A Privileged Journey

by David Maidment

  I completed at least three return trips each day that week and have a full performance log of each. As stated above, much of the running was spoiled by the Hayes bridge-rebuilding slack, just at the point where down trains would have been accelerating nicely, and many drivers did not bother to try to keep schedule to Reading, presumably in the knowledge that could take advantage of recovery time in the schedule approaching Swindon and before their destination. (At that time most WR expresses had two batches of four minutes’ recovery in schedules to Taunton, Bristol, Cardiff, Gloucester, Worcester and Birmingham.) I shall therefore limit myself to describing some of the best runs, the others being documented in tabular form, for the record.

  Last train for the day for me on Tuesday 16 June was the up ‘Merchant Venturer’ from Bristol, with Bath Road depot’s 5085 Evesham Abbey on nine coaches, 302/330 tons tare/gross. After a very mediocre day we at last had some vigour: a rousing acceleration to 80mph at Maidenhead (passed in 12 minutes 42 seconds), and passing Slough in even time (17 minutes 42 seconds) and a clear run after the bridge slack saw us arrive almost punctually at Paddington in a net time of 36 minutes for the 36 miles, just two minutes late, having picked up four minutes of previously lost time. The next day started with a very similar run with a ‘County’, with one coach less. Swindon’s 1019 County of Merioneth achieved my fastest start of the week from Reading, clearing Twyford in 6 minutes 48 seconds and already doing 68mph; 77 was reached at Maidenhead, and Slough (17.5 miles) was passed in 17 minutes 14 seconds, but an early arrival was prevented by a signal stand at Acton and further checks into the terminus, arrival being again two minutes late.

  The up trains were definitely performing better than the down. Later that same afternoon the Hereford train, due Paddington at 4.47pm, drew in behind a 1925-built ‘Castle’ in its original state, Worcester’s 4089 Donnington Castle, a loco due for heavy overhaul at Swindon Works, and I feared the worst. However, the driver was game, whisking his light load (eight coaches, 262/290 tons) up to 83mph at Ruscombe and reaching 70 after a check to 48 at Slough and 72 again after Hayes, and we actually arrived at our destination two minutes early, in 35 minutes net.

  On the Thursday I eventually achieved one more punctual down run, with, surprisingly, another 1925-built veteran, albeit this time just ex works. I’d seen the up ‘Cheltenham Spa Express’ belt through the middle road at Reading while we waited for the road that morning on the Fishguard boat train, so I was interested to get Gloucester’s 4085 Berkeley Castle on its return working, the 2.15pm Paddington–Gloucester, with ten coaches (342/360 tons). A very vigorous start was made to clear Southall in under 12 minutes at 64mph, and after the bridge check speed was maintained at 72mph all the way from Slough to Twyford, Reading being reached on time, in 37 minutes net. A wait of three quarters of an hour culminated in the arrival of Landore’s No 5091 Cleeve Abbey on a South Wales express, running 12 minutes late on account of the failure of gas-turbine 18000 ahead of it just before Reading. Progress on the ten-coach train was steady but unspectacular, with a 10mph signal check at Taplow as well as the Hayes check, and arrival at Paddington was seventeen minutes late.

  4089 Donnington Castle approaches Reading with a Worcester train, 17 June 1959.

  4085 Berkeley Castle ready to leave Paddington with the 2.15pm to Gloucester and Cheltenham, 18 June 1959.

  After a quiet day on the Friday — nothing spectacular, good or bad — I hoped perhaps for something unusual on a summer Saturday. I was expecting a ‘Britannia’ on the 1.55pm to South Wales, but ‘County’ 1012 County of Denbigh of Swindon was a last-minute replacement for one of the pacifics, which had failed on the up journey. The loco seemed ill prepared and performed erratically, unable to sustain more than 56mph with its twelve-coach load after the Hayes check. It took nearly 50 minutes to reach Reading, having dropped eight minutes, only half of which was attributable to engineering work. Another long wait ensued without a ‘47xx’ or ‘63xx’ or any other rare locomotive, so I took a ten-coach train from Bristol which arrived behind Old Oak’s 5035 Coity Castle, a loco often picked for royal trains. Surprisingly we were unchecked apart from the bridge slack, running steadily at 80mph before Slough, and approached Paddington at 35mph behind the signalbox to platform 11, very early. I was in the packed corridor when suddenly the standing passengers were catapulted into each other like falling dominoes as an emergency brake application was made. We ground to a halt just as 5056 appeared tender-first from under the station canopy and stopped about two engine lengths short of a collision. Apparently 5056’s ECS had been drawn out to Old Oak, leaving 5056 on the stop-blocks while its fireman went in search of tea for his billycan. The signalman assumed the platform was clear, as 5056 was standing on track so heavily contaminated by oil that it failed to operate the track circuit, and our train was admitted under clear signals. Thank heavens for an alert driver and very effective brakes. So our net time of just under 36 minutes was only up to a train’s length from the stop-block!

