Hull to Hornsea motive power

[John B]

Hello Bricam5,

Welcome to the forum, it's always great and very interesting to have people on board with footplate experience, especially from my home town, you must have been "nobbut a lad" when you joined the railways?

The J73 illustrated in Peter Price's book is number 68361 was this your loco or was it 68360 or 68363?

68360 was, I think, allocated to Dairycoates, the other two to Botanic.

Did you have much fun or was it all "ard graft" as my mother used to say. I expect there would be a lot of waiting around for traffic, how did you pass the time?

Were the J73's well liked engines and easy to fire? I see they were designed by Wilson Worsdell and built by the old North Eastern in 1891 so they were getting on a bit.

Cheers

[bricam5]

Thanks for the welcome John B.
Yes I was a lad when I joined, I am 77 now and still mourn the passing of steam. As to the engine No. Sorry but I'm damned if I can remember it now. As for firing,well. after all those years I can give the Wilmington secrets away. On the morning turn,we used to go to the coaling stage and then run alongside the coal stacks and fill the fire box full to the brick arch with the biggest lumps of coal we could lift and then whistle out for the Botanic crossing and cruise to Wilmington with the two of us hanging out of the cab side in case of blow backs.

With a bit of deft damper management and keeping the firehole door open when idle,this "Hole Full" lasted 'till mid-day when I cleaned the fire for the back shift crew. The back shift fireman had to fire it then but the work was light but repetative and I was glad when I moved to spare link where there was lots of variety but un-sociable hours.

I am from Hull and that was and is my spiritual home. Bradford was a different story. No accent on the different,just different.

[50C]

In the 1950s i used to go to Hornsea from Selby via Hull. We used to stay opposite Hornsea Bridge station(Hornsea Town was the terminus). I seem to recall in the early 1950s the motive power consisted of LMS Fowler 2-6-2Ts,C12 4-4-2T(67391 to 67397) and A8 4-6-2Ts.
Prior to dieselisation we were left with the A8s and I think some A5s made an appearance
All the locos were allocated to 53B Botanic Gardens
We also saw the odd LMS 4mt from 53A with a 53A J25 on the local pickup goods

Hope this is of interest


50c

[bricam5]

I was at Botanic Gardens up to 1953/54 'till I moved to Bradford.

Hull to Hornsea/Withernsea C12's. A8's, A5's, L1's, G5's and BR 4MT's and I recall doing one run with a "borrowed" A7.
I do not ever recall seeing a LMS Fowler tank at Botanic shed,certainly up to my leaving there.
I know that after I moved to Bradford loco,the C12's were withdrawn and V class LNER tanks were used.

I am talking passenger services as thats all (apart from Wilmington and Stepney pilots) Botanic did.

In summer times,Botanic borrowed engines from Dairycoates but these were used for other lines as the turntables at both Withernsea and Hornsea could not manage anything bigger than a class R(D20)

[John B]

I have a photo sent to me by a friend of an LMS Fowler 2-6-2T opposite the water tower at Hornsea. Here is my list with sources of information of Locomotives known to have worked the Hornsea line.


Locomotives found on the Hull to Hornsea Railway line

Locomotives positively identified from photographs, on the Hornsea lines, there are twelve different classes but almost certainly there were others. Any additions would be welcome.

1.1 L1 2-6-4T Thompson, RA7, (Price, page 22, of 67755, en route to Hornsea
& page 53, in LNER Lines of 67766 at Swine)

1.2 A8 4-6-2T Raven, RA5, (Price, page 50, of 69855 en route to Hornsea,
several of these engines were allocated to Botanic Gardens shed 53B until
March 1953)

1.3 V1 2-6-2T Gresley, RA6, (Price, page 62, of 67663 at Hornsea Bridge)

1.4 J23 0-6-0 Stirling, RA4?, (Price, page 64, of two engines at Hornsea
Town Station – pre 1938)

1.5 C12 4-4-2T Ivatt, RA5, (Price, page 65, of 67371 at Hornsea Town
Station – There were sixteen of these locomotives shedded in Hull in
1935)

1.6 Class 4MT 2-6-0 Ivatt, RA5, (Price, pages 55 & 57, of two engines, one at Swine , the other at Ellerby. Six of these engines were allocated to 50B – Dairycoates shed in 1964 & Bairstow, page 52, of 43069 at Hornsea Bridge)

1.7 Class 3MT 2-6-2T Fowler RA3, (Photo supplied in a private email by “Colombo”
from the LNER forum of one of these locomotives taking water at Hornsea Town
Station, (very poor quality photo) also Yeadon, page 98 taken in 1955 when several
of these locomotives were allocated to Botanic Gardens shed 53B)

1.8 A5 4-6-2T Robinson, RA5, (Price, pages 20 and 23, number 69802,
Botanic Gardens on train to Withernsea & LNER Lines page 53 of 69836 at Hornsea Town)

1.9 Class 3MT 2-6-0 BR Standard class 3, RA4, (77010, Bairstow page 50, on a special at Wilmington en route to Hornsea)

1.10 Class D20 4-4-0 Worsdell, RA6 or D2 4-4-0 Ivatt, RA4, Reference source
possibly a visual sighting verbally recorded by – David Edwards??

1.11 Class A6 4-6-2T Raven rebuild of Worsdell design, RA4, (69795 Hill & Vessey on
page 108, at Hornsea Town)

1.12 Class Sentinel (A quotation from Goode, page 81 “The Railways of East Yorkshire” Oakwood, 1981. Sentinels worked the Sunday services)

[bricam5]

Just in case there was any misunderstanding,my posts to this thread are based on engines that I have personaly fired or seen on these lines and as I was based at Botanic Loco,my experience(apart from Wilmington pilot) was all passenger work. I know there were pickup goods on both these lines which would be worked from Dairycoates which I never saw. As to what the Dairycoates loco's would or could be, I will not hazzard a guess as Dairycoates seemed to have as motley a collection of engines as could be found anywhere.

As was mentioned earlier in this thread, my driver told me once that the old class R (D20) used to run to withernsea when he was a fireman.

[Rambler]

In Martin Barker's "Illustrated History of Hull & Barnsley locomotives Volume 1, The Locomotive Classes" the same picture of three H&BR locomotives at Hornsea appears on page 73, and the nearest is stated to be 2475 (although I can't read it's number from the picture in the book). There is also a mention on page 137 that the H&BR 4-4-0s were used on the Hornsea and Withernsea branches.

This book also has many photos of H&BR 0-6-0s reboilered with domed boilers but retaining the original cab.

Intriguingly there is mention of an Appendix, "packed with drawings", but I don't think this ever got published.

[Dave Le Grove]

On a slightly different tack, has anyone got any photos of StoneferrySignal Box please.
I am a past S& T out of Hull Paragon circa 1959. and used to spend some time in the box with Dennis Coward who was one of the signalmen there.