A shed oddity . . . or normal practice?

[Eric Stuart]

Re Norwood Jc. Ooops. I think I was wrong, there was another link from Crystal Palace LL that had a half-hourly electric service plus frieght for the yards and that had to be crossed as well.

[Mallard]

IIRC, Doncaster, although not involving the crossing of any running lines, was quite a lengthy walk from the station. Then, at the end of a street of row houses we were rewarded with the view of the sheds below us in the distance. Utopia. Then, across a wide open space with allotments(?), there seemed to be a few hundred yards of walking through sidings to get to the actual shed area. We must have done this a few times and never once were we cautioned or chased out of there. How indelible these memories are.

Many years after you (probably about 1978) I was a passenger in a car full of spotters that 'swept' into the staff car park at Donny, parked up and we all tumbled out and 'bunked' the shed! Just recently I went on a 'reccy' to the Depot and I think you could still drive in (you can certainly drive around the area) but I got a distinct feeling that if you went roaming you would be arrested!
My only claim to civilised shed bashing fame (sadly blue diesel days) was when I cycled from Worksop to Shirebrook, knocked on the Gaffer's door and got a very warm cup of tea as well as a welcome and permission to roam! On completing my visit I tootled off to Chesterfield via Bolsover; Nowadays I can hardly cycle the mile to work!!
I also went to Toton sometime in the early 80's. This time I drove down to the shed (as on 'official' visits by coach), parked up and roamed around at will for hours!
Happy days, 36E
P.S I have bunked 36E GN in the last year! (Sadly no longer a steam shed of course!!!!!!!!!)

[52D]

Going from the ridiculous to the sublime in my last job i visited Derby works, Doncaster works, Crewe works, Horwich works, Toton shed, Brush works, various yards and 3 London underground depots its a wonder i got any work done.

[Meg Merrilies]

What seems dangerous to someone sitting at a desk doing a risk assessment may seem completely safe to the man on the ground.

Chaz

. . . there seemed to be a few hundred yards of walking through sidings to get to the actual shed area. We must have done this a few times and never once were we cautioned or chased out of there. How indelible these memories are.

And, if you obey the STOP, LOOK & LISTEN rule and cross carefully . . . It's called common-sense, which seems to be out of fashion in the UK today!

Chaz ~ 'Back in the day' neither we ("the trespassers") nor the railwaymen thought anything of the task of having to cross the running lines, and generally they were well aware of our to-ing and fro-ing but did little, and mostly nothing, to impede our activities.

Giner ~ as above, generally our weekend shed visits encompassed 64A, 64B & 64C and for the most part we were given free rein to come and go around as well as within the sheds. At one time, at Haymarket we were "informed" that in future we would have to report to the shed master to ask for permission to enter ~ but that requirement fell by the wayside soon enough. Indellible memories indeed !

Eric wrote of 'common sense'.
Ah, yes . . . I remember that!
I also remember that it was quite popular at one time.
Sadly, I also remember reading of its early passing.

[giner]

The farthest north we ever ventured, if we were flush enough from our paper round money, on top of our 8/6d return Sunday excursion from Stevenage to Doncaster (an A3 or V2 up front), would be to get on an express to York. Another easy 'bunk'. It really was a treat to cop some locos we'd never see 'down sarf' and I remember being intrigued by the orange station signs. Also, the daffodils growing on the banking of the city walls as we came out of the station. Sorry, I've gone off on a tangent now.

[chaz harrison]

Sorry, I've gone off on a tangent now.

Let's hear it for tangents! Half the charm of a forum is the asides - add a lot of colour to what could otherwise be a bit dull........

Chaz

[Meg Merrilies]

Let's hear it for tangents!

Chaz

O.K. ~ it doesn't take much of an invitation for me to go off at a tangent, so here goes.

In my previous post above I mentioned 64C as being one of my regular weekend haunts. 64C was Dalry Road (in Edinburgh) and it never was part of the LNER. Pre-1948 it had been an LMS shed (or even earlier a "Caley" shed) and into the 50s and 60s its main complement were LMR locos.

