Preview

‘….under ze bridges of erm, Ealing, wiz me…’ to borrow from French film actor Maurice Chevalier, comes a ubiquitous WR Brush Type 4 Class 47 (possibly 47136) early on a summer Saturday evening with an air-braked InterCity from the west� Still travelling at 75mph at least, it will not start to brake seriously until Old Oak is passed unless signals intervene. The train is about to pass underneath Ealing Broadway station infrastructure before flashing through the mainline platforms. Beyond the far bridge in sight here, is West Ealing station and the junction for Greenford�

Moving further out of the London area we reach Slough and here on a hot summer’s day in 1976 an English Electric Class 50 (possibly 50026) thunders west with a down Inter City express for Devon and Cornwall. Nicknamed Hoovers from their engine noise, these locos proved to be worthy replacements of the Western Class 52s. The whole class was turned over to the WR once their original purpose of working north of Crewe on the LMR was no longer required by the electrification of the West Coast main line. I have often wondered if, by the setting of the headcode panel, someone with a sense of humour has unofficially named the loco ‘Western Enterprise’��

A quiet weekday afternoon in 1976 on the down main platform as a Class 50 heads London-bound through Slough on a set of Mark 2As and 2Bs. It is throbbing loudly at around 90mph as the driver applies power to maintain the momentum� Amazingly, into the third decade of BR, the station still has work for a Class 08 350hp shunter as pilot�

You can almost feel the air being shoved out of the way by this Brush Type 4 Class 47 as it slams through Slough’s down main platform with an Inter City for the west. The station still retains much GWR atmosphere from the glass behind the lone seated passenger, to the iron-work supporting the awnings� On the left is the Windsor Central branch bay� The line itself diverges to the left just beyond the road bridge, whilst on the right-hand side was the, now closed, branch into Slough Estates, which was one of the first industrial estates in the UK, established in the 1930s.

The station at the end of the short Slough to Windsor branch was palatial in size and breadth of planning, yet was only ever an elaborate branch terminus here occupied by a Southall-based two car DMU set consisting of a single-unit Class 121 (56289) and a non-powered driving trailer. That the shot was taken before the UK public’s obsession with German cars took hold can be seen by the single BMW CSi in the car park along with a Ford Capri 2, a Mini Clubman Estate, two Triumphs, a 1300 and a Herald, two Austin Maxis and a Toyota Crown Custom Estate �

Diverging from the WR main line at Maidenhead is the branch to Marlow and that terminus is shown here with another Class 121 (55031) single unit and driving trailer at the platform� Originally, the Marlow line was itself a secondary branch off a route which ran from Maidenhead to High Wycombe, but which was cut back, as part of the Beeching cuts, to Bourne End so that Marlow trains are now required to reverse there. Branches that are roots never occurred to BR accountants in post-Beeching times, as the section from Bourne End to High Wycombe, if open, would now take a lot of the heavy commuter traffic off the Marlow Bypass A404.

The Henley-on-Thames branch from Twyford has only one intermediate station and here, early on a summer Saturday evening, we see a service to Henley braking for the stop at Wargrave with passengers heading for an evening out and posters on the platform.The train is one of the then-ubiquitous Southall-based Class 117 Western Region 3 car DMUs, set L414. Early 1970s fashions have a lot to answer for…

One of the stalwart Southall-based WR Class 117 Pressed Steel 3-car DMUs (Set L413) after pausing at Twyford’s down relief platform on an all-stations stopper from London Paddington to Reading, pulls noisily away heading for the termination point of its journey� Soon, the characteristic twin plumes of exhaust will appear above the roofs of the vehicles, before the seemingly interminable wait whilst the next gear engages� These units bore the full responsibility of the WR’s London suburban services for more than 30 years and also covered all workings on the various London Division branches, such as that to Henley-on-Thames, the connection to which can be seen diverging to the left�

Hurrying westwards in 1976 is a Brush Type 4 Class 47 on a West of England express� By this time, train reporting codes were being electronically communicated from signalbox to signalbox, so there was no need any more for locomotives to display them� Hence the 0000 in the loco’s headcode box� Someone has obviously made some sort of almost successful effort to line up the zeros. Unusual!

