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Contents
April 2010. No. 1,308. Vol 156. A journal of record since 1897
Headline News We launch the Wolverton Works RailCare Open Weekend!; Eurostar chaos – the full story plus latest incident; Class 66 crash loco lifted; First UK live ERTMS trial on Cambrian; ‘Meridian’ de-rails as wheelset fails; A1 Tornado on Royal duties again; Silver chosen as new livery for East Coast fleet.
Right: ‘Meridian’ derails at speed – p7.
On the cover
MAIN IMAGE: The ‘is it or isn’t it? mystery surrounding the identity of Evening Star rumbles on: One of the 9Fs caught up in the debate as a result of being with it at Crewe in pre-preservation days is No. 92203, which is seen here on a Somerset & Dorset re-creation on the Great Central Railway on October 13, 2009. ROBIN STEWART-SMITH
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9F RIDDLE DEEPENS Our readers turn detective in the great mystery
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Track Record The Railway Magazine’s monthly news digest
54 Steam & Heritage ‘Jinty’ returns to service after 44 years; Ken Ryder’s locos sold; 71000 and 69023 steamed again.
64 Railtours GW175 round-up: 9466 based at Laira; A ‘Scot’ from
Tram rails laid in Princes Street, Edinburgh – Metro, p81.
King’s Cross and an A4 from Euston; First Class 70 railtour.
68 Narrow Gauge Lydd delayed; Sholto revealed; Electric railcar for Launceston; Mine loco goes overground.
72 Traction & Stock Class 92s on sleepers? Cab mods for Class 70s; RailCare Wolverton to overhaul 465s.
78 Network New Street Gateway project approved; New platform for Cambridge; S&C – 23 miles of track to be replaced.
83 Classic Traction 37s on Metrolink; Coventry Centre changes hands.
86 World News ICEs into St Pancras? China tops high-speed league.
87 Operations Our monthly round-up of news from the industry.
92 Disposals and Stock Spot Repainted, named, sold or scrapped? Full details here.
Regulars
29 Heritage Events Diary All the details you need on where to go for steam and classic traction this spring.
29 100 Years Ago A look back at what Britain’s senior rail title was reporting 20, 50 and 100 years ago.
37 Readers’ Platform The controversy over Evening Star hots up with some revealing views from readers on the loco’s identity.
39 Subscription Offer A record number of readers are subscribing. Why not join them by taking advantage of our special offer?
45 Panorama Our showcase of the very best in rail photography.
48 Reviews Is it worth it? A selection of latest book reviews
93 Meetings A summary of club meetings and film shows of interest to railway enthusiasts.
98 Prize Crossword Tax your grey matter with our popular puzzle.
The best in rail photography – Panorama, p45.
Above: The first-ever EMUs on the West Highland Line? With snow-capped Beinn Odhar as a backdrop, GBRf No. 66728 approaches Bridge of Orchy with Class 325 EMUs. 325002/008 on a driver-training run from Polmadie to Fort William. See page 82 for the full story. STEVEN J. CROZIER
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16 The Fightback Starts Here Chris Milner looks at the Chiltern’s proposals for Oxford as part of the Evergreen 3 project.
20 Then and Now In this month’s Practice & Performance, Keith Farr compares 1938 schedules with those of today.
26 Its a Wrap! Nick Pigott and Chris Milner visit RailCare Wolverton to find out how passenger trains are re-liveried using ‘vinyl’ overlays.
32 Manchester’s World-Beater Robert Humm uncovers previously-unknown information about the world’s largest BeyerGarratt – and its troubled history
40 Roving the North-West Rails – 2 Dave Richardson concludes his odyssey to his former trainspotting haunts of 50 years ago, using a week-long North-West Railrover.
HOW IT’S DONE: TRAIN LIVERIES
IT’S A WRAP!
By D?9A F?=EJJ
ONE of the biggest differences between the modern railway and that of the British Rail era is the increasing tendency to livery passenger carriages by means of vinyl overlays. A number of readers have asked us to explain how vinyl graphics are applied to trains, so with the agreement of RailCare, Porterbrook and First Capital Connect, we were invited to film the process at Wolverton Works.
