Stop & Examine
Richard Hodder, from Swindon, contacted us with some personal memories of Longmoor Military Railway, which was featured in
RAIL 869. Richard has a lifelong interest in the Longmoor Military Railway, and is an active researcher into everything to do with it and the surrounding area and railways. And he has a very good reason for doing so.
“My father was Regimental Sergeant Major at Longmoor in the early 1950s. Because of that I lived there when young, and visited many times after leaving up until closure (and a few times since).
“I therefore knew the railway well. Having its principal station literally just across the road from the house, seeing the trains every day, and as an Army family travelling on the LMR from time to time, I’m sure it gave me my lifelong interest in railways of all sorts.”
Another RAIL reader with a Longmoor connection is National Rail Awards judge Clive Fletcher-Wood. He recalls that for a fortnight each summer a ‘Certificate T’ course was run for 16 and 17-year-old cadets in the Combined Cadet Force and Army Cadet Force.
“The course started with ‘classroom’ work, which included work such as train planning on graph paper, as well as studying signal boxes and the like. Then, for what I think was the last three days, the cadets were allowed to run the railway, under a degree of supervision.
“I was on the footplate of a tank engine (I think a saddle tank) on the Hollywater Loop when we persuaded the corporal driving it to try opening the regulator as fully as possible. He did, but couldn’t shut it, so had to drop the fire to stop the train. As this part of the line was used primarily to de-rail and re-rail trains, little seemed to surprise the railway’s management.”
Clive also recalls that at that stage the Army had a vehicle called an Austin Champ, which was meant to be a competitor to the Land Rover, but which had a heavy Rolls-Royce engine and a very high centre of gravity, so it was prone to turning over on rough ground.
“Of course, this didn’t apply on a railway, and at least one Champ was mounted on railway wheels. A peculiarity of the Champ was that it had five gears, but rather like a steam locomotive being fitted with a reverser, the Champ had a second gear-box to select forward or reverse. It could therefore go as fast backwards as forwards.
“That was of little use on a road, and even less use of rough terrain, but it meant that the rail-mounted Champ could go 60mph backwards, with those sitting in it facing forwards. This wasn’t an act of war, but was certainly good sport.”