A Privileged Journey

by David Maidment

  30453 King Arthur passing Woking Golf Course with the 2.54pm Waterloo–Salisbury, September 1959.

  ‘Merchant Navy’ 35030 Elder Dempster Lines nears the summit at Milepost 31 with the 3pm Waterloo–West of England, 11 July 1956.

  30804 Sir Cador of Cornwall with a down ballast train near Woking Golf Course, September 1959.

  From August 1960, the proud possessor of a second-class honours degree and a letter from the Ministry of Defence informing me of the abolition of National Service, I obtained employment as a clerk in the London Divisional Passenger Office of the Western Region Operating Department, continuing my regular commuting to Waterloo until I started as a Western Region Management Trainee in the autumn of 1961. As I had to be at Paddington by 9am the ‘Nelson’-hauled 7.51 Woking, due Waterloo at 8.22, was ideal. During this period I became pretty familiar with the performance of the regular locomotives and crews. I had a lot of experience of the ‘Lord Nelsons’, behind which I’d previously travelled every Thursday on this train (which set off from Southampton Terminus at 6.4am) in order to be present for the one weekly college lecture that started at 9am, and often, during my daytime meanderings, on the 10.54am Waterloo–Basingstoke as far as Woking. Altogether I clocked up 383 runs behind the Maunsell ‘Nelsons’ between 1957 and 1962 — and not one of them was memorable in the positive sense of the word. They were known to all local enthusiasts as ‘Nellies’, and the word that comes to mind when describing them on the move is ‘waffle’, which perhaps sums up my impression of them overall. Of course, their soft exhaust from the wide Bulleid chimney and the eight beats per revolution (save in the case of 30865) reinforced the impression that they shuffled along in a very ‘understated’ way.

  ‘Lord Nelson’ 30865 Sir John Hawkins leaving Woking with the 11.53am Woking–Waterloo, a semi-fast from Basingstoke, 29 December 1958.

  I cycled to Woking from my home and left my bike in the bushes outside the station (I couldn’t afford 1/3d a week to leave it in the station lock-up) and would run across the forecourt as the haze of brown smoke drifted lazily from the loco’s chimney as it slunk into the station — always a couple of minutes late. (I relied on this, as 7.51am is an early hour for students!) I could give no other morning train this latitude. I would set up my beach stool in the corridor (I hardly ever got a compartment seat) and watch the countryside roll gently past as the ‘Nellie’ took usually 5 minutes to clear West Byfleet (‘King Arthurs’ would do it in 4 minutes and Bulleids anything from 3½ to over 5, depending on how much they slipped). Cruising speed around Hersham/Esher was usually around 60-65mph; a good run would make 68mph, and 14-15 minutes to clear Surbiton was the norm. My ‘par’ on other trains was 70-75mph around Esher and 13½ minutes to Surbiton. (For typical runs on this train see Appendix, Table 4.)

  I talked to many drivers during this time, and the general view of the ‘Nelsons’ was that they was hard to fire compared to the Bulleids, Standards and ‘King Arthurs’ — they had a long firebox requiring careful firing, and few Eastleigh firemen in the late 1950s were really masters of them. As a result they were rarely steaming well by the time they reached Woking, and in winter we used to joke that we could have steam heating or get to Waterloo on time but never both! In reality that was false, because we rarely reached Waterloo at 8.22 anyway (it was usually between 8.25 and 8.28), but I can remember some classic occasions when the insides of the carriage windows froze over, and bowler-hatted city gents were rolling up the Financial Times and shoving it up their trouser legs! (And I’m not joking!)

  On the 10.54am Waterloo–Salisbury they had a much easier job: only four coaches, and 31 minutes allowed, fast line to Hampton Court Junction and slow line thence to Woking. Even so, they could still get into trouble, and I can remember one morning when 30850 Lord Nelson distinguished himself by achieving 47mph at Vauxhall, and speed fell away for the rest of the journey! Another, much harder job dominated by the ‘Nellies’ was the 10.35pm Waterloo–Weymouth news and mail, comprising about fifteen coaches and mail vans. It started from two platforms, the loco drawing out the mail portion from platform 11 and backing onto the passenger coaches at platform 10 a few minutes before departure. Progress was usually pedestrian, but I can recall one night when 30851 Sir Francis Drake was worked really hard and produced a spectacular fireworks display that must have been visible over the whole of Surrey, and in Berrylands Cutting our coach was bombarded with red-hot coals the size of golf balls! (See Appendix, Table 5.)

