From Folkestone to Padstow the final decade of Southern steam

John Beckett toured the Southern Region of BR and captured its finest steam in action in its final decade. He has compiled a new album in Steam Reminiscences – Southern, the latest offering from Silver Link Silk Editions.

John Beckett toured the Southern Region of British Railways from its easternmost point to its western extremity and captured a geographical cross-section of its finest steam in action in its final decade. He has raided his extensive archive to compile a new album of many previously-unpublished views in Steam Reminiscences – Southern, the latest offering from Silver Link Silk Editions.

Iwas born and bred by the Brighton main line in Sussex, and in 1945 I started to attend grammar school in Horsham. My time there involved a daily return journey by (electric) train, but also brought into sight the locomotive sheds at Three Bridges and Horsham and three steam-worked branches: Three Bridges to Tunbridge Wells, and Horsham to Brighton and Guildford. Not unnaturally, for a boy just entering his teenage years, they produced a lifelong interest in railways.

However, not until I was in National Service could I afford to buy and use a camera, and then postings to Cambridge and Bodmin allowed me to practise its use, and three years at Cambridge thereafter to achieve some success (I did study Russian and Classics at the same time). I entered Cambridge just in time; by graduation in 1958 the local railway scene was being modernised at a great rate.

In 1958, the first of my pictures to be published appeared in The Railway Magazine, after which I regularly contributed photographs to the railway press and various authors.

After Cambridge, there followed a year in Surrey as a salesman of ethical drugs, with a company car, then some years associated with computers. During this time I used a succession of second-hand 120 film cameras for black and white work. Not until 1961 did I buy a new camera, and that was used only for colour films.

My new album contains a selection of shots taken on the Southern Region between 1956 and 1968. Some have been selected because they show a point of interest, others because I hope they will be ‘pleasing to the eye of the beholder’. They are but a small part of the black and white negatives I have from that period. I have included the former Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway and the nascent Bluebell Railway for the sake of completeness.

The 128pp hardback (ISBN 978 1 85794 547 8) starts with the lines into Kent, then continues in more or less geographical succession through to Cornwall. Each area is arranged more or less in the Down direction for London (or Bath) to the coast.

Bulleid Battle of Britain Pacific No. 34085 501 Squadron in full cry across the Kentish Weald near Chart signalbox, two miles to the west of Ashford with the Up ‘Golden Arrow’ on May 16, 1959.

Right: At the westernmost outpost of the Southern Railway, sole-surviving LSWR T9 ‘Greyhound’ 4-4-0 No. 30120 is silhouetted against the Camel estuary as it is turned at Padstow on June 13, 1961. As highlighted in News, page 21, this locomotive, now part of the National Collection, is currently based at another prime seaside destination, the Swanage Railway.

A line of LSWR O2 0-4-4Ts out of steam: Nos. W14 Fishbourne, W30 Shorwell, W21 Sandown, W29 Alverstone and W26 Whitwell at Ryde St John’s Road shed on September 16, 1961.

Right: During the Lewes floods emergency service, LBSCR K 2-6-0 No. 32341 approaches Glynde with an Eastbourne-Brighton train on November 5, 1960. The floods had by then been draining for 48 hours.

SER R1 0-6-0Ts Nos. 31340, 31107 and 31174 cross Folkestone harbour and head into the climb to Folkestone Junction on October 18, 1958. At the junction, the train (the Up Calais boat train) will be reversed and then leave for London.

LMS Fowler 2P 4-4-0 No. 40634, which has been the subject of a Hornby model in recent times, pilots West County light Pacific No. 34043 Combe Martin through the curves near Writhlington, a mile east of Radstock, with what is believed to have been the 8.40am Bournemouth-Bradford train over the Somerset & Dorset line on August 5, 1961. The slagheap in the background was a memento of the North Somerset coalfield, which had provided much traffic for the railway.

A WR Warship diesel-hydraulic hauls a train from Cornwall over Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash, while on the Southern main line below, LSWR T9 4-4-0 No. 30717 heads the Plymouth portion of the Up ‘Atlantic Coast Express’ through the foreground on July 1, 1960.

The 1.02pm London Bridge-Brighton afternoon van train, with empty coaching stock for Preston Park and Lancing Works, crosses the Ouse Valley viaduct behind BR Standard 4MT 2-6-4T No. 80147 on September 24, 1958.