  Full details of the week’s running are as follows:

  Record of runs from Paddington to Reading, 15-20 June 1959

  Record of runs from Reading to Paddington, 15-20 June 1959

  So what was I to make of the week? How did it compare with commuting from Woking? Well, for a start, punctuality was poor, the bridge rebuilding at Hayes affecting all trains, and signalling problems — both technical and operational — delayed many runs. There was a huge contrast between those drivers who attempted to maintain time despite the checks and those who accepted them as reasons for lateness and appeared to make little effort, although their engines — apart from a few exceptions — seemed to be in no difficulty. Of the forty-four runs I timed, only eighteen ran with vigour and arrived at Reading or Paddington more or less on time. Two were delayed by earlier loco failures (gas-turbine 18000 and a Canton ‘Britannia’), and eleven tried hard but were thwarted by operational problems, signal failures and congestion. That leaves three trips on which time was dropped because the locos (1012, 6920 and 70029) were obviously below par and ten where the driver, despite having a good loco with plenty of steam, made no real attempt to recover time lost by the planned engineering work.

  Newly ex-works from Swindon following overhaul, 5008 Raglan Castle draws into Reading on 19 June 1959 with a train from Swindon booked to arrived at Paddington at 10.30am.

  7025 Sudeley Castle enters Reading with a Paddington–Worcester train in June 1960.

  It is interesting to make comparisons with the SR performance (described in Chapter 6 and in the Appendix logs) during the New Malden bridge repairs, when nearly all down runs worked hard to eliminate the arrears before the Woking stop. Speeds on the level between Slough and Reading were not dissimilar to those of SR locomotives between Hampton Court Junction and Walton, but the couple of miles of gentle descent from Weybridge past Brooklands encouraged the highest speeds in the mid- to upper 80s. The best speed on the WR was 83mph by 4089 on the level, which was equal to the best of the ‘Merchant Navies’ on my SR journeys. Overall, timekeeping by SR drivers was more consistent; WR punctuality was affected by a culture that condoned the acceptance by some drivers of engineering delays without any attempt at time recovery, in contrast to the best, who made every effort to keep time despite, at times, very long odds.

  I needed an antidote to this surfeit of Western-concentrated experience, a little over the top despite my Western bias. A few weeks before buying the weekly season I’d joined my first enthusiasts’ special train, the ‘Potteries Express’, which started from Paddington with ‘Royal Scot’ 46154 The Hussar and took a tortuous route to reach the Midland main line, travelling via the Greenford–Ealing branch and over the the North London line from Acton through Willesden Upper and Brent before joining the St Pancras route at Welsh Harp Junction. Attaining a maximum of 84mph at Ampthill and managing 44mph at Sharnbrook Summit, we proceeded competently enough but without any real fireworks to Derby, whence we were due to be double-headed by two ‘2P
’ 4-4-0s to Rudyard Lake en route to Macclesfield. In the event our motive power was a single Horwich ‘Crab’ 2-6-0, 42922, and after a walk around the lake we were hauled by two Fowler 2-6-4 tanks, 42346 and 42398, over the long-closed ‘Potteries’ line from Macclesfield to Stoke, bringing a game of cricket to a complete standstill as the white-clad fielders turned and observed a sight that had not been seen there before. A ‘Black Five’ took us from Stoke to Wolverhampton Low Level, where ‘King’ 6008 King James II took over the nine coach special and ran well within itself until opened out finally on the descent through Denham, touching 93mph.

