A Privileged Journey

by David Maidment

  We paid a few visits to St Lazare terminus, but it was pretty quiet there, with usually at best a couple of État Pacifics and perhaps one or two of the ungainly ex-Ouest ‘141TD’ tank engines on push-pull suburban trains. Our one visit to Montparnasse was a big disappointment, yielding only one steam engine, a ghostly ‘141C’ 111 from the non-electrified route from Granville and Argentan, amid the silent electrics. It seemed more like a cathedral than a busy railway station.

  Our return to Britain was fairly uneventful — the boat train from St Lazare had an État Pacific modified by Chapelon, ‘231G’ 772, the crossing was calm, and the BR boat-train locomotive was a Bulleid Pacific, 34068 Kenley. The one bit of excitement was at the British Customs, as one of our party was David Dimbleby, son of the then-famous Richard Dimbleby, who had shopped to excess in Paris and now required assistance to carry his haul from the boat. I got separated from him and ran into dire trouble when I tried to explain to a curious and increasingly suspicious Customs official that the large wooden box I was carrying housed a bust of Beethoven, that I was carrying it for someone else who had disappeared and that I did not know what it was made of, or its value, or where it had been purchased. In the end the official decided that if I had really been smuggling something I would have concocted a better story than that, and he sent me packing, box unopened. I’d dearly love to know if David remembers that — I guess not, as he was already boarding the boat train at the time.

  My next ‘official’ student trip was a couple of years later, in April 1958, with a party of first-year students from UCL’s German Department under the much less watchful eye of a couple of our eccentric tutors. (I can’t remember which ones, but they were all eccentric and exceedingly good fun.) We were bound for Bad Harzburg in the Harz Mountains, only a few miles from the border of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), to attend a language and literature course. I really had no idea what (if any) railway interest there would be apart from the Hook ‘Day Continental’ boat train from Liverpool Street (‘B1’ 61046), and the long sea crossing was followed by a series of electric runs across Holland to Bentheim, where in pitch darkness the shape of DB Pacific 03 091 backed onto our train for the run through Rheine to Osnabrück.

  At Osnabrück we changed and we went downstairs to a connecting train for the junction of Löhne on the line from the Ruhr to Hanover and Berlin. My first impression of the waiting locomotive (‘P8’ 4-6-0 38 2219) was that we had come across a real veteran — the sight of the tall chimney and generally antiquated appearance misled me — but we piled into a coach reserved for our party and were duly dumped in the middle of Löhne Yard for upwards of three hours. Attempting sleep in our crowded quarters was pretty hard anyway, but Standard 2-10-0 50 921 was attached and kept whisking us off to the other end of the yard with a great jerk every time sleep seemed imminent. I finally cottoned on to the fact that our coach was to be attached to a D-Zug to Berlin, and it suddenly swept past us when I was hardly ready, just noting that the smokebox-door numberplate of the locomotive had lots of 0s and 1s in it. On arrival at Hanover, where we had to change at 06.00, I hurried to the front (our coach had been attached at the rear), but as we seemed to have about seventeen coaches on I managed only to see No 01 1087 backing down for the trip to the GDR border. At the time I wrote 01 010 in my notebook, but I later suspected that we’d had an ‘01.10’ three-cylinder Pacific, probably 01 1001, 01 1100 or 01 1101. (Since first drafting this book I’ve become a member and contributor to a ‘Railways of Germany’ website forum and posed the question of the possible identity of this locomotive. I was astounded to get a flurry of answers from erudite British and German enthusiasts, and two members of German club DSO, Ronald Krug and ‘03.1008’, advised me that D119, calling at Löhne at 02.56 to pick up through coaches from the Hook of Holland, was diagrammed for a Hanover-based ‘01’ — rather than an ‘01.10’ — through to Hanover and the engine change. As 01 010 was a Hanover engine at that time it is 99% certain that my loco that night was indeed 01 010 and not one of the three ‘01.10s’ that I thought subsequently might have been our motive power.)

  Ex-PLM 4-8-4 tank 242TA 35 with a suburban train at Gare du Nord, April 1956.