The vehicle in the vinyl bay when Chris Milner and myself arrived at 9am on February 5 was DTSO (driving trailer second open) No. 77489 from Class 319 EMU No. 319376. This had undergone a C6 refresh programme as part of First Capital Connect’s fleet upgrade and was fresh from the paintshop, where its drab blue & grey Thameslink livery had been replaced by a purple gloss using the two-pack paint system.
It may seem strange to cover new paint with vinyl wraps, but the latter enable the owning lease company to transfer vehicles to the fleets of other operators far more quickly and easily than would be the case if the bodies had been painted. They also allow highly intricate and attractive liveries to be designed and applied to rolling stock – imagine how time-consuming and expensive it would be for skilled painters to air-brush all the tiny graduated patterns and inter-twined lines that appear on the trains of many franchised passenger operators these days. HeZX^Va^hi
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The vinyl sheets are manufactured by 3M Controltac and printed by SSDM (Supersine Duramark) at its specialist press in Lowestoft, Suffolk. SSDM also provides the teams of graphic applicators, who travel to locations all over the UK to apply them to trains, buses and vans. It takes 18 rolls of sheets to cover a vehicle such as No. 77489 and if an applicator makes a mistake by getting grit on the adhesive side or cutting in the wrong place, he cannot simply do what a wallpaper-hanger would and use another roll because every sheet is unique (see captions). Once the backing adhesive has dried, the sheets can only be removed by steam or heat gun, which means vandals and inquisitive passengers can’t ‘pick’ off more than a few flecks. The vinyls are guaranteed for six years and when the time does come to officially remove them by steam or heat, they leave no marks or blemishes on the trains’ painted surface, which is why a high-quality two-pack base paint job is necessary. Some operators, such as Northern Rail, also sometimes specify an anti-graffiti vinyl, which makes the applicator team’s job even harder, for such sheets are thicker and therefore more difficult to wrap, smooth and cut.
In case readers wonder, the stages of the process shown in the accompanying photos are in sequence, but because two teams of applica- tors were working simultaneously, the same men do not necessarily appear in consecutive pictures. E^XijgZh Wn 8]g^h B^acZg VcY C^X` E^\dii
26 • The Railway Magazine • April 2010
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April 2010 • The Railway Magazine • 27
APPLYING VINYL LIVERY: How it’s done – p26
A MANCHESTER WORLD-BEATER
BY the late-1920s, the Soviet railways had largely recovered from the ravages of the First World War and the ensuing civil war that followed the Bolshevik revolution. The infrastructure had been in a state of collapse in 1919 with 60 per cent of locomotives out of use and track and buildings in many places lying in ruins.
The all-out industrialisation of the USSR’s economy anticipated by the Soviets’ first ‘Five Year Plan’ (1928-1933) meant that Russia’s vast distances, meagre rail facilities and long stretches of single track were struggling to cope with the greatly-increased demands for freight train capacity. The most expedient solution was to provide powerful locomotives capable of shifting huge trains with a minimum of delay.
During the 1920s, the frontline freight class in the Soviet Union was the E class 0-10-0 (and its improved successor the Eu) of which 2,724 had been built between 1912 and 1925. They were supported by 1,104 of the unsatisfactory Class Shch 2-8-0s and no fewer than 8,480 classic 19th century Class O outside-cylinder 0-8-0s. There were also 744 modern Ye class 2-10-0s imported from the USA during the Great War.
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The Es were rugged and reliable locomotives of greater power than most contemporary types of non-articulated freight locomotive in Europe, yet they were increasingly having to be double- headed – a wasteful practice at a time of loco and crew shortages. There was an urgent need for freight locomotives more advanced than the E.
Several lines of action developed in parallel, and often at conflict with each other. One was the purchase for evaluation of two batches of five locomotives apiece from the United States – a 2-10-4 from Alco (classified Ta) and a 2-10-2 from Baldwin (classified Tb), but their 23-ton axle-load precluded general usage over most of the system, on which 17 tons was the maximum permitted axle-loading.
