A Privileged Journey

by David Maidment

  On the first morning of my spell at Maidenhead the train ran into Reading 5 minutes late behind 1015 County of Gloucester and accelerated past Twyford in 7 minutes 25 seconds — about par for the course if time was to be kept. We took exactly 15 minutes 5 seconds start-to-stop, with a top speed of 64mph at Waltham ’box before shutting off steam for the Maidenhead stop. The next day we had a ‘Modified Hall’ but a Westbury-based engine, 6968 Woodcock Hall, which ran in on time and completed the short run in 14 minutes 46 seconds, with a top speed of 68mph. I did not time every journey, so despite catching this train twenty-four times (at weekends I went home to Woking, returning on the Monday morning via London) I have only seventeen logs. On most of the runs that I failed to record I had the booked 81E ‘County’ or ‘Modified Hall’; 1002 was certainly the engine on one occasion, and I know Didcot’s 6996 Blackwell Hall featured more often than the twice suggested by my logs, while Reading’s 7919 Runter Hall also appeared at least once. However, I made sure to log the train when more interesting engines appeared, these including an Oxley ‘Grange’, 6851 Hurst Grange, which was the only engine recorded as reaching 70mph, thereby cutting half a minute from the schedule and having to wait time before departing Maidenhead, for any commuters who might have been caught on the hop. A Bristol SPM ‘Grange’ also appeared, 6831 Bearley Grange, although this was not quite as energetic, taking 15 minutes 16 seconds, with a top speed of 66mph. The fastest runs were with a Didcot ‘Hall’, 4994 Downton Hall, which stopped at Maidenhead in one second over 14 minutes without exceeding 68mph, and one of the journeys with the engine I had most frequently, 1018 County of Leicester; these were the only engines to clear Twyford in less than 7 minutes. There were two real surprises during the six weeks. A Churchward Mogul, 6364 (82B), appeared on 19 October, arriving at Reading on time but taking 16 minutes 48 seconds, mainly because of a slow start; top speed was 60mph. But even more surprising was one of the huge Churchward 2-8-0s, 4701 of Old Oak Common, which graced the train on 1 November and ran virtually to time, attaining a top speed of 63mph. A table of all the runs timed, starting with the fastest, appears overleaf.

  The final run with 1018 was the only one on which the locomotive appeared to be in difficulty — on this occasion a shortage of steam.

  The evening runs back to Reading on the 4.35pm from Paddington had much more varied motive power. This was a Swindon (82C) turn, usually producing a ‘Hall’ though sometimes a ‘Castle’, but frequently Old Oak used the train to return Bristol Division engines westwards, and Swindon Works often used it as a running-in turn. Two ex-works engines are particularly remembered — Penzance ‘Grange’ 6808 Beenham Grange, which headed the train five days in a row, and former Bristol Bath Road 4079 Pendennis Castle, which had been reallocated to Swindon and appeared six times towards the end of my spell at Maidenhead. On a couple of occasions I went through to Didcot for the hell of it, one such being on 3 November with 4079. The train was quite heavy — eleven coaches (356/375 tons) — and ran throughout on the relief line, which was restricted to 60mph; we reached 58 before Twyford and covered the 17 miles from Reading to Didcot in 22 minutes exactly, having maintained 60 from Pangbourne to Moreton Cutting. A few weeks later — on 30 November, after I’d moved on to Slough — I took the same train from Reading to Didcot with 5035 Coity Castle (82C) and the same load, this run being slightly slower, taking 10 seconds short of 23 minutes, but including a maximum speed of 63mph at Cholsey. Both runs were punctual, as were all the other journeys on this train, without exception. Engines recorded during October and early November 1961, although not logged for time, were as follows:

  ‘County’:

  1000

  ‘Castles’:

  4074, 4079 (six runs), 5023, 5035

  ‘Modified Halls’:

  6974, 6982

  ‘Halls’:

  4922, 4975, 4977, 4983, 5900, 5922, 5960, 6901, 6910

  ‘Grange’:

  6808 (five runs)

  1924-built 4074 Caldicot Castle (by now with four-row superheater and double chimney but retaining its original ‘joggled’ frames) on arrival at Reading with the 4.35pm Paddington–Swindon in October 1961.

  At the end of October I took a Saturday off to try the ‘Pembroke Coast Express’ again. I really shouldn’t have! 5037 Monmouth Castle (87E) was a good loco, making plenty of steam, but once again the driver ignored the public timetable and more than used the revised WTT timing to Newport that was applicable because he had eleven coaches on; after a Reading check he wandered down the fast line to Swindon without even touching 60mph, blowing off steam furiously — what the fireman thought of this waste of his effort I shudder to think. A belated dash through the Severn Tunnel in 3 minutes 34 seconds, touching 85mph at the bottom, could not prevent our being twenty-two minutes late into Newport by the public book.

