A Privileged Journey

by David Maidment

  I complete the records by 11.15. I’m quick because I know the mileages of each diagram by heart and the records kept for the Prairie and pannier tanks are pretty sparse — no-one seems to bother with recording fully their oil and coal consumption. Our ‘Kings’ are knocking up 2,000-2,500 miles a week, especially if they’re used mainly on the Plymouth road, and most ‘Castles’ between 1,500 and 2,000, although 5082 on the ‘Cambrian Coast Express’ is doing well over 2,000 regularly to Shrewsbury and back plus light running, six days a week. She’ll have done 25,000 miles before she’s due for her first valves-and-pistons examination in the Factory in the autumn and we have to select a new ‘Castle’ for that turn. Billy Gibbs wants me to check which engines are due for a weekly boiler washout; those with Afloc water treatment, mainly the ‘70xx’ ‘Castles’ and engines on the Wolverhampton run, can run a few days longer. They’ll get tube-cleaning at the same time, essential if they’re to steam well, for we can’t guarantee all our engines will get the best Welsh Markham or Oakdale Colliery coal which we keep for our top-link turns. And then — it’s still not lunchtime yet — he wants me to plan the likely shopping dates for our ‘Kings’ and ‘Castles’, looking carefully at when we’re due to get engines back from Swindon Works to replace them.

  One of our problems is that we’ve currently six ‘Castles’ in works (5029, 5065, 5066, 7010, 7030 and 7033) and a seventh (7036) stopped waiting to go, plus a couple of ‘Kings’. Two of them — 5029 and 7030 — have been there nearly five months now. That means we’ve got only thirty-three of our allocation theoretically available, and we’d normally have two or three stopped for boiler washout and possibly a couple in the Factory, one with a planned valves-and-pistons exam and another on casual repair. On summer Saturdays we’ve forty-three Old Oak diagrams for ‘Castles’. We’ll obviously ensure we book none for boiler washouts on a Saturday, but that still means we’ll have to find ten and possibly more substitutes — our ‘Modified Halls’ will be first in line, with ‘Halls’ and ‘Granges’ from Southall (81C), Reading (81D) and Oxford (81F) making up the rest. Billy therefore impresses upon me that we should line up engines for our shopping proposals immediately at the end of the summer timetable, and he’ll get the fitters to concentrate on keeping the high-mileage engines going for another couple of months. After half an hour of digging through the records I produce the following, in order of priority:

  5014 ex works 2/56, mileage now 95,000, due Heavy General

  4089 ex works 2/56, mileage now 79,000, due Heavy General

  7024 ex works 2/56, mileage now 101,000, due Heavy Intermediate

  5055 ex works 3/56, mileage now 88,000, due Heavy Intermediate

  5060 ex works 3/56, mileage now 104,000, due Heavy Intermediate

  5099 ex works 5/55 but with an unplanned works repair in 11/56, mileage since last Heavy Intermediate 106,000, due Heavy General

  5044 ex works 2/56, mileage now 89,000, due Heavy Intermediate

  I add that 7020 has also clocked up well over 100,000 miles since its last Heavy General in March 1956 but that it has had a couple of light repairs in Swindon in the meantime. Billy sits down with me and instructs me to prepare shopping proposals for 5014 and 4089 immediately — 4089 has been reported by drivers for rough riding and is on what we call ‘restricted working’, meaning it must not be diagrammed to fast passenger turns. Although 5060, 5099, 7020 and 7024 have over 100,000 miles he knows that they are all running without any major complaints or heavy casual repairs, so he marks them off to wait for the autumn. He asks me to check through the record cards for 5044 and 5055 and scrutinise their repair cards, which have been filed separately, and when I show him the cards, which give little apparent cause for concern, he decides that both these engines can also wait, unless we have a major failure with either in the next month. I then tell him that 4082, 4090 and 7032 are due for a valves-and-pistons exam. He pulls a face and says that 4090 will have to come in, as it’s been our regular ‘Bristolian’ engine since April, but that 4082 and 7032 will have to wait another month, until the end of August.