Another school of thought took what might be called the Stalinist ‘biggest is best’ approach, which resulted in the construction of the monstrous AA-20-1 class 4-14-4 prototype, which emerged from Lugansk works in 1934. So out of tune was it with the realities of the poor-quality Russian permanent way that it was quietly sidelined after a few trial runs.
So it was that Soviet locomotive engineers began looking towards Great Britain. They were well aware of the rapid development of the Beyer-Garratt locomotive type from its unspec- tacular beginnings 20 years earlier as a patented
32 U The Railway Magazine U April 2010
Gorton’s Giant THE LARGEST GARRATT IN THE WORLD
high point of 189 locomotives of all types delivered in 1930, output had slumped in just a few months to 46 in 1931 and 18 in 1932.
The new Garratt, No. Ya-01 (written with a reversed ‘R’ in Cyrillic script) was of the 4-8-2+ 2-8-4 wheel arrangement and was the largest Garratt in the world. In full working order, it weighed 262.5 tons – no less than 30 tons heavier than the largest previous Garratts (16 Bengal-Nagpur Railway 4-8-0+0-8-4s built in 1929) and a figure not again approached until the Class 59 Garratts of the East African Railways (259 tons) delivered in the 1950s.
Indeed, at the time of delivery, Ya-01 was the heaviest locomotive of any built outside North America. The solitary AA-20-1 4-14-4 already referred to, weighed 208 tons without its 12-wheel tender.
Ya-01 was allocated BP order number 1176 and works number 6737. Some details of the specification still survive in the company archives now deposited at the Greater Manchester Museum of Science & Industry. The photographs hardly give an adequate impression of its size, for the harmony of the design, together with the great height of the chimney permitted by the generous Russian loading gauge, tend to obscure its immense proportions. :cdgbdjh design of Herbert Garratt and manufactured exclusively by Beyer Peacock Ltd (BP) in Manchester’s Gorton Works.
Following the delivery of the tiny 0-4-4-0 Garratt, No. K1, to Tasmania in 1909, a total of 343 had been supplied by 1930 to numerous railways all over the world. The latter year was the best ever for Garratt production, no fewer than 90 being delivered from Gorton Foundry.
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The Garratt, with its unique combination of high power and flexibility, would appear to have been the ideal locomotive for Soviet main line conditions, capable of handling heavy trains over long stretches of lightly-laid and poorly- maintained track without double-heading and at higher speeds than the plodding 15-20mph of the 0-10-0s and 0-8-0s. Yet there were strong reservations within the USSR’s Ministry of Ways & Communications over the purchase of Garratts. While the Soviet Union was not averse to borrowing ideas from the West, there was a dislike of being dependent upon a patented foreign design requiring large outlays of gold roubles the country could ill afford. In addition, there was the cost of shipment from Britain. Even if an arrangement to assemble BP locos
“In my country, locomotives are propelled by steam – not by quadratic equations”
HE8;HJ >KCC recounts the troubled history of the most powerful Beyer-Garratt locomotive ever built under licence in Russia could be negotiated – which at that time BP was opposed to in principle – the workshops of the USSR were not equipped to build such large locomotives.
Objections of a more technical type were that a Garratt would possess long exposed steam pipes unsuitable for the Russian climate and that it would be too long for the nation’s engine sheds. There was also a belief that Soviet traction problems could be overcome not too far into the future by the development of the main line diesel locomotive – a technology in which the USSR was, at the time, world leader.
recorded as “One Beyer-Garratt locomotive with drawings and spares at a price of £23,750 FOB Birkenhead (that is, inclusive of all costs up to the point of shipment), for delivery December 1932.” This order must have been highly welcome to BP, for it was facing a severe crisis: From a
The height from rail to chimney top was an enormous 17ft 2ins and the other principal dimensions were: total length 109ft; wheelbase 98ft 8ins; coupled wheels 4ft 11ins; four cylinders 22.44in diameter by 27.95in piston stroke driving Walschaerts valve gear; boiler 7ft 7in outside diameter pitched 9ft 10in from rail to centre line; total evaporative surface 3,564ft; boiler pressure 220lbs psi; firebox volume 600 cubic ft and cab floor 100 sq ft. The tractive effort, calculated at 85 per cent boiler pressure, was 89,200lb and the minimum radius curve that could be traversed was ten chains.
