solution to acidic water corrosion in the class’ final years.
Some will argue that it isn’t important. That the island engineers shouldn’t waste a moment in scrapping the old, and bolting on the new. But Andrew wants to keep Calbourne as original as possible, for as long as he can.
“When we come to looking at the tanks we’ll decide on the best way to repair them, while retaining as much original material… Those tanks have been leaking ever since I was here in 1983. A small leak, and irritations like small rusty paint marks, is something we can live with. There’s a possibility that it might go back out with the same rusty marks on the leaky tanks.”
As if to emphasise how much of a time capsule this engine is, it actually carries a real one, which was sandwiched between the cab floor and bogie at the 1990 overhaul. It includes a VHS video of that year’s overhaul, but Andrew now fears that whoever opens it in years to come “probably won’t have anything to play it on!”
That video may be unplayable by future generations, but with good care, Calbourne will be able to run for a long time to come.