Twyford station one summer Saturday afternoon in 1976 and Class 47, 47171, Brush Type 4 heads towards Paddington with the 1A15 10�30am Saturdays only service from Newquay to London. Already making well over 80mph after its Reading stop, the ride in one of the last-remaining wooden-bodied Gresley Buffet cars (W9135E) as the second vehicle here must have been an interesting experience. For many decades Twyford station required a 60mph, later raised to 75mph speed restriction on the main lines, as the route dog-legged around the signalbox and bridge abutments. This was all rectified in 1970 as the curves were eased and the platforms reshaped to allow for unrestricted speed. In this shot, the results can be clearly seen in the newly modified facings of the central island and newly laid track.

You can almost feel the heat and blare of the thrumming sound from the Western Class 52 as it gets well and truly into its stride having completed the Reading stop with an up South Wales express on a cold blustery March morning in 1974� The location is immediately east of the end of Sonning Cutting looking towards Twyford and the 52 is easily overtaking the trundling Class 31 (5687, later 31259) on an engineers train� It is a Saturday so the latter is heading towards London to be in position for a possession that night� As there was no longer any need for the erstwhile 75mph Permanent Way Slack (PWS) through Twyford station, the 52 is well into the 80s and swiftly approaching 90mph at this point�

Powering out of Sonning Cutting towards Twyford is a Brush Type 4 Class 47 on the 08�25am 1V18 from Birmingham to Paddington train on a Saturday morning in the 1970s� The train is entirely of Mark 1 stock and probably consists of carriages then intended for weekday Thames Valley peak-hour commuter services� Although these sets spent most daytimes in OOC sidings before returning home with their commuters, the Coaching Stock section made much use of them at weekends allocating them on anything from Footexs to Merrymakers. Few of those joining these carriages at, say, Didcot on a Monday morning would have realised that they had been to Blackpool, Margate, Tenby or York the day before.

In Sonning Cutting just after passing under the golf course bridge, this Western Class 52 is flat out as it accelerates its Mark 2A plus RB set away from Reading and heads for London on a Saturday morning in 1974� Fleet of foot, it was commonplace for Westerns to reach a cruising speed of 90-95mph on this stretch and cover the 36 miles in around 30 minutes or less� The train headcode is complete nonsense, but it is actually believed to be 09�55am Paignton-Paddington service (1A55) which turned at Paddington to form 1B73 (note the similarity) 14�30pm back to Paignton…

This is a classic Great Western Region shot and it has all the necessary ingredients! Hardly taxing a Class 52 Western, a solitary, but very smart, Siphon G van is hauled through Sonning Cutting one Saturday morning in early spring 1974� The cutting ends just around the corner followed by Twyford station, junction for Henley-onThames� The Siphon G looks to be just released from Swindon Works after refurbishment and is being returned to OOC Carriage Sidings�

The glamour and high speeds achieved by the trains on the fast lines may eclipse the relief line traffic, but these Pressed Steel 3 car Class 117 DMUs, all allocated to the specialised depot at Southall, plied their trade reliably for decades� Sometimes they were allowed onto the main lines on a rush-hour Oxford semi-fast and picked up their skirts to run at 70mph given the chance � In these circumstances it was advisable not to sit in the front power car to save your hearing and stay in your seat across the junctions at Slough�

Spotters at exit note down the numbers of a as it rattles past. The birthplace was in Malvern Link so it can consider itself an honorary Great Westernite!

