1970 would herald the arrival of what is now one of Britain’s household preservation names

– the Severn Valley Railway, which officially opened to the public on May 23 1970.

Still very much in ex-BR condition – having been preserved directly upon withdrawal from Lostock Hall in 1968 – sole surviving Ivatt ‘4MT’ 2-6-0 No. 43106 departs Bridgnorth with a packed train comprising largely ex-LMS stock past crowds of onlookers on an unrecorded date in June 1970, just weeks after the preserved railway opened. Note the people on the lineside, displaying the more relaxed attitude towards health and safety of the day.

The ‘Flying Pig’ was one of four ex-BR steam locomotives used for the line’s first day of services, along with Collett ‘2251’ 0-6-0 No. 3205 (now resident at the South Devon Railway), Ivatt ‘2MT’ 2-6-0 No. 46443 and ‘8F’ No. 48773. From opening until 1973, SVR services south from Bridgnorth initially only ran as far as Hampton Loade, but extended to Highley, Arley and Bewdley from 1974 onwards, and ultimately to Kidderminster in 1984.

With few places to house their charges, let alone run them, owners had to get creative. There must be few sights more incongruous than that of an ‘A4’ picking its way along 1½ miles of track through a field on what was once the freight-only East Fife Central Railway. The Lochty Private Railway was created in 1967 by

Union of South Africa owner John Cameron as a home for No. 60009. He built a 75ft-long shed to house ‘Number Nine’ and operated the ‘Pacific’ with a single coach in tow every Sunday afternoon – a far cry from its exploits on the famous three-hour Glasgow-Aberdeen expresses in the mid-1960s.

The ‘A4’ is pictured amid somewhat low key surroundings but, fortunately, it did not suffer this indignity for very long, for it left Lochty in 1973 ahead of its first main line outing since 1967, and never returned. Motive power on the LPR was instead provided by less glamorous but more appropriate industrials, including an ex-Wemyss Private Railway ‘Austerity’ 0-6-0ST. Lochty closed for good in 1992.