STEAM’S COLDEST YEAR: PART 3

Preserved steam in 1970

Despite the all-but-total eradication of main line steam two years previously, there was still plenty of working steam to be found in Britain in 1970, whether it was the last remaining dregs of main line operations under the auspices of London Transport and its ilk, or in the varied world of industry (see SR505 and 506).

The preservation scene was very different to that of today. The steam centre was all the rage, with several being established across the country where they rapidly became havens for early Barry departures and – to an even greater extent – those engines purchased directly from BR which had nowhere else to go.

Indeed, while the notion of enthusiasts taking over and restoring a narrow gauge line was by then nothing new – the preserved Talyllyn Railway was nearly 20 years old in 1970 – doing the same on a standard gauge line was still a somewhat alien concept. However, the ensuing decade would bring about great change and, by the end of the 1970s, many of today’s household names had started running services. By contrast, the dominance of the steam centre fell away as locomotives and rolling stock, attracted by the prospect of a longer run and better facilities, emigrated from the likes of Ashchurch, Dinting and Longmoor to these newly established railways. As such, some of the places featured herein are now but a memory, their time as preservation’s centres of excellence quickly overshadowed by the burgeoning desire to restore Britain’s moribund railway lines.

Here then is a snapshot of Britain’s preservation scene in 1970 – steam’s supposedly coldest year – focusing not on the places which by then were firmly entrenched, but on those which have either been consigned to the history books or were just starting out on the journey towards becoming the preservation behemoths they are today.

But while nostalgia and rose-tinted spectacles are all well and good, 50 years on and a similar limited scope of operation is now very much a possibility as our industry tentatively begins to emerge from the current coronavirus crisis. Will it be 1970 all over again? Not quite, but perhaps not far off.

GORDON EDGAR One of the newest arrivals on the preservation scene in 1970 was the London Railway Preservation Society’s steam centre at Quainton Road – opened the previous year and based in the former Great Central/Metropolitan Railway station, which had closed in 1966. Former LSWR ‘0298’ 2-4-0WT No. 30585 stands with ex-Great Northern Railway East Coast Joint Stock six-wheel Brake Third No. 1470 in the former Brill branch platform on August 29 1970. Purchased by the LRPS in December 1963, the Beattie well tank was initially kept at the Hockerill Cold Store in Bishop’s Stortford from March 1964, before moving to Quainton Road in May 1969, returning to steam there in March 1970. The paintwork is likely to be ex-BR, with the characteristic ‘lion and wheel’ emblem painted over to avoid falling foul of BR’s original policy of forbidding preservation groups to use their liveries and crests on preserved engines. It was joined in September 1970 by the LRPS’ flagship, Metropolitan Railway ‘E’ 0-4-4T No. 1, which, following its purchase from London Transport in 1963, had been stored in Luton and Aylesbury prior to arriving at Quainton.