PART OF THE FURNITURE… LITERALLY

Further to the revelation that part of Flying Scotsman forms a table in a Bedfordshire pub (SR498) two readers have contacted us with the locomotive bits that are part of their furniture.

David Cross says: “My late father and well-known photographer Derek Cross was, according to my mother, not allowed much railwayana in our house, on the basis that there were too many pictures already!

“So, to get around this domestic ban, he had the worksplate from SDJR ‘7F’ No. 53807 – which

I think he bought in 1963/64 – made into a tray. Always useful in any home – we still have it!”

Built by Robert Stephenson & Co. in 1925, No. 53807 was the last of the eleven ‘7Fs’ in service, being withdrawn from Bath in the week ending September 5 1964.

Bob Hanson of Halifax has a gauge glass protector from another ‘7F’ – a Fowler ‘Austin Seven’ 0-8-0 – which has formed the base for a table lamp since 1976.

He explains: “It came from a scrap line of three locomotives at Horwich Works in 1960 when I was 11 years old. For many years, I seemed to remember that the locomotives were L&Y ‘A’ class’ but as I got older (and wiser in railway knowledge) I began to wonder why it was stamped LMS and not L&Y.

“Only in 2011 did I discover, from a photo in Ian Allan’s On Lancashire & Yorkshire Lines, that it must have been from a Fowler ‘7F’ 0-8-0. The photo was of 49592 on Bolton shed en route for scrapping, almost definitely at

Horwich. I dug out my first Ian Allan ‘Abc’ of ex-LMS locomotives and saw that I’d put a letter C after 49509, 49592 and 49662, which can only have been the three scrappers I’d ‘cabbed’.

“The protector must have fallen into my duffel bag from one of the three without my noticing!”

● Mailbag will return next issue.