The LNER Encyclopedia

I know this might ruffle a few feathers-but can anyone explain why Gateshead locos always look filthy in photos?In books about steam,or for that matter Deltics,why do the authors always say "typically Gateshead appearance".Was there a lack of washing facilities there? I know Geordies are clean folk(my best man is one),so why the grimy engines?

In steam days it was probably a lack of cleaners locally. I remember reading something by a well known photographer who said he never bothered taking shots of Gateshead A4s because they were always filthy dirty. Peter Townsend (ex Kings Cross Top Shed ) wrote that one day his staff cleaned up one of the 52A A4s and within hours he started getting phone calls asking if the engine concerned had been transferred to 34A.

I don't think it was just Gateshead engines, FF - New England didn't seem to be able to keep theirs clean, either. Hardly surprising when you think how unattractive a job being a cleaner was.

In later days i can only remember clean locos out of the works or specially prepared locos for railtours/excursions etc and of course locos cleaned by the stalwarts of the MNA. Including a lovely clean 9F and K1s on the last day at Alnmouth shed

In very early B R days Gateshead engines seemed to be quite tidy in their appearance and it was later in the 1950/60s that they began to gain their 'grimy Gateshead ' reputation. I was once told that this was due to a shortage of cleaners who were soon out firing after joing the railway at Gateshead? Mind you, as 52D said, even the Gateshead diesels were dirty in the early days. In June 1962 for the accelerated summer services Finsbury Park and Haymarket turned their Deltics out in absolutely immaculate condition.Gateshead's? Grimy, bodies streaked with oil and brake dust! It should also be remembered that at King's Cross some of the engine cleaners were employed as such and were not in the footplate line of promotion,which no doubt helped matters. A Gateshead driver once told me when I tweaked him about the shed's dirty engines that as long as they were ok mechanically was what mattered. Perhaps others on the site might comment on this? In its last couple of years with steam the shed had a number of keen lads as cleaners who, when they got the chance, would really go to town on an A3 or A4. I remember 60005 on the Berwick 'stopper' one night gleaming after their efforts, though I personally wasn't keen on their over use of aluminium paint on the A3s.

The 37's were always filthy due to the ammount of coal traffic around the area and the fact that they didn't always get back to Gateshead Depot very often. I didn't see loco's going through the washer there very often. Maybe there was a problem with it. Over to everybody else that's from that area!

After the war, conscription didn't help. As soon as a youth hit eighteen he was seconded into the forces so that many cleaners were passed as firemen to replace the conscripts so very little loco cleaning was done.
Even when the conscripts were demobed, the situation was that they had to spend some years with the TA resulting in yearly camps plus compulsory training each week resulting in passed cleaners on the footplate and not cleaning.

bricam5: In the 1950s things were so bad in some places over recruitment of locomotive staff that Sir Brian Robertson, Chairman of the BTC, and a distinguished former military man, tried, unsuccessfully, to get footplate staff classed as being in a reserved occupation and not therefore liable to 'call up' for National Service. One problem was that many called up never returned to the railways. Another worry in the 1950s was the number of experienced men leaving the railways, after perhaps ten to fifteen years service. A neighbour in those days,who was a passed fireman, left in the early 1960s after 17years, citing the unsociable hours worked. Previously, the railways had been seen as a secure occupation and a job for life, things which often outweighed the more unpleasant and ant-social aspects of the job, such as the grime and the ungodly hours. In 1961 the LMR were reduced to gathering up diesel shunters from all over the region and concentrating them in the Birmingham area, due to a shortage of firemen for steam shunters and a Western Region internal memo at around the same time spoke of the number of freights cancelled due to crew shortages. Recruitment problems ,together with rising operating costs and problems with the quality and price of fuel, led to the headlong dash to replace steam on B R, as much as the operating economies which dieselisation permitted. Some 15 years ago there were a couple of excellent articles by Colin Churcher in one of the railway magazines. As a university student in the early 1960s he applied for vacation work as a fireman on the LTS in the last days of steam! Sure enough, within days of beginning and the most rudimentary training, he was firing on commuter services, which shows how desperate things often were in the larger cities.

Having spent 100s of hours in the 1950s spotting at Selby on the ECML I saw all the pacifics many times over(except for the Scottish ones) and I must agree that the Gateshead pacifics
were by far the dirtiest.You could tell at a distance long before the name or number was visible you knew that it belonged to 52A.Sometimes the cab side numbers were unreadable.The worst two which stick in my mind were the first two A4s,Sir Ronald Matthews and Sir Murrough Wilson-happy days

50C

There was a thread on the forum last November which showed a picture of some grimy pacifics, but the pictures are no longer there. Anyway, the thread was

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1875&p=12090&hilit ... up+#p12090

Now I don't know whether any of the locos were shedded at Gateshead, but what I was going to say was, I like 'em dirty. It made them look like the business. And modellers sometimes go to great lengths to replicate the look, so it can't be all bad.

Saddest sight I ever seen as a spotter in the Gateshead area was A4 Silver King passing through Pelaw Junction on its way to Tyne Dock with a coal train, it was so filthy it was only identified because the crew had bothered to clean the cabside number for the benefit of spotters, it was leaking steam from just about every joint and pouring out black clag, the image is still vivid in my mind.
Not often you seen a 52A cleaned loco in Greenesfield near the end of steam, having said that their diesels were just as bad.