  The connecting Eilzug from Hanover to Bad Harzburg was conveyed efficiently enough by 03 131, which became one of the last two ‘03s’ to survive in far-off Allgäu (Ulm) in the early 1970s. This visit was definitely cultural and had little room for railway tours, especially as I knew little about my surroundings. I did spend a few hours around the railway station at Goslar while others went visiting the town’s castle and other sights, and I have a vague memory of seeing a huge narrow-gauge 2-10-2 tank emerge from the forest when we had the obligatory coach visit to the Iron Curtain border to stare at the barbed wire and guard posts on the Brocken Mountain. I cannot think that we got close enough to the border to see a train from the DR Harzquerbahn, but I believe we must have seen a train on the Süd Harz system between Walkenried and Braunlage, which closed in 1963 (more information gleaned from the ‘Railways of Germany’ website forum).

  DB Pacific 03.131 at Hanover with the 6am Eilzug–Bad Harzburg, April 1958.

  Our return journey to the UK was a little better remembered, as I was now prepared on what to look out for. Our first leg was completed behind 03 086, and the run to Löhne was behind a DB standard ‘01’ (definitely this time), No 01 161. (I have a somewhat fuzzy photo to prove it.) At Löhne we managed to get shunted by both 2-10-0 50 816 and Prussian ‘G8’ 0-8-0 55 5449. Another ‘P8’, 38 1988, took us back to Osnabrück, and the ‘Nord Express’ (from Flensburg) to the Hook of Holland had 03 169, still with its original large smoke-deflectors, as far as the Dutch border at Bentheim. A ‘B1’, 61311, on the ‘Day Continental’ from Harwich completed the experience.

  These first forays into foreign parts had whetted my appetite, and I determined to be a little more prepared whenever such opportunities next presented themselves.

  Prussian ‘P8’ 4-6-0 38.3473 at Goslar with a local passenger train from Brunswick, April 1958.

  Chapter 8

  Old Oak Vacation

  In August 2000 I was involved at the Old Oak Common Open Weekend in the naming of EWS electric locomotive 90 031 The Railway Children Partnership and, in support of that event, was present during the two days with a stand and display about the international street children’s charity after which the locomotive was named. Coincidentally that stand was on the ground floor of the old train-crew accommodation — where forty-two years previously, immediately above, on the first floor, I had spent several weeks, just before the building’s completion, copying out the new winter timetable train-crew rosters in isolation, as the Chief Clerk feared I might be subject to some animosity. I was apparently doing some clerk out of overtime he had been expecting in order to complete the same task! As a result I found myself unsupervised with a grandstand view of all the main-line locomotives going on and off shed — ‘Kings’, ‘Castles’, ‘Britannias’, ‘47xx’ 2-8-0s, the lot! So my banishment was hardly an ordeal.

  So how did I arrive at this happy situation? Back in the summer of 1956 I’d enrolled in what was termed ‘a short works course’ with British Railways — a scheme to show sixth-formers career opportunities. I’d always believed that I’d need an engineering degree to turn my hobby into a railway career, but this course seemed to advertise other potential opportunities. I was instructed to make my way on a Sunday evening to a hotel in Bath and duly caught the 4.15pm from Paddington behind one of the WR’s derided ‘Britannias’, 70019 Lightning, which did not live up to its name, enduring a lot of slow-line running because of engineering work. Seven fellow students joined me there, and we spent the week under the tutelage of the Bristol District Assistant Operating Superintendent, Rodney Meadows, a former Traffic Apprentice, who was to show us the opportunities such a scheme offered.

  The week was a joy for train enthusiasts (and most of us were), although I gathered later that I was the only one of the eight that a
ctually joined BR. We had a tour of Bristol Docks in a brake van behind pannier tank 3623, spent an afternoon at Severn Tunnel Junction marshalling yard, spent time in a new signalbox at Bathampton (and caught a local back to Bath behind 6027 King Richard I, running-in after a Swindon overhaul) and had a most fruitful day at Swindon Works, where we were permitted to view Lode Star and a row of stored Dean Goods 0-6-0s and ‘Dukedogs’ in the works ‘stock shed’. I returned home via a visit to Wickwar (on the Bristol–Gloucester former Midland route) to see relatives, travelling behind Saltley’s Compound 41073, and then caught the Saturday 12.0 from Bristol with Old Oak’s current ‘Bristolian’ engine, 7036 Taunton Castle, which was in a decided hurry. Subsequently I kept in touch with Rodney Meadows, who became the agent by which I got the opportunity to work at Old Oak Common.

