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BRITAIN’S LEADING HISTORICAL RAILWAY JOURNAL
Vol. 30
•
No. 12
DECEMBER 2016
£4.75
IN THIS ISSUE
BEATTOCK AND ITS FAMOUS INCLINE
THE WINDERMERE BRANCH
HIGH SPEED TRAINS IN COLOUR
A WEDNESBURY WINTER’S NIGHT
PENDRAGON
PUBLISHING
FATAL ACCIDENTS ON THE STOCKTON & DARLINGTON RAILWAY
READING SHED AND ITS DUTIES
RECORDING THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN’S RAILWAYS
CHRISTMAS OFFERS FROM PENDRAGON
ONE MAN AND HIS CAMERA
THE RAILWAY PHOTOGRAPHY
OF TREVOR OWEN
COMPILED BY
PAUL CHANCELLOR
Trevor Owen is undoubtedly one of the greatest names
in railway colour photography. Avid readers of the railway
press will be very familiar with his name whilst many others
would be able to spot one of his pictures without noticing
the photographer credit. First and foremost the quality of
the image was generally second to none but other factors
would betray the touch of his genius, such as the creative
use of light, often low winter sunshine. Other ‘trademarks’
were locomotives in action rather than at rest and trains in
the landscape rather than being tightly framed front three
quarters views. With Trevor being a prolific and a very early
adopter of colour film, the results of his work are some of
the best images of the UK
railway scene that we can
enjoy today and the fact
that we can do this is down
to the photographer having
had the foresight to place
his work in the Colour-Rail
Collection. In association
with Colour-Rail, Pendragon
Publishing now brings you
this wonderful selection
of some 250 classic Trevor
EE
POST FR
Owen images of the steam
railway in 1950s and 1960s.
144 pages A4 hardback
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Vol 30 . No.12
No. 308
DECEMBER 2016
RECORDING THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN’S RAILWAYS
Reinventing the wheel
New trains come, old trains go, some hang about when we wish they
would rather be gone (think the wretched ‘Pacers’). However, pre-dating
even those four-wheeled rattlers and still soldiering robustly on are the
redoubtable High Speed Trains which, remarkable to realise, have clocked
up 40 years since their entry into service. Placing them in a timeline is
rather disconcerting: the HSTs appeared just eight years after the end
of steam on British Railways at which time the oldest ‘Black Fives’ still at
work would have been 34; now the HSTs have outlived them. Yet you
can’t say they don’t still have a modern countenance about them or look
up to the mark for their top link tasks.
Now the HSTs aren’t perfect; I’ve always had against them the
adoption of the MkIII carriage design with its abandonment of the
relationship between the disposition of windows in the bodywork and
the layout of seats within. It bugs me that you can end up in a seat with no
view and it’s no extenuating circumstance that such a ridiculous practice
has been perpetuated in later and more modern rolling stock. Seeing
the landscape unfold as you journey along has always been one of train
travel’s great pleasures – well, most of the time: it depends where you
are, I suppose. Yet as you note today’s passengers (at least those of a
certain age level) wired into iPods, scrolling and texting with their fingers
and thumbs dashing across keyboards like Liberace on speed, it often
seems windows and the world beyond their own personal bubbles are
irrelevant.
HSTs have other qualities, though. When, in its Atlantic days during
the reign of the two Davids,
Backtrack
had its spiritual home in Cornwall,
I used to take the legendary Dundee–Penzance between York and Truro.
It was a cross-country HST and once having learnt the ploys of where best
to sit, it could be quite an enjoyable experience. The catering team, who
worked throughout from Edinburgh to Penzance (the longest shift on the
railway at the time, I believe), looked after you well and could serve you
a proper meal which you could eat at a table. The carriages ride properly
and the seating is comfortable enough, certainly by the standards of the
unyielding, bum-numbing hardness of more recent creation.
Of successors like the ‘Voyagers’ the less said the better and in short I
hold that from a passenger’s point of view not much better has been built
since. There has been talk of building a new generation of HSTs. Well, how
about this: get a set of the original plans, update the technology, match
seats and windows, keep the proper buffet, don’t even think of fitting
them with modern ‘ironing board’ upholstery, then just construct some
more... and Robert, as they say, is your auntie’s husband.
*****
I mentioned last month that a ride on the resurrected Waverley Route was
high on my ‘to do’ list and in fact I resolved to travel north this October
before the cold and the dark set in. I therefore interviewed the computer
and found me some first class tickets at very reasonable cost, with which
I set off on the East Coast Main Line.
Travelling first doesn’t necessarily bring peace and quiet as I had
two working passengers at my table, armed with phones and computers.
One, an ‘on-the-up’ business-youth, made or received seven calls
between York and Newcastle, but both decamped there as did several
others which enabled me to move across to the other side, the better to
enjoy the finest part of the East Coast route with its exhilarating cliff top
sections (as seen on the front cover).