  I then decided to try the East Coast main line for an invigorating breath of more bracing air. On Saturday 25 June I caught the 9.40am King’s Cross–Newcastle behind Grantham double-chimney ‘A3’ 60105 Victor Wild, which was energetic, with a top speed of 83mph after Sandy and 88 at Connington, but p-way slacks at Arlesey and Werrington Junction and diversion to the slow line half way up Stoke Bank caused us to drop ten minutes on the mile-a-minute schedule. Finding a local at Grantham, in from Nottingham behind GC ‘A5’ tank 69827, I decided to go to Derby Friargate. I was surprised to get a GNR ‘J6’ 0-6-0, 64235, but at Nottingham it was changed for a more prosaic ‘L1’, 67800, and, disappointingly, I returned from Derby Friargate to Grantham behind a filthy and run-down ‘B1’, No 61209. The next London-bound train ran in behind a dirty ‘V2’, 60909; given its light load of eight coaches I decided to give it a go and was rewarded with a swift descent of Stoke Bank, reaching 88mph; then there was a sound of grating metal, and we screeched to a halt opposite Lolham ’box, our mechanical lubricator now in bits several miles behind us. We limped into Peterborough, where the ‘V2’ station pilot (60821) took over and left twenty minutes late, while I decided to wait for something better. Sure enough, double-chimney ‘A3’ 60044 Melton of Top Shed followed straight in, having been delayed by the disintegration of the ‘V2’, on the up eleven-coach ‘Northumbrian’. We left fifteen minutes late, and 60044 whisked us to London in fine style, reaching 81 at Huntingdon, 81 at Sandy, and with a net time of 69 minutes from Peterborough, despite three signal checks and the p-way slack at Arlesey, we regained six of the lost minutes.

  ‘Crab’ 42922 pauses at Rudyard Lake en route from Derby to Macclesfield with the ‘Potteries Express’, 9 May 1959.

  Five days later I was tempted to have another go but was intending to resist and simply watch, as my finances were running low. However, when double-chimney ‘A3’ 60111 Enterprise backed onto the 12.30pm King’s Cross–Newcastle ‘Northumbrian’ my good intentions collapsed, and I screwed up my nerves and forked out for a day return to Grantham. The load was a heavy thirteen coaches (460 tons gross), and we ran very steadily, with maxima of 84 after the Arlesey slack and 88 at Connington South and a clear run this time up Stoke Bank, sustaining a minimum of 57 with this load, cutting the 111-minute schedule by thirty seconds. I had now become attracted to the double-chimney ‘A3s’ (the performance of which compared very favourably with that of the same locomotives in original condition) and, heading south again, gladly took Grantham’s 60049 Galtee More, complete with a set of the new German ‘elephant ear’-style smoke-deflectors. The train was the twelve-coach, 450-ton-gross ‘Heart of Midlothian’, which arrived and left ten minutes late, touched 91mph at Little Bytham and maintained the upper 70s from Huntingdon to the Arlesey slack, but then progress was ruined by a series of signal checks in from Hitchin, and we arrived sixteen minutes late. Perhaps the Western punctuality was not so bad after all! I rounded off the evening by finding a ‘new’ ‘King Arthur’, 30786 Sir Lionel, waiting for me on the 11.15pm Waterloo–Basingstoke, so I peddled home and crawled into bed, satisfied but with my annual student grant all but exhausted.

  In July I crept out to King’s Cross again, looked at pacifics going north but counted the change left in my pocket at the end of the college year, before the next grant came through, and had to satisfy myself with a couple of runs through the tunnels and up the bank to Finsbury Park to take a few unsuccessful photos of engines working hard at the top of the bank; most were already going too fast for my 1/25sec shutter speed. ‘A3’ 60047 Donovan graced one Peterborough slow train I caught, and I returned to the terminus on an express behind ‘A4’ 60029 Woodcock, which, along with other terminating expresses, joined the queue at Finsbury Park awaiting a King’s Cross platform. A few days later I tried again and was pleased to sample one of the Thompson rebuilds of the Gresley ‘P2’ 2-8-2s, 60506 Wolf of Badenoch, and returned south on a train hauled by ‘B1’ 61027 Madoqua, which surprised me by turning left and finishing up at Broad Street — a real mystery tour as far as I was concerned, with, luckily, no ticket collector at the Broad Street barrier!

  Headed by ‘Royal Scot’ 46154 The Hussar, the Ian Allan ‘Potteries Express’ special waits to depart Paddington for Derby and Stoke-on-Trent, 9 May 1959.