On one of its last-ever diagrammed trips, the early evening down Bristol Pullman hurries past Reading General station� By this time these Pullman units’ exclusivity was mainly curiosity value, as their ride was considerably inferior to the Mark 2 coaching stock used by the WR on their InterCity routes�The corporate planners obviously hadn’t got to grips with Reading signage by this point, as although Reading Southern station had been demolished and replaced with the platform at which the London Waterloo-bound Southern 4 CIG unit is standing at, the main station is still, at this point, called Reading General� The appellation General being a very GWR way of saying their station was the more important if there was more then one in a town�

Rationalisation and the end of steam spelt closure for Reading Southern station and motive power depot by the early 1970s� They were replaced with a soulless prefabricated waiting room and a new platform attached to Reading General Station which was accessed from the Southern line by a short rising spur� It is perhaps ironic that the London Waterloo services at the time were being maintained by cascaded 4-COR EMUs that dated back to the 1930s themselves� Here 3156, itself assembled post war to replace a 4 BUF destroyed in the conflict, waits to leave for the capital looking the worse for wear in its final years of use, as well as being older than some of the steam locos that had been replaced� Behind, pausing at the Western Region station is Class 47 Brush Type 4 number 1907 (later 47231, then 57010 ‘Freightliner Crusader’), a regular on the route, with 1Z02, a special, possibly from the Bristol area …and possibly heading down the linking spur to the Southern itself!

A filthy, excess-fuel stained Western D1048 ‘Western Lady’ trundles down the ex GWR main line one cold March afternoon in the early 1970s with a freight from Acton Yard heading for Didcot and beyond.The story of the Class 52s was much the same as that of the Hymeks, suffering gradual loss of status as standardised motivepower was built, or cascaded in. At one time they enjoyed a monopoly of traction on the Birkenhead, Devon and Cornwall routes, but this shot graphically describes the story at the end of their days. However, 1048 was one of the lucky ones and survives in preservation today on the Midland Railway at Butterly, Derbyshire.

Not much of what is going on here survives today as D1048 ‘Western Lady’ continues to trundle its empty coal hoppers west towards Didcot. As an inevitable result of trying to clean up our environment, the power-station, cooling towers, locomotive and the hopper wagons have all exceeded their sell-by dates and been eliminated� The train itself will soon turn right to head north, back to the coalfields for the wagons to be replenished and returned to the House Coal Concentration Depot at Hayes…..and that’s gone too, having been opened with great fanfare in the early 1960s by no less then Dr Beeching himself.

A Hymek Class 35 D7022 runs along the water meadows near Theale station on a cold Saturday afternoon with a mixed freight containing a number of Bulk Grain wagons� By 1974, when this shot was taken, it was rare to see a freight train, other than one carrying stone, on the Berks and Hants line � This is a special, 8Z28 and the Grain wagons, which were not a common sight on BR by that time, add to the train’s rarity� In the summer, this was a great location for watching water-birds and trains at the same time �

Early in their careers on the WR the Hymeks were entrusted with expresses on the South Wales main line axis to and from London� This was a job that they coped with successfully despite being only of Type 3 classification.The arrival of increasing numbers of Class 47s meant that they were cascaded downwards to lesser services and by 1974, as in this second shot of D7022, they ended their days on menial duties when required.

On the day in 1971 that British Rail finally relented and agreed to allow the first steam-hauled train to run on its tracks since the summer of 1968, whilst paying a visit to the Didcot Steam Centre in order to observe King Class 6000 ‘King George V’ run past, this Peak Class 46 number D149 (later 46012) rolled into view light-engine, heading in the down direction towards Oxford. The loco carries an intermediate rail-blue livery as the numbers are still prefixed with ‘D’s.

A slightly down-at-heel and careworn Class 47 Brush Type 4 number 1909 (later 47232) is stabled in Didcot sidings one 1970s Sunday amongst a number of period-style engineers wagons� Still in its two-tone green but bearing the larger style numbers applied to diesels post-steam, this was a long-term Western Region engine spending much of its early life allocated to Bristol Bath Road. A possession was ensuring that the Swindon to Didcot section of the GW main line was blocked to normal traffic and 1909 is dozing away the Sunday waiting to be activated to return to site to help clear up wagons and workers, ready for a resumption of normal train working on the Monday morning