The ‘Borders Line’ (as the Waverley Route is now presented) was
splendid with stirring, empty scenery to absorb, such that I almost felt
moved to start penning an historical Scottish novel of some length. Thus
inspired, I alighted at the pleasant little town of Galashiels and spent an
hour wandering around in the ‘dreich’ atmosphere with the thought that
it was the sort of place where I might come across a good second-hand
bookshop. It wasn’t, though I
did
find it rakishly had no fewer than three
tattoo parlours and a body-piercing studio. Declining both options, I
returned to the station and rode back on the other side of the train where
I noted the clear provision of gradient signs indicating what a formidable
route this is. Passing Falahill Summit the climb towards it from Edinburgh
is daunting – long pulls at 1 in 70 and as steep (I think) as 1 in 57. Imagine
pitching into these with a ‘cold’ North British ‘Scott’ or even an A3! The
journey left me wishing I could have continued further onwards – but, as
we’ve seen, you can never say never! Recommended.
*****
Volume 30 of
Backtrack
concludes its journey at the buffers with this
month’s issue and I can look back with cautious satisfaction on a year
when the magazine reached its pearl anniversary and its 300th issue.
Reviewing the contents I note more new authors have introduced
themselves during 2016 – no fewer than twelve of them – along with
several new colour contributors: always good news as is the growth in
the number of new subscribers, by far the best way of supporting the
magazine. Volume 31 will lead us whither it may and the only certainty
along the way is that we will encounter some assertions to challenge,
some opinions to disagree with and some arguments to contradict.
Experience tells the editor you will do all those things and that there’ll be
at least one occasion when he’ll receive a robust reprimand for stepping
out of line!
And so, as the politician of hope sprawls on the carriage floor of
grime and the eager editor of opportunism skips over him to rush for an
upgraded first class seat, our train heads towards the sunny uplands of
2017. Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year to all our readers and
contributors!
Contents
A Steady Climb – The Story of Beattock
and its Famous Incline
.......................................................
708
The Early Years of ‘The Gem of Railways’
..............
715
A Wednesbury Winter’s Night – Part One
............
724
Snaigow
and
Durn
.................................................................
733
A Derbyshire Outing
...........................................................
734
High Speed Trains
...............................................................
736
The Train Ferries – Part Two
........................................
742
Across the Midlands
...........................................................
748
The Departure List – Fatal Accidents on the
Stockton & Darlington Railway between
1825 and 1845
.......................................................................
750
Further Recollections of Reading Shed
and its many Duties
...........................................................
756
Readers’ Forum
.....................................................................
765
Index to Volume 30
............................................................
766
The age of the Inter-City 125 – the
13.00 King’s Cross–Edinburgh
High Speed Train runs along the
cliff tops near Burnmouth on 2nd
June 1978.
(Gavin Morrison)
Publisher and Editor
MICHAEL BLAKEMORE
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Contributions of material both photographic and written, for publication in BACKTRACK are welcome but are sent on the understanding that, although every care is taken, neither the editor or publisher can accept responsibility
for any loss or damage, however or whichever caused, to such material.
●
Opinions expressed in this journal are those of individual contributors and should not be taken as reflecting editorial policy. All contents of this
publication are protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers
●
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All editorial correspondence to:
PENDRAGON PUBLISHING • PO BOX No.3 • EASINGWOLD • YORK YO61 3YS •
www.pendragonpublishing.co.uk
DECEMBER 2016
©
PENDRAGON PUBLISHING 2016
707
PENDRAGON
PUBLISHING
Nearly there: LMS Class 5 4-6-0 No.44991
stomps towards Beattock Summit with
a heavy freight on 23rd March 1964.
The cloud of steam behind the bridge
shows that a banking engine is at work.
(David Idle)
‘A STEADY CLIMB’
Approximately ten miles at a governing incline of 1 in 77, Beattock bank could
add twenty minutes or more to the fastest journeys on the West Coast Main Line
in the age of steam and was a constant obstacle to express running or goods
operations for over a century. Beattock itself was once the junction for the spa
town of Moffat.
A. J. MULLAY
explains how it came about.
pass itself was a major obstacle, requiring a
climb of some 675 feet in just over ten route
miles.
This was twice as long as the incline in
Westmorland soon to be known as Shap and
was an obstacle for trains in either direction,
whether northbound or southbound. Not
only would there be a challenge for steam
locomotives to climb such a gradient, and over
such a distance, but there would be a danger of
runaways if a train broke in two – and Locke
could hardly anticipate fail-safe braking as
became customary when vacuum brakes
were the norm. Equally, going downhill on a
gradient which was so steep and so long left
open the awful possibility of a runaway train.
