‘Night Owl’ smokebox will bring back nocturnal locomotive memories

MEMORIES of a small class of GWR locomotives that fascinated so many trainspotters in the 1950s will be recalled in a Transport Auctions of London sale on February 26.

They will be invoked by the smokebox numberplate from

No. 4701, one of just nine 2-8-0s that were nicknamed ‘Night Owls’ due to their regular haulage of overnight fast freight trains to the West Country and other destinations.

Occasionally, however, these imposing engines were called up for passenger duties on busy summer Saturdays. This is illustrated by a log I made of trains passing through Reading (General) on August

30, 1958, when I recorded

No. 4708 on the Down ‘Royal Duchy’ and 3½ hours later

No. 4704 on a Weston-superMare express. No. 4701 was built at Swindon in January 1922 and withdrawn from Old Oak Common (81A) in September 1963.

An Old Oak Common shedplate will be among four of the 81 series in the auction, the others being 81B, 81C and 81D. There is also a Great Western and Metropolitan railways cast iron sign warning of the danger of stepping on conductor rails, and a pair of GWR parcels and country lorry service enamels.

In addition, BR(S) and London Underground enamel signs will be going under the hammer, as will a selection of rail and road photographs from the archive assembled over many decades by historian and author David Harvey, who passed away last year.

The auction will be held live online, with telephone and commission bids, and starts at 10am.