44781: THE LOST TREASURE
How we rediscovered parts from the lost ‘Fifteen Guinea’ ‘Black Five’
In a remarkable discovery, parts of long-lost ‘Black Five’ No. 44781 have been found at Bartlow – 50 years after the famous ‘Fifteen Guinea Special’ engine was cut up there following its starring role in the film The Virgin Soldiers. TOBY JENNINGS reveals how they were found.
Have you ever strolled along a disused railway trackbed and wondered if there might be any lost treasure to be found? Small items of railwayana such as track components, or maybe even an enamel totem?
Such thoughts entered your author’s mind while exploring the remains of the former Great Eastern Railway Saffron Walden branch at Bartlow.
To railway enthusiasts, and especially ‘Black Five’ fans, this pretty village on the Cambridgeshire/Essex border will be forever remembered as the last resting place of No. 44781 – the famous ‘Fifteen Guinea Special’ locomotive that should, by all rights, have been the 19th preserved example of the class.
As one of those ‘Black Five’ fans, and a regular volunteer on the restorations of not one but two survivors – ex-Barry Nos. 45163 and 45293 at the nearby Colne Valley Railway – I often detour through Bartlow on my weekly journeys to the line, just because of that historic link. After several years of said detours, I finally got around to stopping off at Bartlow to take a look at what was left of the old railway, and see exactly where that ‘Black Five’ was cut up all those years ago. I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams what it would lead to.
VANISHING ACT
September 1968. It’s one month after the end of BR steam, and enthusiasts across Britain are receiving their slides and prints back from the developers, showing ‘Black Fives’ Nos. 44871 and 44781 hammering over the ‘Settle & Carlisle’ line in full-bore sun with BR’s last steam-hauled standard gauge passenger train.
Many may have been aware that the leading engine,
No. 44871, was now safe in preservation in the hands of Dr Peter Beet at Carnforth, but few would have known what had happened to the other.
It was at Bartlow, being craned off the rusting rails of the disused Saffron Walden branch, and tipped at a crazy angle on the edge of the embankment. It was being bizarrely disfigured with fake side tanks (or possibly, I’ve always wondered, intended to represent armour plating?), a cowcatcher and headlight, and the number ‘531.03’ – the identity of a Malayan Railways ‘L’ class ‘Pacific’.
It was all in aid of the film The Virgin Soldiers, based on the book by Leslie Thomas and set in Malaya during the Communist uprising of the early 1950s, the plot including a sequence in which a troop train is derailed and attacked by guerrilla fighters.
Contrary to common belief, No. 44781 was not ‘blown up’ for the cameras, but posed to make it appear as if it had been blown off the track by an explosion, a local man with an explosives licence being employed to create the scene with the rails bent upwards.
Brought to the site with it were four LMS Stanier coaches, which were modified with end balconies and repainted in Malayan Railways livery, while the fifth vehicle was a goods brake van whose identity is unknown. Darren Kitson, who has extensively researched the filming, says that a Derby Lightweight DMU car, No. E79253, also reached Bartlow and had its driving cab altered to resemble a balcony. It did not appear in the film, and its fate remains a mystery.
HEAVY PRICE
Long-time readers of SR may remember the August 1989 issue, in which we told the full story (or so it was thought at the time) of what subsequently happened to No. 44781. In a nutshell, Gerald Pagano, owner of a furniture shop in nearby Saffron Walden, agreed to purchase the locomotive and coaches from Columbia Pictures – but an unhelpful BR, which wanted nothing more to do with steam, quoted him a price of £5,000 to re-rail the ‘Black Five’ and tow it to Steamtown, Carnforth.
Unable to raise this sum, and with no way of getting a low-loader to the engine, Gerald was forced to abandon the deal, and the whole train was broken up on site by A. King & Sons of Norwich.