  The summer of 1959 was spent on a compulsory course at a German university (see Chapter 9). Then it was back to my final year at University College London and the daily routine of steam trains to Waterloo. In December Rodney Meadows, with whom I’d kept in touch after my ‘short works’ course in Bath and was now Passenger Marketing Officer of the King’s Cross Division, persuaded me to join him on a run down to Grantham on the 16th to take a first trip behind the blue Deltic prototype, which was at that time running a regular Hull–King’s Cross service from Doncaster. 60111 Enterprise was on the 9 o’clock to Newcastle, which we took as far as Grantham; it kept time exactly, unchecked on the 104-minute schedule for the 105 miles, with a top speed of 85mph at Biggleswade. I hadn’t been really sure I wanted to waste my precious money (I had no ‘privs’ now) on a diesel run, albeit with Deltic, and I was therefore particularly pleased to get ex-works Heaton ‘A3’ 60084 Trigo instead of the diesel, which had failed — much to Rodney’s chagrin. The train was the 12.20 Hull and left Grantham with nine coaches (350 tons gross) twelve minutes late, but it picked up four minutes, achieving 84mph at Little Bytham, 84 at Huntingdon and 84 again (was ‘A3’ 84 fixated on that number?) on the slightly rising gradient at Sandy, before a 30mph p-way slack at Hitchin, completing the 76 miles from Peterborough in a net time of 73 minutes. I was happy. It was the end of term, and Christmas loomed.

  My table-tennis partner, Gordon, invited me to his home in Bradford in the New Year, and I travelled north on a chilly and dull January day on the 9 o’clock King’s Cross–Newcastle as far as Doncaster. I was pleased to get a ‘new’ Grantham ‘A3’, 60065 Knight of Thistle, on a lightly filled nine-coach train (325 tons gross), and after a slow start and much slipping through the murky tunnels, taking nearly seven minutes to Finsbury Park, we got going. After 55 at Potters Bar we were just beginning to motor when signals brought us right down to a slow walking pace at Hitchin — apparently a signal failure, as there was a man beside the track, waving us past the red signal. Now late, we accelerated hard over the traditional racing stretch, making 82 at Sandy, 80 at the St Neots hump, 87 at Offord and 84 at Connington. We passed Peterborough in 77 minutes 38 seconds and held 72mph for miles around Essendine before gradually trailing away to precisely 60 at Stoke Summit. We arrived at Grantham just over two minutes late, in 106 minutes 13 seconds — 99 minutes net. We changed engines to a second 35B ‘A3’, 60056 Centenary, another new one for me, and were doing well, managing 80 at Newark, when we got caught by another signal failure — this time coming to a complete stand for more than five minutes. Two p-way slacks to 15mph after that, at Retford and Bawtry, meant that we were seventeen minutes late into Doncaster, through no fault of engine or crew.

  After a pleasant couple of days with Gordon and his parents we were both due to visit Sue, another of our college year, who lived near Manchester, at Ashton-under-Lyne. However, I’d come down with a bug (caught, no doubt, as a result of a very wintry visit to the Brontë country at Haworth, before the days of the K&WVR) and had to be dosed up with brandy before I was fit to risk a Sunday journey on a train across the Pennines
from Bradford Forster Square to Manchester Victoria — behind a ‘Black Five’, 44694. I survived that but nearly came to grief on a long and very jerky trolleybus ride to Ashton. (Is trolley-sickness a recognised condition?) Some thirty-six hours later I was deemed fit enough to return with Gordon via the Diggle route to Leeds, joining a Liverpool–Newcastle express at Stalybridge, which appeared behind Longsight’s 46114 Coldstream Guardsman. In semi-darkness and still not 100% fit, I took little note, though I do remember spectacular pyrotechnics in Diggle Tunnel as we slogged up the grade.

  After further night to recuperate at Gordon’s I set out alone on 12 January 1960, picking up the 11am Leeds–St Pancras, a mere six-coach load as far as Sheffield, headed by a filthy ‘Royal Scot’ transferred from Crewe to Kentish Town, 46123 Royal Irish Fusilier, which I’d had a few years before to Beeston Castle on my first visit to Crewe. We picked our way between slowings for mining subsidences but arrived on time at Sheffield, where the restaurant car and other vehicles were attached, our load on departure being now ten coaches (360 tons gross). We dropped a couple of minutes to Chesterfield but recovered them with a 75 down through Langley Mill and left Nottingham on time. 46123 was not in good condition and slipped badly departing Nottingham; then the weather deteriorated, and we ran into heavy drifting snow in the Oakham area. With just two slight p-way slowings we’d dropped 14 minutes to Kettering and then tried hard but lost time steadily on a tight schedule. We climbed Sharnbrook at 48 minimum and touched 80 on the descent, but a p-way check to 10mph at Bedford knocked the stuffing out of us, and we couldn’t make 60mph before a special stop at Luton to rescue passengers from a failed DMU. Then we struggled on in a fog of steam at the front end, arriving at St Pancras a full 36 minutes late, having dropped twenty-two minutes from Kettering on an admittedly tough mile-a-minute schedule in poor visibility.