Midland Archive Volume 1 Steam on the Great Eastern Norfolk and Suffolk
THE folk at Transport Treasury in the Buckinghamshire market town of High Wycombe are a busy bunch, whose archive of railway photographs is becoming a fascinating source of information and delight through a series of publications, writes Geoff Courtney.
Their latest offerings are no exception, covering, as they do, Midlands steam from 1954-65 and the East Anglian counties of Norfolk and Suffolk through much of the 1950s.
Spice is added to the diet by the two photographers whose images are at the core of these two new books – RC ‘Dick’ Riley with the Midland offering, and Dr Ian Allen with the Great Eastern selection.
There is a select group of photographers to whom the steam enthusiasts of today owe a considerable debt of gratitude for their dedication to recording the post-World War Two railway scenes of the UK, and Messrs Riley and Allen are certainly among them.
As Peter Sikes, who is editor of the quarterly magazine of the LMSPatriot Project, says of Dick Riley in his introduction to the Midland compilation: “We should feel grateful that he took the trouble to travel the country and record what life was like when railways were the vital link in the transportation of goods and people throughout Britain.”
The cover sets the tone, with a shot of Royal Scot Nos. 46148
The Manchester Regiment, 46167
The Hertfordshire Regiment, and an unidentified third member of the class at Camden shed (1B) on August 21, 1955; all three looking resplendent and ready for West Coast Main Line action.
Such an image brings back memories of my trainspotting days in the second half of that decade, when I would regularly catch a South Hampstead electric train out of Euston in order to furiously scribble down numbers as we passed the shed. Those trips helped me to ‘cop’ all but five of the class, the absentees being from either Glasgow Polmadie (66A) or the Leeds depot of Holbeck (55A).
The Camden image contrasts sharply with another a few pages into the book of Class 2F No. 58148 on a mixed freight exiting Glenfield Tunnel in the suburbs of Leicester, which when opened in 1832 was, at just over a mile, the world’s longest steam railway tunnel.
The Midland Railway 0-6-0 was built in March 1876 and withdrawn by BR from the Leicestershire shed of Coalville (15D) in December 1963, having completed close to an astonishing 88 years in service. That photograph, admits Leicestershireborn Peter, was “a bit self-indulgent.”
There is page after page of quality images throughout the book, ranging from Class 9F 2-10-0 No. 92009 on a seemingly never-ending freight train passing Cricklewood Yard on March 19, 1955, and on the same date Beyer-Garratt 2-6-0+0-6-2 No. 47969 near Hendon, to Class 0F 0-4-0ST ‘Pug’ No. 56025 at St Rollox Works, Glasgow, on May