  My slowest-ever journey between Waterloo and Woking was on the same train with 30854 Howard of Effingham. It clearly ran out of steam, and by Weybridge speed had dropped to 28mph; by West Byfleet we were creeping through the station at 8mph, and we finally expired halfway up Woking’s platform 4, with all the passenger vehicles off the platform. We had to wait twenty-five minutes for 30854 to raise enough steam to drag us into the station before we could alight. It eventually woofled out of Woking a staggering 89 minutes late, in a shroud of leaking steam and with 80% of its journey still to be completed. (For my ‘disaster’ runs see Appendix Tables 4 and 5.)

  Despite my predilection for ‘King Arthurs’, which meant I chose a train likely to be hauled by one of those ‘knights’ whenever possible, I of course had many more runs behind Bulleid Pacifics, ‘Nelsons’, ‘Schools’ and the Standard Class 4 and 5 4 6-0s. I kept a meticulous record of these runs, although I timed only some of them in detail, and find that over the four years of commuting (three to University and one to Paddington) the following were locomotives behind which I travelled most frequently:

  30450 Sir Kay between Woking and Brookwood with the 2.54pm Waterloo–Salisbury, September 1959.

  A one-time St Leonards ‘Schools’ now transferred to Nine Elms, 30903 Charterhouse, calls at Woking with the 12.54pm Waterloo–Salisbury in 1960.

  During those years of commuting (1957-61) I travelled behind all the ‘Merchant Navies’, all the ‘West Countries’ and ‘Battle of Britains’ except for 34035, all the ‘Lord Nelsons’, all the ‘Scotch’ and Eastleigh ‘King Arthurs’ except for a handful that were on the Eastern Section at that time and would be withdrawn after the Kent Coast electrification without ever being transferred to the Western Section (30766, 30769, 30776, 30792 and 30801) and most of the ‘Schools’, including 30903, which was named after the school I had attended and which frequently graced the 12.54pm Waterloo–Basingstoke following its reallocation to Nine Elms and before its eventual transfer to Guildford to spend its last days on the ‘Rattler’. The most frequent representatives of the other types behind which I travelled over the route during this period are listed below.

  ‘H15’ (Urie)

  30489

  (14)

  30491

  (16)

  ‘S15’ (Maunsell)

  30827

  (8)

  ‘H15’ (Maunsell)

  30478

  (6)

  30521

  (6)

  ‘S15’ (Urie)

  30499

  (4)

  ‘U’ (2-6-0)

  31630

  (4)

  31635

  (4)

  31798

  (4)

  ‘L1’ (4-4-0)

  31786

  (2)

  31788

  (2)

  Tableau 5

  Hungerford Bridge, March 1958

  I’ve got a free morning today — my first tutorial is after lunch. However, I need to buy some new books which my professor has indicated to be required reading next term — plays by Schiller and Kleist. The best bookseller is in a small cul-de-sac parallel to Villiers Street by Embankment tube station — the previous year’s students have tipped us off to get our paperbacks here rather than at Foyles or one of the bigger expensive bookshops. I’ve caught my usual train to London, therefore, the 6.45 Salisbury, with 34055 Fighter Pilot, in my view Salisbury’s best ‘Light Pacific’, and we’ve arrived at Waterloo on time at 9.16am. I could walk over Hungerford Bridge
or even use my Underground season ticket to take me to Embankment, but as I’ve got plenty of time I decide to purchase a single ticket from Waterloo East to Charing Cross and cross Hungerford Bridge in style!

