SteamIndex

This page is an attempt to reconcile "reality" with "what is remembered". KPJ is surrounded by reminders of railways which ceased to "exist" (in their intended form) about half-a-century ago. Examples include the line which ran from Mundesley to Overstrand, the branch line, via Walsingham, to Wells, and the North Norfolk Railway which lives in a sort of Limbo, which in the case of "real railways" corresponds to the Aldwych branch when (or should have been if) it was running. Perhaps the most interesting, certainly the most useful of these former railways are the long stretches of M&GNR converted into the excellent A149 road between North Walsham and Potter Heigham (interupted by Chestertonian rolling Norfolk drunkard's stretches though Dilham). The railway into roads stretches are relatively free from junctions, and where they do occur they betray their origins as level crossings from the acuteness of the angles of exit. The approach into North Walsham off the Broads is especially fine as the road climbs to parallel the extant line from Norwich to Sheringham. In former times had the 4-4-0s of the Great Eastern raced those inferior machines on the M&GNR.

Our memories are sometimes vague: my own include the Gresley P2 Cock o' the North when painted black at Dundee Tay Bridge station before its deconstruction, and at least one other P2 (could it really have still been in green in 1941?) and two sitings of Stanier streamlined Pacifics: Coronation in blue (Slateford yards sometime between 1942 and 1945) and Queen Mary in red passing light engine through Slateford Station towards end of same period. Another key memory was travelling over the Balerno branch in a modern 4-wheeled coach just prior to the closure of the line. The tunnel at Colinton appeared to be very sharply curved: it is the memory was correct - we walked through it some years ago when I inspected other stored memories including the aqueduct at Slateford - did we boys really wander at will over that death trap - none of us could swim! If the railway memory, once travelled is correct, then was Queen Mary still red in the latter part of WW2, or was it some other name? Certainly, the Stanier streamlined Pacifics were well on the way to the magnifiscence of the A4s which are KPJ's paradigm for locomotive perfection (see index page).

But we conform to what we regard as modern: thus the 1938 Tube stock always seemed to be the essence of modernity, as did the escalator halls with their upward pointing light columns. The streamlined Edinburgh trams on the Number 9 route to Colinton were prefered to the older cars on the Number 4 route to Slateford. The most impressive had the City's Arms surrounded by a lozenge, Rexine ceilings, and plastic-covered grab rails. Why did I never manage to travel on a Feltham in London?

The smells and sounds of steam locomotives resonate through Sheringham and this aspect of "preserved" railways is truly authentic. There have been extensive exchanges of letters on the subjects of livery, and in particular on Midland and LMS "red". There have never been similar exchanges on GNR or NER green, but the colours employed by the NBR and by Jones on the HR used to be the subject of lengthy verbal battles. I only saw two LMS red locomotives: the Pacific mentioned earlier (which had a dark, rich hue) and the sad remains of the livery on Jubilee Howard of Effingham (the tender, cab and below the running plate). On the first siting the boiler may also have retained some red: these observations were made on the 4.47 p.m. Manchester Exchange to Hull (at the former, and possibly also at Greenfield where the train was left).

My first view of a Southern Pacific in glorious malachite and gold was at school in Blackheath. My friend Carl ordered me to see an extraordinary engine with gold stripes, just like the school uniform. I thought that he was fooling, but there it was wearing the school's colours and looking wonderful in the carriage sidings below the school.

This last is much less virtual than the visions of LMS red, which have become distorted by the brief period of LMR red Pacifics, when the colour never seemed to be the same as earlier: the LMR colour was more vivid, less maroon. I am aware of the serious contributions by Jenkinson and Essery, and suspect that the livery on the locomotives viewed after years of neglect (both were in or immediately after WW2) had darkened whereas the those wearing the later manifestation were treated more kindly. In the article on Hamilton Ellis, the whole topic of "railways remembered" is brought into question.

Locomotive numbers are seldom of interest (this is the problem with Steam World which is obsessed with the subject), although a few were sufficiently quirky to justify consideration. Thus LMS No. 1 was interesting for its lack of gravitas for such an elevated station. The Thompson renumbering led to a far more worthy No. 1. British Railways inherited two No. 10000 and the treatment of the "real" candidate typified the skewness of the new management in terms of locomotive policy. The Western Region managed to thwart the new system by inserting an inherited scruffy 0-4-0ST and installing it at the front of the new sequence. Even great men were not immune: Churchward's 111 and Gresley's 10000 cannot have been numbered by chance. 21C1 typified Bulleid as being "pro-European" a quality ever distrusted by the English, but less so by most Scots.

Note the essay on Theroux asks many questions on the reality of the situations portrayed by this particular author. One may even question the authenticity of writers like Nock, where the timings quoted are realatively accurate given the difficulties of keeping records of any sort, let alone in a railway carriage populated with normal human beings, but much of what surrounds these observations may be no more "true" than Tuplin's far more colourful texts. A long time ago I wrote two papers on classification (J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sc) which probably have some bearing on how we pigeon hole a world which by its nature is holistic. Steam locomotives were highly holistic which makes a mockery of recording No. 100 at such and such a such a place at some specific time, even if a tired fitter had fitted the correct number plate to the bits and pieces.