  I make out the shopping-proposal forms for Nos 4089 and 5014, and Billy rings the Running Foreman to tell him that 4090 should be marked off to the Factory the week after next and that 5029 has been advised as due off Swindon Works and could be available to replace 4090, if its running-in is successful. He asks me to look at the ‘Kings’ and ‘Halls’ tomorrow, but he doesn’t think the situation there is so critical, as the number of ‘Kings’ we have balances our diagrams, and the Summer Saturday requirement is the same as that for a normal weekday.

  ‘Time you went to lunch,’ says Billy just after midday, and I wander between turntables 1 and 2, glancing at any newcomers that have arrived. Most foreign engines arriving at Paddington in the morning — engines from Stafford Road, Worcester, Gloucester and South Wales — are serviced and turned at Ranelagh Bridge, but ‘King’ 6016 King Edward V has arrived from the West of England, and there’s 5002 Ludlow Castle of Swindon and our own 5008 Raglan Castle, which has just returned from overhaul at Swindon. There’s 4706 of Bristol St Philips Marsh, along with a couple of ‘Modified Halls’ that have appeared on turntable 2, and Reading’s 4085 Berkeley Castle. The canteen is at the top of the drive by the main gate, and I take a leisurely lunch — traditional British meat, potatoes and two veg plus apple pie (for me, no custard) but no cup of tea — for 1/6d. I don’t like tea anyway and certainly not the Old Oak variety, made for strong stomachs. And I haven’t yet learned the coffee habit — college will teach me that.

  I reappear in the Central Office around 2pm, having had another good wander around the shed and outside to see what’s in and waiting for the Factory, and Billy suggests I spend a couple of hours with the boilersmith, as I’ve completed everything he needed me to do in the office. The fitter is quite happy to take me on — I’ll be useful handing tools and holding things, I suppose. He’s another over-age fitter (I didn’t catch his full name, he was just introduced as Bert) who proudly tells me that he’s one of the younger fitters — 67! ‘We’ve got to sort out 4900, she’s been reported with leaking superheater units,’ he informs me.

  We find the prototype ‘Hall’, 4900 Saint Martin, the original 1924 convert of the 1907-built ‘Saint’ with 6ft 0in wheels, on No. 3 turntable, surrounded by ‘9Fs’, a couple of ‘28xx’ 2-8-0s, another ‘Hall’ and a couple of ‘61xx’ Prairie tanks. She’s still black with the old BR lion-and-wheel, quite clean, no doubt following a recent going-over by the cleaning gang, as she seems to have an oily sheen over the layers of grime beneath. Bert opens the smokebox door, and I spend twenty minutes handing him up tools while he tinkers, hammers and eventually expresses himself satisfied. ‘We’d better have a look at the stays,’ he says, looking at me meaningfully; now we’re up on the footplate, and he’s opening the firehole door, laying a piece of sacking over it and expecting me to crawl through. Luckily I’m slim, but the heat nearly overpowers me as I get into the confined space. It’s pitch black, and I see nothing until Bert passes his lamp through to me and follows with more dexterity, even though he’s a larger man. He’s obviously well used to it.

  Midland Compound 41113 at Willesden with the evening semi-fast train from Rugby to Euston, 1 August 1957.

  ‘Too hot for you, sonny?’ murmurs Bert, and I try to make light of it. ‘The fire’s been dropped on this one for over three hours now — you should try one which needs urgent attention and whose fire has only just been dropped!’ He casts the light over the tubeplate and instinctively starts hammering some tube ends, deafening me in this confined, echoing space. I’m left holding the lamp for him, bending nearly double at first, then finding it more comfortable to get down on one knee, until he decides it’s time to finish. When we finally stagger out he looks at me, brushing the dust and ash from my trousers. ‘You should get them to issue you some overalls from the Stores if you’re going to come out with me again. Go back and tell the foreman that he should authorise some proper clothi
ng for you. I’ve got a job to do on a pannier tank on turntable 4, but I should go home if I were you. Come out with me tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll do a couple of boiler washouts.’