Sunday was the best day to visit as it was overflowing to bursting point and although it was only a fairly small shed comprising mainly 'work-a-day' locos, there was almost always one or more LMS 'exotica' in the shape of a Patriot, a Royal Scot, a Jubilee or sometimes a stonking great Crimson Lake Coronation laying over before the return "home" on the Monday.

That exotic loco would have been the power at the front end of a named train which would have arrived into Princes Street station (NOT Waverley station) around 6 PM on the Saturday night. That was a named passenger train which I think had possibly originated in Birmingham and made its way to Edinburgh via the West Coast route. Now, it must be an age thing, but for my life I can't remember the name of that train, nor can I be sure whether it was a Monday to Saturday train or if it was a Saturday only train.

Is there anyone here on the forum who can relieve my troubled mind and tell me the name of that train ? !!!

[stembok]

Meg Merrilies: The 'exotic' loco on 64C Dalry Road may have been off the Birmingham -Edinburgh. I'm not sure this had an official title, though these trains were sometimes referred to unofficially as 'Birmingham Scotsman' Most of the year I believe the train ran to Glasgow with an Edinburgh portion, but in summer and at holiday times ran separately. On 10/9/61 45595 5A? was on 64C having arrived on this train the previous day.

[Meg Merrilies]

Stembok ~ 45595 -- 'Southern Rhodesia' was, from July 1959, once again a Crewe North (5A) loco until September 1964 when she was transferred to Llandudno Junction (6G).

She probably made several visits to Dalry Road as I remember seeing her there on a few occasions.

. . . and just to wander off-topic again --- at some point after I had stopped actively train spotting (due to the murder of the steam loco) my mum, in her "clearing out wisdom" dumped all my Ian Allan locomotive and locoshed books which held my life memories of all the locos I had ever seen!

Has this happened to anyone else ???

[manna]

G'Day Gents
Yeah I did that by accident when we emigrated to Australia (see, Memories)
manna

[kudu]

Sorry to come late to this.

There may have been other depots where access involved crossing main lines, but I'm not sure any other example quite matches St Margaret's, where running sheds were on both sides of the line. Stratford, mentioned above, was a complicated tangle of lines, workshops and running sheds - no other major works I can think of were so entwined with lines and sheds in a single complex. But the sheds themselves were on a single site in the middle of all this.

Worcester had a separate "works", though I'm not sure whether they were classed as part of the depot. Worcester's two running sheds were also separated by sidings, as was Chester GW. Chester's turntable, however, WAS separated by running lines. At Wolverhampton Stafford Road the coaling area was some way from the sheds - so was Guildford's, to a lesser extent. But there were no running lines to cross.

Retford is a special case - two separate sheds classed as one by the LNER and BR.

[kudu]

While writing the above another name came to mind but somehow I missed it out. It is in fact the closest parallel to St Margaret's, having a longshed and roundhouse separated by running lines.

This is Stoke, where the original North Staffs Rly roundhouse, a huge building sadly now demolished, was supplemented by a longshed in LMS days. A unique feature of the roundhouse was its rotating crane in the roof for lifting the locos below. I'm sure when I visited we didn't cross the running lines, though, as was always done at the Edinburgh shed.

[James Brodie]