  I stand on the deserted main-line platform — everyone else is on the middle platform awaiting down expresses or on the far platform for one of the myriad electrics to Lewisham or Orpington. A couple of local electrics use this platform and disgorge a few passengers, then a ‘Battle of Britain’, 34083 605 Squadron, ambles in with an express from Ramsgate. I’m tempted to take it, but I really want to get a ‘Schools’ on a train from Hastings, so I let it go. Patience is rewarded, for less than ten minutes later a large-diameter-chimney ‘Schools’, 30901 Winchester, appears from around the corner with a train of narrow-bodied coaches used specifically on the Hastings route. 30901 looks to have been recently outshopped from Ashford, for it’s a very clean Brunswick green with the latest BR emblem on the tender. A fair number of passengers alight, and I slip unobtrusively into the first coach, immediately behind the engine. I stand in the corridor on the upstream side of the Thames, and Winchester strains on the curve to start the train, then slips violently on the oily track, polluted by many engines (especially the oil-leaking Bulleids) that have stopped at this very spot. The engine sets back, buffering up to its train, then tries again, and suffers another bout of slipping; then, very slowly and softly, it grips the rails and starts to pull away, with barely a sound from the chimney.

  We pass under the bridge to the main Waterloo station, looking down at the fine entrance, and roll onto the girders of Hungerford Bridge past the South Bank site of the 1951 Festival of Britain and the exhibition of railway locomotives — 70004 William Shakespeare, brand-new and straight from Crewe Works, an electric locomotive (26020) for the newly electrified Woodhead route, Southern diesel-electric 10201 and an Indian Railways ‘WG’ 2-8-2 representing British manufacturers’ locomotives for the export market. The site is now cleared, and the main edifice is the towering Shell building. The ‘Schools’ is coasting now, and as we rumble onto the main girders spanning the river the only noise comes from our wheels as they reverberate on the heavy steel. I recollect that it was here during the Second World War that 934 St Lawrence suffered a direct hit from a German bomb that ripped a hole in the bridge as well as crippling the locomotive. We roll on at a steady 15mph, and we are now over the centre of the river, with views across to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, seen between the side girders and a squall of rain that suddenly splashes against the corridor windows, then stops as quickly as it started. We are already entering the platform at Charing Cross opposite 34083’s empty train and draw slowly to the buffer-stops, having taken barely three minutes for my minuscule journey. I mingle with the crowd and hand in my ticket surreptitiously, in the hope that the ticket collector will not notice and be suspicious that I’ve actually travelled from much further afield, requiring me to explain that I’m not mad in seeking to travel by steam train over such a short distance. Once through the ticket barrier I relax and stare for several minutes at Winchester resting at the buffer-stops, all its passengers having long since departed for Trafalgar Square or the Underground.

  Class L 4-4-0 31760 pilots ‘Schools’ 30929 Malvern in 1959. The train was a semi-fast from Charing Cross to Ashford, which the author took to London Bridge.

  My shopping does not take long. I purchase three plays in the preposterously cheap (9d) East German editions and climb the steps by Embankment station to the footpath that runs over Hungerford Bridge on the Festival Hall side. I don’t pluck up sufficient courage to purchase a ticket back to Waterloo East and have to show it to a ticket collector on the main-line platforms 5 and 6, who would, I’m sure, have attempted to direct me to one of the suburban electrics on the other platforms. I would perhaps have done this if I’d decided to go out to London Bridge, but today I’m going back to Waterloo to catch the 10.54am back to Woking, as I saw an Eastleigh-based ‘King Arthur’, 30788 Sir Urre of the Mount, as we passed Nine Elms this morning, and I suspect (and hope) that it might have come off the 6.4 Southampton Terminus instead of the usual ‘Nelson’ and therefore be on the 10.54. I can still get back in plenty of time for lunch in the college refectory before my tutorial.

  Anyway, I decide to walk across Hungerford Bridge, although I risk getting caught in another squall. The footpath vibrates as electric units rumble past, and I look out at the famous skyline dominated by St Paul’s. As I near the Festival Hall I hear something starting out of Waterloo East and peer between the girders and electrics passing in both directions at another ‘Schools’, Ashford’s 30924 Haileybury, which has a string of parcel vans behind its passenger vehicles. I find myself wishing I’d had a run behind that as well — perhaps it will be on the semi-fast to Ashford via the Otford loop, which I know runs sometime mid-morning. But enough is enough. I’ll chance getting 30788 to Woking — a decent run, and free; my season ticket from home to college will cover that.

