Green Arrow

[61070]

Chaz - hope you don't mind if I gatecrash your thread, but Flamingo's quiz has given me the idea to post this photo and I can't resist continuing in quiz mode. Ten points to anyone who can identify where the wandering 2-6-2 is here. I can come back with some clues, but the points will reduce!

[61070]

Some clues: the photo of 4771 was taken in summer 1973 from an overgrown, long-disused platform.
The photo below shows the same bridge and the platform, but note that neither the L&NWR 2-4-2T nor 4771 is on home turf.

[chaz harrison]

No problem with anyone posting good snaps of V2s in the topic, but you might be pushing your luck with strange tank engines from Crewe!

I'm afraid I have no idea of 4771's location. The LQ semaphore in the earlier picture looks Midland Railway.

Chaz

[61070]

Sorry Chaz - 50p in the swear box and another photo of Green Arrow to make amends and by way of a further clue. This picture was taken at a shed just over a mile north of the site of the bridge, but three years earlier - 30th July 1970 to be precise. And you are right about the signal.

ps - as HA Ivatt and Gresley both trained at Crewe perhaps they wouldn't really mind the occasional nod in that direction if they are looking in on this forum from the great drawing office in the sky!

[chaz harrison]

Nice turntable shot, Ten Seventy, shame the stalls behind the V2 aren't full of other locos. (Also a shame about the amount of rubbish accumulated in the TT well.)

I am sure that both Ivatt and Gresley as professional designers and engineers would have taken a keen interest in the goings on at other railway centres*, Crewe included. The North Western locos seem very old fashioned to me. Put a Claughton alongside a Gresley A1 and there seems little contest.

*this doesn't mean we have to be nice to GWR enthusiasts! Polite disdain is best.

Chaz

[chaz harrison]

Oh, I forgot my guess (and it is a guess), Midland Railway roundhouse, how about Leicester?

Chaz

[52D]

Maybe the pic was taken at Derby works.

[Bryan]

Does the tram on the overbridge give any clue?

[52D]

If it is a tram clue it has to be Manchester, Sheffield or Nottingham.

[61070]

Yes indeed sir, Leicester it is.

It's perhaps not very well known that 4771, 44027, 63601 and 49395, plus MR 118 and 158A were all at Leicester Midland MPD for a year or two at the end of the 1960s. They were earmarked for a proposed East Midlands Museum of Technology which was to have been built in Leicester. It never happened, and the first four listed were taken away in July 1970. It was during preparation for this departure that I took the photo of 4771 on the turntable.

4771 went to Norwich and was restored to operating condition there, as Flamingo says. I'm not sure if it went to Norwich direct from Leicester, or spent time somewhere else first.

The first photo that I posted was taken when 4771 passed southbound through Leicester in summer 1973. It's about a mile south of Leicester London Road station, and the bridge carries the Welford Road over the quadruple track midland main line. I'm not sure of the date, purpose or destination of this move, but I seem to remember that it originated at Norwich. Was this the loco's first post-restoration foray onto the main line? If anyone can confirm that, and/or give the date and the destination, I'll be very grateful. All I have is the slide mount, dated 'JUL 73' during processing.

Anyway, here are two more shots on the same occasion, the first showing 4771 approaching Leicester from the north (MPD to the right). The vantage point was the famous 'birdcage', a fenced footpath where many of us spent a happy hour or three on Saturdays in the 1960s. 4771 took water at the station so I looked in there, took the second photo and was able to get ahead on my bike for the shot at Welford Road bridge.

Chapter and verse on the latter location can be found at http://www.lnwrs.org.uk/Mystery/A051/M053.php , where the shot of the LNW 2-4-2T is discussed on in detail (having been posted as a 'mystery photo'), including identification of the tram.

I agree with your comment Chaz about contemporary Crewe and Doncaster design and development. It seems that Crewe Works provided good opportunities for aspiring young engineers to get a thorough grounding in manufacturing techniques, but it was also an environment which, having achieved that, innovative people would want to leave before their potential became stifled by the sheer inertia of the place.

[chaz harrison]

Ten Seventy,

Your shot overlooking the signal box is unmistakably Leicester (even without the give away sign on the depot wall).

Ooh, look at those two railway employees standing in the four foot to take their snaps. No high-vis jackets. And the one in the brown top probably the signalman (should know better). Sackable offence?
Puts the modern paranoia about enthusiasts into perspective?

Chaz

[StevieG]

Although legitimately on-track daily, we only started getting issued with first orange items (mini-vest with rubber buttons) about 1970.
And I think traincrew were not necessarily issued with anything until later still, and ensuring it was worn was a slow process as I recall things, with their then going on and off track frequently, though often only briefly, plus a perception that perhaps 'we're a breed apart', probably not only held amongst their 'ground floor' staff, either.

[StevieG]

... " It's perhaps not very well known that 4771, 44027, 63601 and 49395, plus MR 118 and 158A were all at Leicester Midland MPD for a year or two at the end of the 1960s. ...."
.... " 4771 passed southbound through Leicester in summer 1973 " ....
.... " Anyway, here are two more shots on the same occasion, the first showing 4771 approaching Leicester from the north (MPD to the right). .... "

Many thanks for these lovely shots.

The originals are, I presume, colour slides. Through enlarged viewing of particularly, the 'approaching from the north' photo, might I ask how, and with what, they have been scanned, to produce a file of only medium-ish (<500Kb) size, yet still having so much detail discernible when magnified?

[manna]

G'Day Gents
Some great shots there, I wonder what the signal box scene looks like today??? I suppose the roundhouse is a DIY warehouse


I was issued one of those high vis mini jackets, probably 1974, almost impossible to put on if you had your overcoat on, and in a loco cab at the same time, I never did those little rubber buttons up, there was always at least six inches between button and button hole, use to wrap it round our necks like a scarf
manna

[twa_dogs]

AAaaaaaah wishful thinking?