  I take the hint and tell Billy, who instructs me to call into the Stores in the morning and then suggests I go home. I go and wash the dirt off as best I can, collect my belongings and dawdle through the shed once more, as I want to catch the Rugby semi-fast from Willesden Junction at just after 5.30pm rather than hurry to catch an earlier Bakerloo Line train. I spy 4073 Caerphilly Castle over on No 2 turntable and go and look at her. She’s looking rough, not in Canton’s usual spotless condition, and I wonder how much longer she has before withdrawal. Both she and the resplendent 4074 I saw this morning were slated for withdrawal back in 1955, but they’re still going — although not for much longer in the case of 4073, by the look of her. I’ve got my camera with me today — I don’t usually bring it to work. But I took a photo of 4087 this morning and 4900 after we’d worked on it, and I take a picture of 4073 alongside 5035 and 6979 now.

  I walk slowly up the slope to the gate and along Old Oak Lane. It’s still hot, and despite washing earlier I still feel grubby. I arrive at Willesden’s up slow platform and find I’ve beaten the Rugby–Euston stopper. As I’ve got my camera, and the train — when it deigns to arrive — will stand for at least ten minutes while two ticket collectors go through the train, I go over to the middle platform to get the sun behind me and wait. A couple of expresses dash through the station — one with a ‘Scot’, the other with a re-boilered ‘Patriot’ — and my train is late. I hope this means we’ve got a Compound tonight rather than the booked ‘Black Five’, and, so it proves; I take a photo of 41113 as it draws into the station, already about twelve minutes down, and another as it comes to rest. I wander over and join the rear coach a couple of minutes before departure and sit back in an empty compartment to savour the ten-minute journey, during which, I estimate, we don’t exceed 45mph. Then it’s the Northern Line back to Waterloo and an electric all stations to Hampton Court while I just relax and realise how tired I am, with the noise of Old Oak still singing in my ears.

  Chapter 9

  Munich University, 1959

  SNCB US-built ‘S160’ 2-8-0 29.045 at Liège on the Ostend–Munich express, July 1959.

  It was the summer of 1959 and the end of the second year of my languages degree course at University College London. Most second-year students in the German Department qualified for the summer term to be spent at a German university, having passed appropriate exams in their subsidiary subject at the end of the first year. My French being somewhat below par (my having wasted my Sorbonne training on the platforms of the Gare du Nord), I was obliged to stay in London to sit these exams at the end of the second year and enrol in a two-month summer course at a German university to make up for my earlier absence.

  I dithered as to which course to choose, desperately trying to find out which might have the most railway interest, but finally allowed myself to be persuaded to enrol for a course at Munich University, despite my meagre knowledge that this would be at the heart of the DB electrified system. I was therefore resigned to putting my studies first for once. The Kent Coast had been newly electrified, and I set off from Victoria in the late afternoon on one of the brand-new ‘4-CEP’ units and crossed overnight to Ostend, where my through train for Munich originated. A small SNCB Bo-Bo electric (122 series) took me to Liège, where, to my surprise, an American-built austerity 2-8-0, 29.045, backed onto the train and chirrupped through the unusually sunny summer Ardennes forest to the German border at Aachen.

  An ‘03’ Pacific duly took the train to Cologne, where the first of many reversals took place (my main recollection of this journey is the constant see-saw of direction of travel) and a ‘V200’ diesel-hydraulic piloted by a new ‘E10’ electric backed down and took us as far as Koblenz. Here the electric departed, and the ‘V200’ took us across the Rhine onto the right bank past the vineyards to another reversal in the dead end station of Wiesbaden. Steam appeared again in the shape of a grubby Pacific, 01 171, for the short trip to Frankfurt-am-Main, for yet another reversal and the appearance of one of the 1930s 2-BB-2 ‘E18’ electrics, which took us through Würzburg to Nürnberg, where another ‘E18’ backed onto the rear of our train for the final leg through Ingolstadt and Augsburg. I arrived at Munich at bedtime and found bedlam. Although it is a Catholic city I belatedly discovered that it was hosting the Protestant Lutheran Church’s annual ‘Kirchentag’ rally, involving thousands of delegates, and every single hotel was fully booked. My registration for the university course and fixed accommodation was not until the next day, so for the first time in my life (but not the last) I had no alternative but to find a bench on the station and try to sleep. And at midnight the pile-driving began, as the station was being rebuilt following wartime damage …

  At 6am, bleary-eyed after two nights without sleep, I became aware of steam movements and an ancient 2-6-0 (a former Bavarian Class 54 Mogul) bringing in empty stock. I established this was for a local and bought a ticket to its destination, Lermoos, as I still had four hours to fill before I could register and crash out at my lodgings. A former Prussian 4-6-4 tank, 78 181, duly stopped at all stations to a somewhat rural suburb and ran round the train, returning with commuters.