  Chapter 7

  The wider horizon

  Chapelon Pacific No 231E 34 on the ‘Blue Train’ from Belgium at Gare du Nord, April 1956.

  Like many other schoolchildren I really had no idea what career I wanted to follow and just carried on studying what I happened to be best at, through ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels to university degree. In my case, through a number of chance encounters and a particularly conscientious and persuasive schoolmaster, this happened to be modern languages, and I suppose I might have become a teacher myself but for a work-experience course with British Railways which opened my eyes to possibilities with my real interest. In the meantime, and before finally deciding for a management career with BR, I enrolled for an honours degree course in German at University College London, with French as a subsidiary subject. I subsequently opted to specialise in stylistic analysis of mediaeval German poetry, which would appear to have even less relevance to a railway career, other than making me an expert on Arthurian legends and allowing me access to the source of some of the more abstruse Southern Region ‘King Arthur’ names!

  However, this choice of study opened up a number of reasons for visiting railways overseas. My first venture was in the spring of 1956 when I was in the Modern Languages Sixth at Charterhouse and somehow got myself enrolled to do a three-week vacation course at the Sorbonne in Paris. To this day I can remember nothing about the content of the course itself, although the travels and accommodation stay vividly in my mind. There were around 1,000 sixth-formers on the course, and we left Victoria on two special boat trains, with 30915 Brighton on our train and 30918 Hurstpierpoint on the other. The Newhaven–Dieppe crossing was vile; a shallow-bottomed ferry called Lisieux seemed to list permanently to starboard as the strong easterly wind swept up the channel, and there was no room for us below deck, so we huddled like penguins on the sloping deck, ducking whenever a nearby pupil succumbed to seasickness and the warning cry came in time.

  On arrival at Dieppe I managed to escape the schoolmarm attempts to marshal us in crocodiles onto the awaiting trains and got to the front to obtain my first sight of foreign locomotives, both État Pacifics, ‘231D’ 710 on our train and ‘231H’ 740 on the relief. I can remember little more than being crammed into our compartment, four on each side, and watching the smoke billowing over French meadows bathed in sunshine and wild flowers. We were lodged in primitive accommodation at the Lycée St Germain, near Montparnasse, and quickly became expert at negotiating the garlic-smelling Métro (all the tunnels seemed to advertise Dubonnet … Dubonnet … Dubonnet …) and looking for alternative snacks to cover for the leathery horsemeat smothered in garlic that in those days seemed to pass for French school meals.

  Luckily there was one other like-minded railway enthusiast in our small party from Charterhouse, and the main educational benefit of our stay seems to have been our ability to fend for ourselves around the SNCF and Métro systems. How many lectures we cut I cannot remember, but Martyn and I spent many happy hours at Gare du Nord and Gare d
e l’Est with notebook and camera and a few French coins to relieve the slot machines of bars of chocolate.

  At Gare du Nord we saw ‘241P’ Mountains and a couple of the ‘232R’/‘232S’ Baltics on trains from Lille, ‘231E’ and ‘K’ Pacifics from the Belgian border and Calais and several ex-Nord Super-Pacifics (‘231Cs’) on semi-fast services, as well as the de Glehn ‘230D’ 4-6-0s. The Nord de Caso ‘141TCs’ dominated the local suburban service, although some huge ‘242TA’ ex-PLM tank engines were running out on the line through Aulnaye-sous-Bois and beyond. Someone had told us that in France you could walk across the tracks from platform to platform (maybe I learned that from the classic 78rpm record by Reginald Gardiner about his experience of French trains). Martyn and I put it to the test at the business end of Gare du Nord, and in hindsight I think this was not the wisest decision by a future Head of Safety Policy for BR. We got away with it but received a good ticking-off from a French railwayman, which improved our language ability no end!

  Gare de l’Est was equally exciting, with plenty of those splendid Est ‘241A’ Mountains and a large number of PLM Pacifics transferred on electrification of the Paris–Marseilles main line. There were also a number of the Chapelon ‘141Ps’ and some ancient Est ‘230Bs’ and ‘230Ks’, which managed to look more antiquarian than they actually were. Everywhere the fussy suburban ‘141TBs’ rushed in and out like the ‘N7s’ at Liverpool Street.