Gerald went on to preserve two other engines – former Cambridge gas works Sentinel 0-4-0VBT Works No. 8024 ‘Gasbag’, now at the Ribble Steam Railway, and Norwegian ‘21c’ 2-6-0 No. 377 ‘King Haakon 7’, today at Bressingham. Darren, who knew him personally, says: “He told me that he purchased the Sentinel as a sort of booby prize following the 44781 debacle. Emotionally I don’t think he ever got over it.”
One can hardly blame him, then, for ‘liberating’ a few pieces of the ‘Black Five’ before it disappeared. Prior to the filming, he already possessed the chimney, the engine carrying a mock-up replacement for the production, although Darren says: “He was always somewhat coy about how he acquired the chimney – he probably slipped the production people a few bob. I vaguely recall that it ended up on another loco, but further details elude me.”
Gerald also recovered No. 44781’s Caledonian hooter and, of all things, its firebox fusible plugs; mounted in a display case, these were last heard of when they were sold at auction in 2010. However, some much bigger parts also survive – for the rods and motion were recovered, and did make it to Carnforth.
“They were in the shed for years,” recalls Chris Beet, now of West Coast Railways. “I used to try and pick them up as a kid… I never managed it!”
Since then, he says, these components have been “dispersed” to other engines, and the coupling rods are believed to have ended up on No. 45491, now at Loughborough. Quite by chance, while enquiring of other groups as to their whereabouts, I discovered that the owners of ex-Turkish ‘8F’ No. 8274 also have a couple of small pieces from No. 44781. “We’ve got one of the cowlings from the top feed,” says Mike Hoskin of the Churchill 8F Locomotive Company.
But the real mystery concerns some cab fittings. In the messroom at the CVR one day, Francis Renouf, the engineer leading No. 45293’s restoration, casually mentioned that many years ago, somebody (presumably Gerald) had offered these to our group, the British Enginemen Steam Preservation Society – but the offer had not been taken up.
Immediately, I took it upon myself to find out if those parts still existed, whether we still needed them for No. 45293 or not. Either
they could make a nice local history display at Castle Hedingham, or perhaps they could be put to good use on one of the ‘Fives’.
Sadly, Gerald had passed away in 1999, but after a good deal of detective work, I tracked down his eldest daughter Margareta, who recalled: “I spent my childhood on steam engines all over Europe, and I still adore it.” Unfortunately, she added: “There weren’t any railway parts in the garage when we cleared it out – I certainly don’t remember a chimney.”
With no other promising lines of enquiry, it seemed that the cab fittings had been lost – but little did I know that there were even more pieces of No. 44781 waiting to be found.
DEATH SCENE
Having spent most of 2018 chasing after ‘Black Fives’, ‘8Fs’,
Oliver Cromwell and the odd ‘73 Standard’, I decided to continue the 50th anniversary commemorations by taking a peek at the place where No. 44781 met its demise.
I must stress at this point that the trackbed, including the part where The Virgin Soldiers was filmed, is private land belonging to Bartlow Estates. Tim Breitmeyer, the estates manager, kindly granted me permission to explore… and has continued to be patient and helpful throughout the mad escapades that have resulted.
I began at the demolished bridge at the western end of the station, from where a path led along the overgrown embankment to the first landmark – the remains of the signal box. Already a gutted shell in photographs from 1968, it now stands silently amid a green canopy of trees and the sound of birdsong, with BR cream paintwork still clearly visible, but never to send ‘Train Entering Section’ again.
A couple of chains or so further on, the path sloped upward onto the ramp of the simple timber platform once served by ‘G5’ 0-4-4Ts and ‘N7’ 0-6-2Ts on the push-pull shuttles to Saffron Walden and Audley End.
About halfway along, however, where passengers once exited for the station building (now a private house appropriately named ‘Booking Hall’) and the main Stour Valley platforms, the undergrowth became as impenetrable as the Malayan jungle that was once ‘recreated’ nearby. Somewhere in there was the spot where the ‘1T57’ engine had once stood.
Hiking round via the road, I made my way over the field and followed the line of trees that mark the former route of the railway.