  Eventually I decided I could take a tram to the university and obtain details of my digs, only a five-minute walk from the college (Türkenstrasse 54 still rings a bell in my subconscious). The landlady showed me to my room, came up with a welcoming glass of very dry white wine and left me to unpack. I lay exhausted on the bed and was gone. When I woke up it was five minutes to the deadline for the course registration and language tests to allocate me to the appropriate class group, and I could not bring myself round. Head under the cold tap, self-administered slaps around the face, a dash around the block and joining the queue at the registration desk got me nowhere, and the test conducted was only a vague sort of extra-sensory experience happening to someone else. I did not graduate to the more advanced group.

  Now feeling disorientated and vaguely sick, I somehow gravitated to the Hauptbahnhof (there being no formal start until the next morning), where my first sight was of this glorious, most un-German-looking locomotive, with flared chimney, bullet-shaped smokebox nose and huge cylinders, standing facing me at the buffer-stops. It was, of course, one of the thirty re-boilered four-cylinder compound locomotives of the ‘18.6’ series, built to the Bavarian 1908 design by the Reichsbahn in 1926 while the standard ‘01’ and ‘03’ Pacifics were being developed. There were forty of these DR-built locomotives, originally in the series 18 509-548, and some were used in the late 1920s and 1930s on the ‘Rheingold’ between the Dutch border and Mannheim. They were particularly economical locomotives and were well suited to the heavily graded lines of the former Bavarian state system. Thirty were rebuilt in the mid-1950s with new all-welded boilers, renumbered in the 18 601-630 series and allocated initially to Heidelberg, Hof and Lindau (the latter on Lake Constance — the ‘Bodensee’) before ultimately nearly all being housed at the Lindau depot, which was almost on the shore of the lake. I think one or two were allocated to Ulm for the Ulm–Friedrichshafen–Lindau services, but the majority monopolised the Geneva/Zürich–Munich expresses — taking over from Austrian electric power at Lindau, another dead-end station — via Kempten and Buchloe, threading the Bavarian Alps between Oberstaufen and Immenstadt. On seeing this apparition in front of me I suddenly felt that perhaps I might enjoy this vacation course after all …

  A few days later, after I had got used to the college routine and was getting on well with my landlady (including acting as interpreter between her and the other lodger, a French-speaking Algerian medical student who spoke no German), I found myself at the end of the day’s sessions again at the Hauptbahnhof in time to see the 4.35pm Eilzug (E826) to Kempten and Memmingen, which I had by now identified as a likely candidate for ‘18.6’ haulage. In those days my resources
were not great, so it was only a return ticket to Pasing (the Clapham Junction of Munich, a few kilometres outside the city) that I had purchased as I made my way down to the front end for a run behind my first Bavarian ‘S 3/6’, 18 606.

  The short journey under the Hackerbrücke and past the electric and steam roundhouses was completed, I meticulously noted, in 8 minutes 10 seconds, with a top speed estimated as an unexciting 45mph. The return run was via a local train from Geltendorf, a suburban station on the Munich–Kempten–Lindau main line, about twenty-five miles distant. This service was worked almost exclusively by push-pull trains with a former Prussian ‘P8’ 4-6-0 tender-first at the Munich end of the set. On this first ‘excursion’ the train was hauled by No 38 1650, a ‘P8’ with ‘Witte’ smoke-deflectors and a tender from one of the scrapped austerity ‘42s’. The train itself consisted of one eight-wheeler (the push-pull control vehicle) and ten six-wheel coaches.