Sometimes particular issues of a journal produce a multitude of specific responses. For instance, Backtrack Number 5 (2003) includes a wonderful photograph of Ayot signal box taken on 16 September 1961 (the day of our return from honeymoon in Cornwall to start married life in Wakefield, unaware that the bulk of this life would be spent within walking distance of the remains of this location. Furthermore, other features produced further responses: a boyhood home in Saddleworth may be visible in one of Magilton's photographs (but taken after the start of married life in another corner of Yorkshire). In 1956 we made an autumnal family outing to Arrochar on the push & pull, travelling first (in itself a rare feature on push & pull trains) and back behind two class 5s from Ardlui. Finally, the shots of the B17s in the vicinity of Yarmouth raise many issues: I get my car serviced near what must have been South Town station where there is still a "railway tavern" and a broad highway to expedite exit from the town, but how little recognizable remains in a flat landscape, apart from the the occasional bridge which rises over the forgotten tracks. Oh by the way the Editor indulges in his own memories of long forgotten lines. (this paragraph 2003-04-29).

Sometimes, accounts may be of something which one knew, but which the author had never seen (the Oakwood history of the Balerno branch falls into this category: see communication from the Author received in late 2003)), or had seen from a different angle, and mainly later than you had. Jeffrey Wells account Miles Platting to Diggle (via Ashton) [one could have gone via Oldham] is an example of this KPJ commuted between Greenfield and Manchester Exchange during term time between late 1948 and 1954, but there was more variety in the motive power, the Delph Donkey was still working, and the signal box at Droylesden was still an L&Y structure. Furthermore, Wells observed from Clayton Bridge: on the school-bound journey we stopped there; we raced through on the return unless the 4.47 was hauled by the feeble Giggleswick.

From the Berwyns to the Bering Strait: the "what if?" metaphysics of railway history. R.A.S. Hennessey. Backtrack, 16, 678-83.

Lewin, H.G.
Early British railways: a short history of their origin and development,
1801-44. 1925.
The railway mania and its aftermath, 1835-1842. 1936.
"Great Southern" Railway. D.T. Timins. Rly Mag., 3, 579-90.
Provides a stimulating view by a railwayac on the joint management of the SER/LCDR and what might be achieved with new junctions, one of which is about to be brought into service.

Broader than Broad is a reprint in book form of four articles Barnes wrote on the subject in "Locomotives International" (writer had the magazine articles, having found one by chance, and ordered the back issues), and is definately worth reading, though the coverage is necessarily limited - most of the illustrations are Barnes' Paintings (which are good) with only a couple of scale drawings.

There was a brief article on it in one of the magazines, Backtrack he thought, which concluded that while the weight diagram was genuine, it was probably the combined result of boredom and showing that the standard black five (all of about 3 tons heavier and with much higher route availability) was the best bet for further wartime construction of mixed traffic/passenger machinery.

Overstrand

In September 2003 we "dog-sat" for inlaws in Mundesley which brought us into daily contact with the road from Cromer. Just south of Sidestrand there is a stretch of embankment of the former railway which is approached by the road in such a way that just before the road heads towards the sea one perceives the embankment in the same way that such one would perceive an operating railway. At this point the former railway makes it way straight for Trimingham whilst the road twists this way and that. Passengers from the train must have had wonderful views out to sea to the east and across North Norfolk to the west. Presumably the area between the railway and the road was viewed as a potential site for mansion building. The civil engineering works which remain were constructed of the best quality blue brick and are in marked contrast to the poorer quality brick used for the "mainline" to Cromer. It should be noted that two years experience of the Norwich to Cromer line have given the writer the sense of a mainline rather than a branch line: its alignment shares much in common with the ECML, and it is possible to half shut one's eyes within the class 150 and one is transported across into a GNER express racing across the flatlands of Eastern Britain.

Balerno

He [i.e. KPJ] touches on an interesting aspect of the book, inasmuch as I tried tell the story of the railway without having first-hand memories of its operating days apart from the last special trains in the 1960s. I acknowledged this fact in the book, but I have sometimes wondered what those who knew the line felt about my impudence in attempting its history without the aid of such memories. I would be interested in Mr Jones' further recollections of the line.

Best wishes

Don Shaw

KPJ: One aspect I failed to note above was the Hornby O gauge nature of the trains: the brightly painted four-wheelers were exactly like those provided with the better quality O gauge train sets. The locomotives were provided with a trailing bogie but were otherwise Hornby-like. I have always wondered what the ride was like, but as I was used to four-wheel trams this would have been familiar. Both in Colinton village (from near the tram terminus) and near Currie the railway looked as if it was "far below", but that aspect can still be explored. Viewed from the West Runton heaths the line between Sheringham and West Runton looks "far below" but lacks the enclosed aspect peculiar to the Balerno branch (and some other lines which traverse or traversed valley floors, such as the Looe branch and the descent of the former Perranporth branch down Perrancombe). In terms of capturing what a branch line "was like", the journey from Sheringham to Norwich is far more realistic than any preserved railway, possibly because of the friendliness of the staff, and the high level of customer satifaction.

Updated 2003-12-29