The locomotive is still with us today, awaiting restoration on the Wensleydale Railway in North Yorkshire, and is believed to be still in its final English, Welsh & Scottish Railway (EWS) livery. It carried 5 numbers, D1909, 47232, 47665, 47820 and finally 47785. On 11th June 1997 it became the first EWS Class 47 to be named. It was named ‘Fiona Castle’ by the widow of entertainer Roy Castle, to mark the running of the British leg of the final, 1997 Tour of Hope fundraising train for the Liverpool Lung Cancer Hospital�

The train ran from London Waterloo to Liverpool Lime Street station to coincide with the opening of the Lung Cancer Research facility that had been the focus of the original ‘Tour of Hope’ train that toured Britain in July 1994, raising £1m in three days�

All of this was some 25 years after this photograph was taken�

Originally numbered D0280 and named Falcon as a prototype diesel locomotive in 1962, it had emerged from the Brush works with Maybach engines as a possible ‘standard’ second-generation Type 4 to replace the Class 40s and spent time on the ER under test conditions, but in normal traffic. By the time this shot was obtained in late 1971 inside Swindon Works, it had been demystified and assimilated into the system as plain 1200. Allocated to Bath Road Bristol 82A it was used from there, almost as a common-user engine, on InterCity trains to and from London� As part of an unusual agreement, BR had purchased the loco outright from Brush at scrap value on condition that it was actually scrapped when BR had finished with it, and this finally happened in late 1975. The closest Warship is 862 ‘Viking’, withdrawn on 3rd October 1971 and is being stripped of usable spares before being broken up�

The doyen of the Western Class 52s, number D1000 ‘Western Enterprise’, undergoes considerable work inside Swindon Works late in 1971. There were sharp intakes of breath when it was new, as it was originally turned out in a sort of beige/mustard colour officially referred to as Desert Sand. Perhaps the most well-known official photograph of it in this colour was taken heading a train of vans and waiting in the side parcels platform at Paddington, which was situated just beyond and to the left of the end of Platform One. Dark green was also tried on a few following examples before coaching-stock maroon was decided upon as the standardised colour for the class. The locomotive was in Swindon Works from 1st November 1971 until 29th March 1972, for conversion to dual Air Brakes and fitted with the Automatic Warning System (AWS) as part of an Intermediate repair�

Western Class 52 ‘Western Emperor’ D1036 is in Swindon Works in winter 1971 for major mechanical work including an engine and bogie change. The new or refurbished components, with the engine displaying a turbocharger and a fluid coupling on the bogie, along with the bulk of the loco itself, are dwarfed by the massive scale of the GWR’s Swindon Works main erecting shop. It is not difficult to imagine rows of anything from Kings to Pannier Tanks awaiting work and final painting to gleaming condition in this enormous building. It is to be hoped that something was done about the loco’s shabby exterior too. D1036 was in Swindon Works from 20th October 1971 until 8th March1972, for conversion to dual Air Brakes and AWS as part of an Intermediate repair�

Nicely turned out in the latest rail-blue livery, English Electric Type 3 Class 37 strangely has had its original number – 6997 – reapplied instead of a new TOPS number. There were many cases of non-standard finishes on many different types of locomotives from all of the works on BR. Nice to know the corporate accountants’ tentacles didn’t get everywhere � In the background is a Hymek on jacks, probably having parts removed as a cannibalisation process to keep the dwindling number of these locos still surviving in action� The Class 37 became 37297 in the TOPS renumbering scheme and was later re-built as 37420 in the latter half of 1985 as steam heated coaching stock was eradicated from the BR network� The locomotive survived until 2008 before being cut up�

Out in the coaching-stock yard of Swindon Works, around the back, stands the famous Track Testing Car based on an original Dean carriage and colloquially known as the ‘Whitewash Coach’. Marshalled in a test train, any track irregularities causing the vehicle to sway too much caused a load of whitewash to be dumped on the track, so telling the men on the ground where to look for trackwork problems� Nearer the camera is a Collett BG full brake, but it is interesting to note that the Mark 2 FK in the background is mounted on Mark 1 bogies