Each of the two engine sections was, in accordance with BP practice, identical in layout. The foundation was a massive bar frame 5in thick braced by cast steel cross members. Each pair of cylinders was cast in two sections and formed the principal stiffening at the outer end of the engine unit. The central frame carrying the 40-ton boiler was built from deep-section steel plate with intermediate cross stiffeners.
Firing was by means of a mechanical stoker, the drive motor of which was located at the rear of the cab. There was provision for hand firing
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In spite of those reservations, it was decided in 1930 to order two Garratts on trial – one for the main line and for narrow gauge industrial railways. The order was channelled through Arcos Ltd, the Soviet import-export agency in London. At an advanced stage of negotiation, the Soviet finance ministry, for reasons now lost in the fog of politics, refused to make funds available for the narrow gauge version and that order was cancelled.
The other order first appears in the Beyer Peacock board minutes of May 24, 1932, where the company’s chairman, Sir Sam Fay, reported that “negotiations have been concluded with representatives of the Russian Government”. At the next meeting on June 21, the order was duly
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April 2010 UÊThe Railway Magazine UÊ33
GORTON’S GARRATT: The troubled giant – p32
THE 21ST CENTURY NETWORK
ASEVEN-day North West ‘Rail Rover’ ticket costs just £70 (£46 with a Railcard) – excellent value when you consider that it’s £53 just to get from my Oxford home to my Liverpool starting point and back. During a week in which I set out to re-visit many of the haunts I frequented as a child, I found much that made me laugh and much that made me wince . . .
After three days in and around Lancashire, Merseyside and Greater Manchester (see last issue), I decided to take advantage of the fact that the ‘North West’ Rover includes Carlisle, Hexham and even part of Scotland! 9Vn ) Atownby the name of Haltwhistle must have been created by the railway, surely? A place where the first trains would halt and whistle? Alas no, the name comes from old English, and Haltwhistle is also – surprisingly – the geographic centre of Britain.
Roving the g North-West rails :7L; H?9>7H:IED concludes his one-week ‘Rail Rover’ tour of north-west England
I alight from ScotRail’s No. 156449 briefly and am pleased to find that the station – with staggered platforms – is a delight. An old water tower (now with a shop underneath) bears the inscription, “Peter Tate Engineer 1861. R. Wylie & Co, Newcastle-on-Tyne”. The elevated signal- box with its long row of levers is also a gem. I reckon it must be a great job being a signaller in a semi-rural location such as this, on a line that isn’t very busy. But maybe I’m wrong. There’s probably a ‘Fat Controller’ somewhere breathing down his neck.
My ‘Rover’ ticket would have taken me as far as Hexham, but although it’s clipped (for the first time this week!), I’m sure it would have taken me all around the North-East as well as the North- West as no inspector seems to look at it closely.
The ticket also, I’m surprised to find, extends a short distance over the Scottish border, to Lockerbie and/or Dumfries. For enthusiasts, either trip will take you past Carlisle Kingmoor. The steam shed at Kingmoor (12A, formerly 68A) holds a cherished place in my memories, for on September 5, 1964, I came here and copped nearly every Scottish-based loco in sight. My father had a way of talking his way around sheds and I copped A2 No. 60535 Hornet’s Beauty and ‘Black Fives’ with large cabside numerals, which seemed exotic to me.
There were 83 locos on 12A that day, including two ‘Duchesses’ (46228/55, plus 46254 passing) only days before the whole class was withdrawn. Upperby (12B) had a further seven (46225/26/35/37/38/39/43) plus one ‘Princess’ (46200) out of 41 locos present – and the two sheds combined had only 11 diesels.
