Further batches of ‘Dean Goods’ were sent to France during 1940, which would bring the total number to 57. Shipped along with the Victorian 0-6-0s in 1940 were LMS Hawthorn Leslie diesels 7069-7073, 7075 and 7077/78 and eight ‘Jinty’ 0-6-0Ts, Nos. 7589, 7607/11/13/17/59/60/63. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Supply had settled on William Stanier’s ‘8F’ 2-8-0 as its standard war locomotive and had placed an order with the Locomotive Manufacturers Association for 240. Staff and engineers at North British, Beyer Peacock and Vulcan Foundry were hard at work on WD300-539, and the first was unveiled on May 24.

May 9 1940 was the day when everything changed. The codeword ‘Eisfrei’ was passed from German high command, meaning that

at dawn on the following morning troops would start a race to the North Sea. With their superior tactics and fuelled by copious quantities of amphetamine, it took just 14 days for German troops to take control of northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands. British plans were left in tatters, the Allied armies were stranded at the Channel ports. The British Admiralty had no choice but to launch ‘Operation Dynamo’, the codename for the operation to evacuate troops from Dunkirk.

RESCUE FORCE

The Admiralty arranged for a fleet of passenger ferries – 20 from Dover and 15 from Southampton – plus cargo ships, coasters, trawlers and 40 Dutch barges supported by Royal Navy warships to sail to France in a bid to rescue the stranded troops. The Southern, LNER and Great Western provided vessels for ‘Dynamo’ too. At 6.57am on May 26, the signal was given to start the rescue.

It took nine days to bring 338,000 Allied

troops back to England. But it was all very well landing men on British shores; they had to be moved off the quaysides quickly as more incoming ships were just in their wake. Injured men needed moving to hospitals.

It was the railway’s toughest logistical test of the war so far, but the REC’S planners, safe in their new headquarters in the old London Underground station at Down Street, responded superbly. The GWR, LNER and LMS swiftly dispatched 131 trains to the Southern to join the 55 that it was providing. The problem was that no one was exactly certain at which ports troops would arrive and trains had to be dispatched at short notice to meet incoming ships.

Control centres were set up at Redhill, Reading, Banbury and Salisbury. Both the Southern and Great Western handled much of the traffic for the South of England. For the North, the Dunkirk specials ran via the former Great Western/great Central Joint Line to Leicester.

The Fall of France left Britain defenceless. Most of the Army’s armour had been

An LNER publicity shot showing the difficulties of operating in the black-out. Categories of lighting were introduced by the Air Raid Precaution Committee. ‘Category B’ allowed the absolute minimum of light to be shown. The idea was that these lights could be shown during an air raid. After trials in January 1939, it was decided that larger levels of light could be shown at depots, yards and large stations for safety reasons. However, ‘Category C’ lighting had to be switched off in the event of an air raid warning. Light switches in these areas were wired to a central point so that, in essence, they could all be turned off with one master switch.