  Having nothing better to do during my ‘half gap year’ between school and college during the first half of 1957, I applied, with a reference from Rodney, to the London Divisional Office of the Western Region for temporary employment, knowing by then that I wished to pursue a railway career. (I duly became a management trainee — or ‘Traffic Apprentice’, as it was known — in 1961 and had a further three months at Old Oak Common as part of my footplate training in 1962, as described in Chapter 15). During my first summer vacation from London University in 1958 I repeated the experience, but the summer vacation of 1959 was spent brushing up my German at Munich University and discovering the delights of Bavarian Compound Pacifics on the Munich–Lindau route.

  Old Oak was always short-staffed during the holiday periods, so for most of my time there I was employed in various clerical jobs, which involved spending time in different sections of the shed. Initially I spent a few (rather boring) weeks doling out thick green engine-lubricating oil to drivers and enjoying the atmosphere of the depot. At that time Old Oak Common’s allocation included 170 steam locomotives — about half of the ‘Kings’ and 43 ‘Castles’, amongst others — and 20 diesel shunters. I lived at East Molesey, near Hampton Court, during the first spell and used to travel to Waterloo via a change at Surbiton onto an early-morning Basingstoke semi-fast, almost always hauled by a Urie ‘H15’ of the 30482-91 series. On weekdays I reached Willesden Junction via the Bakerloo Line, but on Saturday mornings there was a Rugby semi-fast from Euston that stopped at Willesden Junction and was hauled by a Crewe ‘Royal Scot’ or ‘Jubilee’, as well as an occasional ex-works engine running-in, like Blackpool’s ‘Jubilee’ 45580 Burma on my first memorable attempt.

  Every morning, as I walked down the long slope from Old Oak Common Lane into the depot, I was greeted by the sight of at least two ‘47xx’ 2-8-0s simmering at the stop-blocks by the carriage shed after arrival on overnight fast freights; indeed one particular siding there was known to all as the ‘4700 road’. I would then cut through the side entrance of the shed, across one of the four electric turntables, glancing at the ‘Kings’ and ‘Castles’ on display, searching for a rare visitor. I would need to be careful at this point because the turntable, being fully covered in and electrically operated, would often start off with little warning and at quite a lick.

  On my first day I was given a tour of the shed, which included a trip in the cab of 5074 Hampden being prepared for the ‘Torbay Express’ down to the coaling plant and shed-exit signal. The depot was a very cosmopolitan place, and although work seemed to be allocated along racial lines there seemed to me to be only good-natured banter between the various groups — perhaps I was just a little naïve at the time. The shed labourers working the coaling plant and emptying the ashes from smokeboxes and dropping fires near the coaling plant were all Irish. The cleaners employed in the shed itself were all of West Indian origin, and a gang would be seen cheerfully smothering an engine with oil until it gleamed, and if it was still there after the gang had gone around one of the roundhouses cleaning the other locomotives it would get another dose. Was there a method in this madness? Perhaps they were on piece rate and no-one scrutinised the numbers of the engines cleaned too closely! We had many Welsh firemen, and I learned that they had come on promotion to get a foot on the driver’s promotional ladder, as there was little hope of becoming a driver in the Welsh Valley depots before reaching one’s mid-50s.

  The ‘Stores’, where I was initially employed, adjoined the ‘Factory’, where facilities existed for the repair of several steam locomotives, which usually included two or three undergoing the three monthly valves-and-piston renewals and a couple of ‘hot box’ repairs involving lifting the engine from the bogie, which seemed the location of most problems. When a locomotive had been repaired here it was despatched under the eyes of Billy Gibbs, the Maintenance Foreman, for a high-speed trip around the Old Oak–Greenford–Ealing triangle to see that all was well. As well as driver and fireman, Billy Gibbs and a fitter from the Factory, it was practice to allow one of the apprentices to make the trip. I got a turn too, and my loco was 6024 King Edward I after a bogie hot-box repair. I remember sitting on the tender toolbox, head above the cab roof (any railway inspectors please shut your eyes — although I did wear a pair of motor-cycle goggles) as we accelerated hard from Old Oak West after a signal check, so we only got up to around 65mph instead of the 80 hoped for to test the bearing. A sedate run on the branch, pauses to feel the offending bearing, and then another burst of speed back from West Ealing to Acton saw all successfully concluded, and 6024 was on the ‘Limited’ the next day.

  By this time I was getting used to the smell of the place. Although it can’t be true, I remember the shed always baking in a heat wave, and everywhere was bathed in a peculiar pungent odour of hot oil, sulphur and a faint whiff of stale urine, which seemed especially strong around the dead locos awaiting repair outside the Factory. Once I was working on clerical rather than Stores duties I used to wear a white shirt (why? — I only had white shirts), and my poor mother had a dreadful time trying to get it clean after one day’s wear in that atmosphere.