In the summer of 1837 it appears that
Locke returned south to tell the railway’s
backers that the Evan Valley was a barrier
which the technology of the time could not
conquer. It was surely more logical to take
the line westwards from Gretna to Dumfries
and then head north through the gentler
Nith Valley into Ayrshire. This would have
the additional advantage of tying such
towns as Dumfries and Kilmarnock into
the network, while also giving access to
the Ayrshire coalfield and a possible future
route to Irish Sea ports.
But…agitation by the local MP, John
James Hope-Johnstone, the very opposite of
a modern ‘nimby’ in demanding a railway
through his area, resulted in Locke being
asked to conduct a second survey before the
end of 1837. This time he came up with the
answer required of him, concluding, although
with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, that a
line through Beattock was possible. When
he opined that “a plane like this ought not
to be adopted without sufficient reason”, one
contemporary critic suggested that Locke
was “writing against his own convictions”.
It helped that Thomas Telford (a native of
Dumfriesshire) had chosen the Evan Valley
north from Beattock for his road on what is
now the course of the M74, although before
the 1820s the mail route was through Moffat
and north past the Devil’s Beef Tub in the
parallel valley to the east. Two of Locke’s
assistants claimed to have recalculated the
likely gradient from Beattock to the summit
as averaging 1 in 103 – which subsequently
proved to be too optimistic – and historian
C. J. A. Robertson implied in his history of
Scotland’s early railway development that
a fuller assessment of capital outlay on
earthworks, compared with likely traffic
receipts from such a lightly populated stretch
of landscape, meant that “Nithsdale might still
be preferable”.
The proposed Annandale route for the
railway (following the river of that name and
some miles from the town of Annan) allowed
for a ‘Y’-junction farther north to serve both
BACKTRACK
THE STORY OF BEATTOCK
N
ot many railway inclines feature
in poetry, especially in a poem as
well-known as ‘Night Mail’ by W. H.
Auden. However, Beattock bank is the first
topographical landmark to be mentioned in
the poem which is voiced over the illustrious
GPO film
Night Mail
released in 1936 and
featuring the one-time Travelling Post Office.
Auden wrote about the train:
“Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb
The gradient’s against her but she’s on time.”
But the bank was only part of the railway
presence in the area – the village had its
own wayside station for more than 120 years
despite the sparse population and it was a
junction for a branch line to Moffat, financed
by the townspeople themselves.
The topography of the Beattock area
very nearly killed the prospect of the West
Coast Main Line being built northwards from
Carlisle by this route. When surveying the
possible course of a railway which would
grow northwards from the Lancaster &
Carlisle, in its turn an extension of the Grand
Junction out of London, the engineer Joseph
Locke must have paused at Beattock in some
consternation. Located where the Evan Water
joined the River Annan, this hamlet was at the
foot of a pass scoured in the Lowther Hills for
some ten miles up to the watershed, where the
county boundary of Dumfriesshire ‘marched’
with that of Lanarkshire. Near this summit,
and on its northern side, the Clyde begins its
long journey to Glasgow and beyond, and
from an engineering point of view, presented
few problems in this location. However, the
708
AND ITS FAMOUS INCLINE
Glasgow and Edinburgh. This fulfilled the
concept of a national transport artery and
was recognised as such by a Government
commission established soon afterwards.
Consisting of Sir Frederick Smith representing
the Board of Trade and Professor Barlow of
the Royal Military Academy, this considered
no fewer than eight Anglo-Scottish routes in
1839–41, identifying the proposed GJR/L&CR
route – in other words, the Beattock route –
LMS Fairburn Class 4 2-6-4T No.42215
urges a Manchester–Glasgow express up
the bank at Greskine on 4th June 1960.
(Gavin Morrison)
as the principal line. If rival promoters were
disappointed, they at least had the consolation
of knowing that the backers of this route
north from Carlisle were required to start
construction within a short time – and therein
lay a problem.
any investors in what became known
as the Caledonian Railway were
English-based and had sunk most
of their capital in the adjoining Lancaster &
Carlisle. This was having enough difficulty
battling its way through the fells towards
Carlisle for its promoters to even think about
forging farther north into higher, steeper, hills.
The ascent of Beattock: a classic shot
of the West Coast route’s most famous
train, the ‘Royal Scot’, powering north
at Harthope behind one of the great
LMS ‘Coronation’ Pacifics, in this case
No.46253
City of St. Albans,
in the mid-
1950s – thirteen on and no banker!
(Eric Treacy/Pendragon Collection)
Meanwhile Edinburgh-based businessmen
launched the North British Railway
southwards towards Berwick-on-Tweed,
their example giving hope to the Glaswegian
backers of a Nithsdale route through
Dumfries. It became obvious that, Government
commission or no, there was going to be more
than one railway crossing the Border.
M

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