This end of the branch platform remained stubbornly buried in the undergrowth, but with the aid of the Oakwood Press book on the Saffron Walden branch, and the map from Darren Kitson’s web page, I lined myself up with the station building until I was certain I was as close to the right place as the jungle would allow.
Standing on the very edge of the embankment where
‘No. 531.03’ had precariously balanced 50 years before, the thought occurred. Might there be any treasure to be found?
BOILER ALERT
I didn’t seriously expect to discover anything, but I climbed gingerly down the steep slope and alongside the small stream until I was surely beneath the point where the ‘Black Five’ had been.
And there it was. Lying on the river bed, something distinctly man-made… a tube, seemingly of the right diameter and about ten or eleven feet long. Consulting several ‘Black Five’ books later, I found barrel lengths of around 13 feet quoted, varying between the many different batches – but Francis assured me that ten feet or so “is the length you’d cut them to get them out of the boiler.”
Looking at the pictures of No. 44781 in 1968, cliff-hanging on the edge of oblivion in both senses, one can easily see how a tube might have been lost or discarded. A scrapman is on top of the boiler with the oxy-acetylene torch. One tube escapes his clutches and goes down the embankment.
Would you go to the trouble of retrieving it? Not with several tons of copper firebox as the big prize.
Several yards closer to the junction was another rusty piece of metal. Nothing much to look at, just a thin strip of steel twisted and rolled back on itself like tinfoil – but with a 90º corner visible. Given what I’d just seen, could this be another remnant of our star locomotive – part of the cab window beading, maybe?
Later that afternoon at the CVR, 45163 Ltd chairman Jeremy Dunn and I straightened it out. A square shape emerged, much too big for a ‘Black Five’ window.
Yet, despite having been immersed in the stream for five decades, BR maroon paint was still clearly visible, as was yellow and black lining in one corner.
It was a window frame from one of the LMS coaches. Measurement and more perusing of books showed that its dimensions exactly matched a Period III Stanier vehicle, and the experts in these matters – the LMS Carriage Association – confirmed that such frames were indeed riveted around the windows in BR days when they started to suffer from corrosion, much like the aluminium frames found on BR Mk 1 stock.
But what of the maroon paint? Weren’t the Bartlow carriages repainted in Malayan Railways livery? Darren, however, pointed out that the modifications to resemble the Far East stock (as revealed by close study of the film stills) entailed removing the original windows altogether and substituting wooden-framed replacements. Either this frame had been discarded as part of this process, or had been on a coach that had been left intact on the side away from the cameras.
Says Darren: “All the coaches were painted on one side, but
I can only confirm that at least two were painted on both sides. The production people would only have modified the stock where necessary to keep within budget, and skilled cameramen would have provided any necessary illusions.”
This, we concluded instantly, was a small but quirky piece of local history that should go on display in the CVR’s new lotteryfunded museum, then still under construction.
But it wasn’t the only piece. We had to go back and retrieve that tube, find out if it really did come from a ‘Black Five’… and scour the rest of the site.
“So what are you actually going to do with this tube?” asked Francis in the pub one evening. I can’t remember what my reply was – probably a jest along the lines of “stick it in 45163’s boiler” – but little did we know that there was yet more to be found.
SALVAGE OPERATION
To transport the tube, I enlisted the help of James Francis, a CVR and Mid-Norfolk Railway driver with a suitable trailer. Friday September 20 found us heading north from Castle Hedingham in his classic 1975 Land Rover, full of straps to hold the tube in place… both of which would prove fortuitous later.
Finding the tube again with no trouble, we searched along the river bed for anything else of interest. A signal wire pulley… one or two lumps of coal…
Then James spotted it. About an inch or two of angled metal, sticking up diagonally… with a rivet clearly visible.
“Part of the running plate?” we wondered. “That’s got rivets on top.”
About a foot to one side, another, even smaller bit of metal stuck up at about the same angle. The rusty steel went down further.
Just to the side of the two pieces of metal, there was a large round object… with red paint on it. Then we realised that it was on top of a huge, curved sheet of steel.