Today, I don’t have time to walk out to the site of Kingmoor, which is now a nature reserve mostly covered by mature trees, but the main
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40 U The Railway Magazine U April 2010
reason for enthusiasts to tread this hallowed ground is to look across the main lines at the DRS depot opposite, which has come back to life after closure by BR. Kingmoor marshalling yard is a shadow of its former self, but at least it’s still in business. It’s often forgotten how many diesels could be seen in the years after the end of steam; I once logged 60 in and around the yard. 9Vn * It’stimeto head along the Settle & Carlisle and a Class 153+158 formation is waiting. This line is a real success story, having been threatened with closure in the 1980s, and the ‘Friends of the S&C’ are doing a great job providing a buffet service on the train and helping to restore the stations. The Appleby Heritage Centre seems to be a worthwhile project, but unrestored Great Western 4-6-0 No. 4979 Wootton Hall looks rather forlorn and far from home.
You’re rarely aware of climbing inclines with modern traction, but the DMU is clearly working hard up Ais Gill. I alight at Ribblehead, and a great sense of calm descends on the station after my train departs for Leeds. All I can hear are the baaing of sheep and then the clucking of hens, which soon emerge onto the platform. With no mobile phone coverage, it’s heaven!
This is ‘Three Peaks’ country and I think of Class 44s as I gaze at Whernside, Ingleborough and Pen-y-Ghent. Near the famous viaduct is an interesting display recalling its construction and the navvy camp called Sebastopol (the viaduct was built just after the Crimean War). It must have been a riotous place, and there was even a narrow gauge construction railway complete with engine shed. I look around the volunteer-run visitor centre, where I learn that the station was closed between 1973 and 1990. Everything about the S&C today, from the restored stations to the regular passage of freight, shouts “renaissance”. Northern’s train service is pretty good too, with a pair of 158s operating
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my onward service, but I can’t help thinking the S&C might have been better off as part of the TransPennine Express franchise.
I alight at Hellifield, where I face a two-hour wait, looking forward to photographing its cast-iron canopies and semaphore signals with a regular procession of freight. The latter is a disappointment however as not a wheel turns through Hellifield for the first hour and only one freight passes during my stay. I cop GBRf ’s No. 66718 on a northbound gypsum train, meaning that I’ve seen trains operated by all four main freight operators today. The enthusiast-run buffet closes before I can buy a cuppa, leaving me alone studying a sign warning that a hidden CCTV camera is watching me.
Now for a trip over the ‘Little North Western’ route to Carnforth. The arrival of another ‘Nodding Donkey’ unit doesn’t raise my spirits, but I’m pleased to see that No. 142018 is well filled. Amazingly, this 16.52 departure from Leeds to Morecambe is the last westbound train of the day over the route, so is of very little use to commuters working in the Yorkshire city.
The route used to boast ‘Jubilee’ and ‘Patriot’-hauled expresses, and some wealthy folk used to commute from their seaside homes in Morecambe. My 1961 Bradshaw shows 5.42pm, 8.35pm and 9.25pm departures from Leeds, but now the route has been forgotten. What comes first – the chicken of a poor service or the egg of poor patronage?
There are still a fair number on board as we approach Carnforth – site of the successful Railway Magazine open days in 2008 – and I’m struck by how the disused coaling tower dominates the skyline, as similar structures used to at hundreds of locations in the steam era. In
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steam on shed are ‘Black Five’ 45231 and ‘Jubilee’ 5690 Leander.
I change at Lancaster for a quick trip to Preston before travelling over a route of great sentimental value to me, and one of major historical significance to steam. The Preston-Liverpool Exchange route saw the last timetabled steam-hauled standard gauge train in August 1968 and I hadn’t travelled over it since then. The service now operates only as far as Ormskirk where, a la Kirkby, you must walk past two sets of buffer stops to join Merseyrail’s electric service to Liverpool Central. I make the long trek to bay platform 3C at Preston to find No. 153378 waiting and ten passengers on board – a far cry from the 1960s when GlasgowLiverpool expresses as well as local trains T
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PART 2 OF NORTH-WEST ROVER: 50 years on – p40
April 2010 • The Railway Magazine • 5