  By the early spring of 1957 I had graduated to the Central Office at Old Oak, so named because it was located exactly in the centre of the engine shed, the bullseye between the four turntables that made up the main depot. But it was central in another way, because it was from here that all the maintenance work of the shed’s allocation was organised. The clerk who was in charge of engine histories was on long-term sick leave, and Billy Gibbs put me to work covering his post. This was a delight, because my role involved recording the oil and coal consumption of each locomotive from dockets issued by the Stores or coaling plant, compiling mileage records from the loco rosters operated for Old Oak engines and preparing routine maintenance plans (boiler washouts and valves-and-piston exams) as well as shopping proposals for heavy and intermediate repairs at Swindon Works.

  Some memories stand out from this period. 4090 Dorchester Castle, the second ‘Castle’ to be fitted with a double chimney and the first at our depot, was regular on the down ‘Bristolian’ from May onwards, and it was so highly regarded that after the three-month valves-and-pistons exam it went straight back onto the ‘Bristolian’ roster — an almost unprecedented move. I believe this was at the request of a number of the drivers who swore by this engine.

  The author on the footplate of 6024 King Edward III during its pause on the Greenford–Ealing branch on its post-repair test run, 29 July 1957.

  One of four Old Oak Common roundhouses, with 4900 Saint Martin and a ‘28xx’ 2-8-0, 3 August 1957.

  Some of the ‘Castles’ from the postwar build attained some incredibly high mileages between visits to Swindon Works — I recall 5099 and 7020 in particular, the latter still on South Wales main-line work with 116,000 miles on the clock since its previous shopping; by this time its paintwork was nearly black from the regular oily cleaning, but it was a very shiny, rather rich greeny-browny-black! Most ‘Castles’ ran about 82,000-86,000 miles between works visits, (even some of the early ‘40xx’ engines), and ‘Kings’ were shopped after about 78,000-80,000 miles, which they acquired very quickly, as
they averaged about 2,000-2,500 miles a week, there being no such thing as a light turn for a ‘King’.

  Other memories are less pleasant. Whilst the location of the Central Office was ideal in one respect, it was hard on the senses. The noise around meant that phone calls were a strain, and at the end of the day a sore throat and headache were quite commonplace. One day 6019 King Henry V failed before going off shed after the fireman had prepared a big fire for its duty, and the loco stood inside the shed on one of the roads adjoining our offices blowing off steam furiously for what seemed like hours. On another occasion a ‘Britannia’ whistle got stuck, and the loud chime lost its attraction long before until it eventually diminished to a feeble cracked note.

  Around this time one of the shed’s regulars was City of Truro, which for several weeks came up to town on a commuter train and returned home on either the 5.20 or 6.20pm Paddington–Reading (I can’t remember which). I travelled on it one day to the first stop, West Drayton, with its eight non-corridor coaches, in a fine drizzle — a most unsuitable duty, as the driver had great difficulty in controlling its slipping. I did record that we just managed to touch 60mph before the stop, and we lost only about a minute on schedule, but it must have been hard going thereafter, as the train was then all-stations to Reading. Following this stint 3440 returned to Didcot and was used on the Didcot–Newbury–Winchester service, a much more suitable assignment.

  Another veteran much in evidence in the summer of 1957 was the last ‘Star’, 4056 Princess Margaret, then at Bath Road shed. She was by now in very poor condition, and one Saturday in September she was pressed into service on the Plymouth–Paddington non-stop leg of a Saturdays-only train from Newquay. Apparently the driver stopped at virtually every location with a depot to request a fresh locomotive, but there was nothing to be had, so he had to ‘blow up’ a head of steam and continue to the next point. When 4056 came on depot the driver had to make out two repair cards, as he couldn’t get all the engine’s failings onto one card — and I subsequently got hauled before the Divisional Motive Power Officer to be dressed down for reporting this fact to Trains Illustrated! ‘Washing our dirty linen in public’ was his description of my offence. Despite this 4056 was booked on the Monday to return to Bristol on the 8.5pm Paddington fast freight, and when 7018, booked for the 7.15pm passenger to Bristol, failed on shed she was substituted. I took a photo of 4056 about to go off shed in the failing light, and I’m sorry to say she got no further than Southall, where she was abandoned in favour of a filthy ‘Hall’. That was 4056’s last run, as she went straight to Swindon for cutting-up, which was a shame.