“A bit of the tender side?” was my first reaction, thinking of the curving section at the top of a Stanier tender. Perhaps the angled bits were the remains of the baffles?
We lifted up the red object. A long narrow cylinder, with a hole in the top and a handle on the side. My first thought was that it might be some kind of pyrotechnics canister from the film’s special effects. “Maybe it’s got detonators in,” James joked. Very carefully, we put it to one side.
A third piece of steel stuck up, in line with the other two. All three linked by the enormous sheet of metal. On the first piece, James pointed out a small catch. We were both familiar enough with No. 45293’s kit of parts to realise what it was. The catch for the fireman’s side front window.
I stared in disbelief at the three parallel pieces of metal. The remains of the side windows. Flat-section beading around the outer edge. A post-war ‘Black Five’. At the rear end, an unmistakable, Horwich-styled curve.
It was No. 44781’s discarded, upturned, cab roof.
CHOPPED UP
Though I can’t remember where, I clearly recall reading a claim that King’s men chopped No. 44781 into large sections and dragged them across the adjacent field to the road using a tractor.
Darren, however, asserts: “It is just exaggerated use of words. The remains of the carriages and then the locomotive were taken along the short section of trackbed to Brocklebank’s Crossing (which was, if memory serves, [Occupation] Crossing No. 24) and from there out onto the Ashdon Road via the farm access.
“The parts were more likely removed on a trailer hauled by a tractor. Can you really see large, heavy chunks of cast iron and steel being literally dragged across a field of soft earth?”
Nonetheless, one piece of the engine was about to be moved in such a fashion. We manhandled the tube up the embankment, but the roof required “motive power” as James drily put it.
We attached a strap to one of the window pillars, connected the other end to the Land Rover, and pulled the mortal remnant of No. 44781 free of its 50-year grave – still in a remarkably good
WE SHOULD HANG THAT FROM THE CEILING IN THE MUSEUM
PAUL LEMON, CHAIRMAN, COLNE VALLEY RAILWAY
state for something that had been in a river for so long. I touched the remains of the BR black paintwork that was still discernible, still scarcely able to believe that I was handling some of the metal that thousands had witnessed hauling ‘1T57’ over Ais Gill.
Now we had to get it up the embankment – and then, at the top, through the trees. Foot by foot, we hauled it up the slope with the ‘Landie’ until it was only a couple of feet or so from the summit. Frustratingly, at just the point where we had a wide enough gap between trees, there was also an inconvenient root running right across its path. Roof kept catching on root until, finally, we got the angle just right and pulled with the Land Rover one last time. The historic chunk of ‘Black Five’ leapt upwards, between the trees, and back onto the Saffron Walden trackbed whence it had come more than fifty years before.
REVERED ARTEFACT
Tim Breitmeyer laughed out loud when he saw what we’d got. He probably thought we were completely nuts, and not without justification. But the reaction when we got it back to the railway was even better.
That same afternoon, the CVR’s new museum, the ‘Brewster Interpretation Centre’, was being officially opened by the Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Essex. Paul Lemon, the CVR’s chairman, identified the red canister we’d found as a period fire extinguisher (and further study of the film stills, inside the coaches, did indeed show a similar example). But then he took one look at the cab roof and said: “We should hang that from the ceiling in the museum.”
Whether this will come to pass remains to be seen
– but one thing is certain. This Holy Grail of ‘Black
Five’ parts, from a celebrated engine that should have been preserved, will be preserved – and, one way or another, it is hoped to place the artefacts on proper display at the CVR, as a reminder of a significant, yet often overlooked, piece of local railway history.
“We’ll have to call you ‘Howard Carter’ now,” joked Malcolm Bell, another of the volunteers on No. 45163, as we admired our engine masquerading as its famous classmate, complete with ‘1T57’ board, and with our incredible finds displayed in front of it.
Almost like the water boy who accidentally stumbled on the entrance to King Tutankhamun’s tomb,
James Francis has, quite by chance, rediscovered a tangible relic of a locomotive that is sacred to railway enthusiasts.