re Tangent-I saw it referred to in a crossword puzzle clues,
Dark brown gentleman running of at an angle
re tangerine my first british railways cap badge was tangerine.
The first and only engine shed I visited was Middlesbrough Shed, I wasn't impressed very much so went down the road to Newport Shed and started there as a engine cleaner.
To get to Newport from Middlesbrough direction you either crossed the two passenger lines then the goods lines, if a passenger train was coming then the wicket gate was locked by the signalman, you took your chances with the freight lines . Then about a mile walk along the riverside crossing some no block lines and shed sidings. The midway access was from near the Dog Track you went over the passenger lines by a footbridge then along a path to the up hump top crossing over the hump line walk alongside the number twenty one/two sidings and crossing about five or six running lines(goods) into the shed-or-from the Thornaby end - footbridge again , past the yardmasters offices and walking alongside running lines, sorting sidings from the now down hump with wagons creeping past you sometimes with a chaser riding over the wagon brake sat on a brakestick, alongside and nest to the old river the down goods sidings which brought you into the shed from the other end and walking over the two tables then into the foremans office.
My attempt at 'spotting' was short lived, standing at the level crossing south end of Stockton station an engine went by 57xx something or other so I on my scrounged scrap of paper wrote 57something. next another engine went by again 57xx but it seemed different. I asked another boy who had a blue-ish handbook with lots of numbers in it what the last engine was and the one before which seemed different. His reply which ceased my interest instantly was "oh you don't look at the engines just the numbers" and "they were both 57ers"
nuf sed

[52D]

Returning to the Y9s some of them had the cab end buffers removed and draw gear fitted for the chip carts so these were a permanent fixture on some of the class. If you are modelling this class make sure you have a good set of pictures of the one you intend to model as the differences between individual locos of this class is unbelievable.

[JustinTime]

Stembok ~ 45595 -- 'Southern Rhodesia' was, from July 1959, once again a Crewe North (5A) loco until September 1964 when she was transferred to Llandudno Junction (6G).

She probably made several visits to Dalry Road as I remember seeing her there on a few occasions.

. . . and just to wander off-topic again --- at some point after I had stopped actively train spotting (due to the murder of the steam loco) my mum, in her "clearing out wisdom" dumped all my Ian Allan locomotive and locoshed books which held my life memories of all the locos I had ever seen!

Has this happened to anyone else ???

Lost treasure
I can empathise with that but in my case, not my Ian Allan combined volumes, rather my Dublo 3 rail collection which was donated to a local jumble sale by my mother after I left home to marry.
I'm sure we spoke cordially to each other eventually by 1980 but the loss still hurts.

St Margarets
St Margarets and her environs were trainspotting nirvana for us, the shed itself, home to approx 200 locomotives and frequent visitors from the south. Best vantage point I think was on the embankment between St Margarets and the signal box opposite Piershill Square East.
Some of us would often stand on a narrow ledge behind what I think was a Railway Club, accessed from Jock's Lodge and looking down on the coaling stage, turntable and ash pits. Any desire I may have harboured for a career in British Railways was dashed by the sight of staff raking out the fire in the pit, ultimately having to shovel the whole lot up and over and into the wagons lying in the sunken wagonway. I understand from a conversation I had in later years with an ex Driver from St Margarets that most of this spoil was dumped somewhere off the Waverley line but where?

Dalry Road
I was a regular spotter from the age of 10 in 1959 till about early 1965 and in that time my visits to Dalry Road were very infrequent in comparison to the hours we spent at 'Maggies' and Portobello station.
In all those years apart from the regular Fives and the older Caley stock, the only notables I can remember copping were Agamemnon, Clan Mackenzie and City of Liverpool, the latter was actually spotted in Princes Street station at the head of a rugby special. Never for me a Scot or Patriot. Were the Patriots rebuilt completely as a class by this time?
Also, did Dalry Road have a turntable, or was there one at Princes Street by the signal box for turning engines? My last visit to both was in December '64 and the cells are going now!

Haymarket
My visits to Haymarket were curtailed very early as I soon developed an aversion to the many unpleasant (to me) aromas which always seemed to be in the air around this area. At that time in the west of Edinburgh there were many breweries, maltings, a wholesale chemical factory and even the Edinburgh Rock firm-Ross's i think, all within smelling distance of the shed, so it was a no-go area for me.

Seafield
Seafield was originally a Caley/LMS shed which I'm sure was used by the LNER after a pre nationalisation agreement. In its' latter years was mainly used as overspill shedding for St Margarets.
After closure in 1962, I can confirm that the turntable was still in excellent free spinning order as we were still able to turn it manually and cycle our bikes onto it to see where we would end up exiting, well we were still only barely in our teens!.........tame by the standards of today.