Steam Days - May 2021 - Preview

GWR OLD AND NEW BUILD – A FRESH PERSPECTIVE

May 2021 | £4.90

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RETFORD – AN EAST COAST MAIN LINE CROSSROADS CINOLFOUULLR

MAY 2021 £4.90

PLUS ‘BRIEF ENCOUNTER’ AT ACHNASHEEN

LIFE AND TIMES OF ‘N15’ SIR LAMORAK

CHESTERFIELD IN THE STEAM ERA

No 381

Cover: Having just crossed over the GN/GC flat crossing at the south end of Retford station, Gresley ‘V2’ No 60896 nears the River Idle bridge with an afternoon up fitted goods service. Recently transferred to Doncaster shed, on 9 October 1960, the 2-6-2 will soon begin the climb of the 3½ mile-long Gamston bank, 1 in 178/200, past Eaton Wood, Gamston box and through Askham tunnel.

Keith Pirt, courtesy Book Law Publishing

May 2021

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Trains of thought

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‘Brief Encounter’ at Achnasheen Eric Stuart shines a spotlight on a long-standing restaurant car exchange at an isolated station on the Kyle of Lochalsh route, a very busy 15 minutes.

12 Steam Days at Chesterfield The second largest town in Derbyshire, Stanley C Jenkins MA provides a historical overview of the Midland, Great Central and LD&ECR lines in and around Chesterfield.

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Rebuilt to ‘O4/8’ in 1955, GCR Robinson ‘8M’ class No 63914 is shunted by another 2-8-0 while at home on Retford’s ex-GCR shed, Thrumpton, in June 1961. Keith Pirt, courtesy Book Law Publications

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MAY 2021

30 Steam Days subscriptions 32 STEAM DAYS in Colour 197: Retford – an East Coast main line crossroads Famed for its flat crossing where the Sheffield-Lincoln route crossed the East Coast main line at right angles until 1965, we look at the interaction and we look at the interaction and variety of these two routes in the last years of steam.

42 Old Build – New Build GWR David Bradshaw reveals how arguably ‘forgotten’ locomotives are at the heart of the recreation of GWR types thought to have been lost forever.

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The life and times of ‘N15’ Sir Lamorak The Urie and Maunsell ‘King Arthur’ class 4-6-0s were a mainstay of Southern passenger services for over three decades. Andrew Wilson uncovers the working life of one of the last at work.

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Reviews

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Tail Lamp – readers’ letters www.steamdaysmag.co.uk

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TRAINS of thought

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Next month...

A 1958 summer’s day at Blackpool Loco profile – LNER ‘B17/6’ class 4-6-0 No 61668 Bradford City Landore engine shed North and east of Maryhill – an NBR perspective Southern Freight in the South West in full colour On sale Thursday, 20 May 2021

his month, in our series of articles profiling specific steam locomotives, we take a look at the life and times of ‘King Arthur’ class ‘N15’ 4-6-0 No 30451 Sir Lamorak. Usurping a lingering Urie plan to rebuild ten Drummond 4-6-0s as mixed traffic ‘H15s’, ‘N15s’ Nos E448-457 were, in fact, Urie-pattern locomotives with Maunsell/Clayton modifications, and Sir Lamorak was one of the first five to be erected. They were built at Eastleigh to the L&SWR loading gauge, their Drummond/Urie cabs restricting them to working the Southern Railway’s Western Section. Of the five engines completed in the late spring and early summer of 1925, Sir Lamorak was the last to be withdrawn, in June 1962.

My own memories of the ‘King Arthur’ class 4-6-0s take me back to the 1950s when this particular batch of ‘Arthurs’ was allocated to Salisbury, from where they worked Waterloo-Exeter trains. Sadly, I never saw any of the first five built from 1925 as most of our family holidays in the late 1940s and early 1950s were taken in Bournemouth, where I saw Nos 30736 to 30754 as these were based on the Bournemouth line at that time. In fact, these earlier-built engines (new between August 1918 and February 1923) were modified from 1928 with new reduced diameter cylinders.

Both as a young schoolboy and throughout my life, although my family spent many summer holidays in Bournemouth, I was never one for sitting all day on the beach. I preferred to be doing something, like spending time on Bournemouth station or travelling around on trolleybuses. Even now, I find it hard to relax, otherwise why am I still working as many hours as I do at 87? As a young trainspotter I was always fascinated by the names of locomotives and their origins, and Bournemouth was a great place to witness many named locomotives, like ‘King Arthur’ and ‘Lord Nelson’ class 4-6-0s, ‘Schools’ class 4-4-0s and Bulleid Pacifics, and those named after the Knights of the Round Table were no exception.

Browsing through my Ian Allan abc at the time, and seeing the list of engines in the class named after Knights of the Round Table, until then I had not realised that there were so many Knights having seen images of the Round Table with limited seating. In his writings, Sir Thomas Mallory only very briefly mentioned some of the names that were selected for use by the Southern Railway for its ‘King Arthur’ class, and some engines of the class even carried the names of ‘Ladies of Legend’, such as Linette, sister of Lady Lyonnese. Of all the ‘Ladies’ that the Southern Railway selected to grace its engines, it is surprising that Morgan le Fay was not chosen, as she was King Arthur’s sister. However, when the names of the ‘King Arthurs’ were later given to the Southern-based BR Riddles ‘5MT’ 4-6-0s, Morgan le Fay was included, on No 73112.

Since producing Steam Days magazine over the years since 1993, I have learned a great deal about specific locomotives and the people and places that locomotives were named after in our ‘Locomotive Names & their Origins’ and ‘Life and Times’ articles – a history lesson in themselves – and I hope that all our readers find these features interesting too. Please continue to enjoy your read and recall your own special memories.

Steam Days Magazine Recently paired with the Urie tender from No 30785 Sir Mador de la Porte, Salisbury-based ‘King Arthur’ No 30452 Sir Meliagrance gets underway from Exeter (Central) with the 10.37am local service to Templecombe on 29 June 1957. It wasn’t until a board of directors meeting in December 1924 that a decision was made to name the hitherto anonymous ‘N15’ class as ‘King Arthurs’. The yet to be delivered new locomotives were to be named after Knights of the Round Table, with the pre-grouping order receiving names of persons and places associated with them, including King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. R C Riley

MAY 2021

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