The LNER Encyclopedia

Anyone able to identify where on ex-LNER metals these famous locos are on excursions in the early 60s? Unlike previous posts I do know the answers, but thought you might enjoy a bit of a quiz. There's been a clue to the general whereabouts of the compound in some of my earlier ramblings.

61070. Is the MR Compound on the special (Don-Yor-Dar Flyer?)which ran to Doncaster and Darlington from the East Midlands 17/9/61? Given the coal on the tender and the shadows I'll have a stab at Eaglescliffe? Due to diversions on the ECML 1000 worked to Eaglescliffe and a K1? then took the train on to Darlington via Dinsdale. 1000 went to Thornaby 51L for servicing and picked up its return working at Eaglescliffe. Probably wrong, but it just seems familiar.

Wasnt there another tour that ran from the late lamented Dinting railway centre using these two locos and traversing bits of the former GCR before heading North to York?

Spot on, Stembok - and here are 3 more photos taken on this tour at Eaglescliffe.

The first must have been taken soon after the train's initial arrival from the south (note no coal visible in the tender; the new colour light signal which is about to replace the semaphore; also the rather well-dressed lady going to have a look at a strange red engine!);

Then two shots from the train showing enthusiasts on the platform, the first on arriving back from Darlington I think (looking back from the north end of the train?), then departing southbound. The picture first I posted was taken from the train when approaching from Darlington and passing the loco, which would have been waiting south of the platforms.

52D - you're well on the case, 4472 is indeed on the GC's 'London Extension' approaching one of the smaller stations. Not the same tour as MR1000 - apologies if I gave that impression (now we have the date of the photo of MR1000 clearly it coudn't have been as 60103/4472 was still in normal service then). Here's a 'going away' shot which might help.

Eaglescliffe: An imposing place in its heyday and an important junction with four platforms joined by an overbridge, containing the booking office, two signal boxes and an impressive track layout. I remember that there was a privately run bar and refreshment room at the south end of the station open in the evenings until around 1963. Today, one island platform remains with the rest cleared away, although the Grand Central services do call. Local folklore has it that the junction of 1853 should really be Egglescliffe, after the nearby village of that name,but that a signmaker mistakenly constructed the station sign as Eaglescliffe and so it remained. There would be no reason for it to be Eaglescliffe and would not be the first time this has happened in railway history.
The photograph of 4472 on the 'Isle of Wight Special', 1X50 18/5/63 must have been one of 4472's earliest rail tours in private ownership from Gainsborough via Leicester and Banbury to Southampton.

Is the GCR station Heath?

4472's passing Belgrave & Birstall station, on the northern outskirts of Leicester and just north of the current GCR's Leicester North station, on 18th May 1963 with, as Stembok says, the Gainsborough Model Railway Society's 'Isle of Wight Special'. Belgrave & Birstall station no longer exists (although the bridge remains); it nearly made it into preservation, but for many years it was isolated beyond the then southern terminus of the GCR and became extensively vandalised.

When I was young a family friend was a retired Leicester GC driver who'd driven the A3s. They had '103' at Leicester for a while in the early 1950s, but he said they didn't rate her very highly.

52D - I'm glad that you had a guess at Heath as I didn't know where that was, and when I googled 'Heath station GCR' I found a website I'd never been on before. It's a very well put together illustrated database of closed stations (not yet complete, but continuing to grow).

You guys probably know all about it, but discovering it for the first time has been a revelation.

Heath station is at http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/stat ... ndex.shtml

Belgrave & Birstall at http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/stat ... ndex.shtml
and http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/stat ... dex1.shtml

There are quite a few similar looking stations on the London extension. Incidentally i used to work for a company at Heath built on the old trackbed. The bridge still survives and so does the Station pub known locally as the pig.

There have been several anecdotal reports that at least in her single chimney days post-war 60103 was not one of the best of her class, mind you the subjective nature of driver's judgments have to be allowed for here, as ten drivers will have ten different opinions about one engine! And, in the 1950s conditions regarding maintenance were often difficult on the GC, as indeed they were in many places. A mechanically run down engine is not going to impress. In 1963 a Gateshead driver told me that 60022 Mallard -which he was driving at the time - was'no great shakes ' and 'a bit weak'. In all probability this was correct as at that particular time, as 22 had amassed a high mileage since her last general repair and was to be withdrawn shortly after.
The single chimney A3s -and indeed the A4s - were at times going through a difficult period in the early 1950s, often due to the general decline in the quality of coal affecting free steaming and were to be totally transformed by the general fitting of Kylchap double blastpipes and chimneys to the classes from 1957-58. Although, alas, rather late in the day.

Even pre-war it was sometimes felt that 4472, as she then was, was a 'star' because of her name, her association with the train of the same name and the celebrity of her regular driver Bill Sparshatt. I have heard it said that of the original batch of A1s 4471-4481 nos 4474/60105 and 4475/60106 at least were generally considered to be better engines overall.