The Last Days of Steam

[Deepol]

The above titled documentary is on BBC4 tonight at 8. It has been on before but worth seeing again how the investment in Standard Steam Locomotives was scuppered by the Modernisation Plan resulting in the premature scrapping of nearly new locos.

[Mickey]

I vaguely recall reading in either the Railway World or Railway magazine (about the only 2 monthly railway magazines on the market back in the 1970s?) saying that during the 1973 'oil crisis' a number of railway enthusiast's had raised the question that preserved steam locos in the national and private collections should be returned to traffic to ease the burden on diesel traction, of course it never happened but people were talking about the idea?.

It would have been interesting to still see a few B.R.9Fs and standard class 4 & 5 MT locos still 'knocking around' in the 1970s and maybe the 1980s as well??.

9F EVENING STAR only had a working life of about 5 years before being withdrawn!!.

[manna]

G'Day Gents

I seem to remember from that time, that some lightly used trains were cancelled,some others were rolled into one, with more stops.

And from a slightly different time, the joys of the three day week, again trains rolled into one, others cancelled, and even light bulbs removed from trains, to cut down on the amount of electricity used, I did a trip to Southampton which was a 8 car VEP, absolutely packed to the max and stopped at every station, took over two hours to get to Southampton, wish it had been a Merchant Navy on the front (could have taken three hours for all I would have cared)

manna