  A trip up to Maesycwmmer with 9616, returning with 2218, soothed our tempers a little, and I prayed that the return ‘Pembroke Coast Express’ would not damn Western performance forever in the eyes of my colleague Alistair Wood. It turned up ten minutes late with one of the early single-chimney ‘Castles’, 4081 Warwick Castle (87F), just ex works, and ten coaches (375 tons gross). We started as I hoped we would not go on — signals to 12mph at Magor, then a special two-minute stop at Severn Tunnel Junction platform. After that things improved, with an excellent climb out of the tunnel, speed being in the 40s for most of the way, only easing to 35mph at the top, before the Stoke Gifford curve. A fast descent from Badminton was curtailed by a severe p-way slowing at Hullavington, but we kept up a steady 78-79mph on the level all the way from Uffington to Pangbourne before slowing for another p-way slack at Reading. Despite this, because of the earlier delays we were still fifteen minutes late into Paddington.

  Early the following month I decided to repeat my North & West triangular tour. The 7.30am Paddington was now diesel-hauled, so I waited for the Saturday ‘Bristolian’ (8.45am from Paddington) with ‘Warship’ D828 Magnificent, which from Bathampton to Bath was delayed behind the 7.45am Paddington, headed by 4951 Pendeford Hall, the down-line pilot from Reading, its own diesel having failed there. The Shrewsbury ‘Castle’ on the eleven-coach 8 o’clock Plymouth was a well-burnished 5038 Morlais Castle, which by Pontypool Road had recovered the 5 minutes lost as a result of its delayed departure from Bristol, despite a six-minute stand for signals at East Usk and a p-way slack to 15mph at Llantarnam on the 1-in-120 gradient immediately before it steepened to 1 in 106/95 for the last four miles, over which 5038 accelerated to 31mph. It had previously touched 83mph in the four and a half mile Severn Tunnel, which it traversed in 3 minutes 50 seconds. It was promising a 58 minute run from Hereford to Shrewsbury, matching that achieved with 5095, when we ground to a halt at Bromfield because of cattle on the line. This lost us more than ten minutes, and we did well to arrive in Shrewsbury only three minutes late, after sustaining a minimum of 40mph at Church Stretton and hitting 76 on the descent through Dorrington. ‘County’ 1022 was on the 4.30pm from Birkenhead to Wolverhampton, where 7017 G. J. Churchward took over for an energetic run to Paddington with a 445 ton-gross load, touching 87mph at Denham — but the usual signal checks from Old Oak in made us eleven minutes late at the terminus.

  Paddington in 1958, with Oxford shed’s 5025 Chirk Castle in charge of the 6.5pm Oxford commuter train at platform 1 and 6011 King James I on the 6.10pm to Wolverhampton at platform 2.

  My six-week stint at Slough Goods started on 13 November and lasted until the Christmas holiday. I found that the 7.30am Oxford–Paddington, on which Slough was the first stop after Reading, was a very suitable service. It was booked for an Oxford ‘Castle’, of which that depot then had four (5012, 5025, 5033 and 7008), and one of these was a fixture on the commuter service, with only one exception. The regular load was a very manageable nine coaches, 282/315 tons. On three days during this period I caught a later train — the 7.10am Didcot, and each time its heavy, twelve-coach load (378/425 tons) was hauled by the same recently ex-
works ‘Hall’, 4976 Warfield Hall (81E). My return service in the evening, after a somewhat tedious day looking at freight-charge calculations, cartage returns and wagon demurrage, was on another non-stop Slough–Reading train shortly after 5pm that was a Reading ‘Hall’ turn and on which recently ex-works 4998 Eyton Hall was the regular engine on all but half a dozen occasions.

  In the up direction 22 minutes was allowed for the 17.5-mile start-to-stop run — a hard schedule for the heavy ‘Hall’-booked service. Unfortunately I did not record punctuality, but my recollection is that the Oxford service was always very prompt, as it should have been. Because of a p-way slack at Twyford immediately after a couple of weekends and because several runs experienced signal checks on the approach to Slough I’ve listed the runs in order of net time, as follows:

  It will be noted that no time was booked against the engine on any of these runs. I did not time the evening runs back to Reading — the trains were crowded, meaning that I usually had to stand, and of course it was pitch dark — but my recollection is that the trains ran punctually. In addition to ten runs behind 4998 I had four runs with 5977 Beckford Hall, three with 5978 Bodinnick Hall and one each with 5973 Rolleston Hall and 6913 Levens Hall.

  In December I took a couple of evening trips out of King’s Cross, to break the monotony of learning the goods-depot clerical work. On the 6th I had double-chimney ‘A3’ 60059 Tracery (34A), which got its eleven-coach, 415-ton load to the first stop at Huntingdon (59 miles) in 62 minutes (59 net), with speeds in the high 70s after Hitchin and a top speed of exactly 80 at Three Counties. A week later, on the 12th, ‘A4’ 60032 Gannet (34A), with only nine coaches (325 tons), was faster but more severely delayed, arriving at Huntingdon four minutes late after a p-way slack and four signal checks but 90 at Arlesey and 83 after the St Neots ‘hump’. We were delayed there for a further twelve minutes awaiting a connection, and had a further p-way slack at Connington and a signal stand awaiting a platform at Peterborough, where we were twenty minutes late. Both return trips were with King’s Cross double-chimney ‘A3s’ on nine coaches, 315 tons, on the last up Hull, due King’s Cross at 9.44pm. 60044 Melton completed the non-stop run in 76 minutes (73 net) with 82 at Huntingdon and 62 minimum at Stevenage, regaining nine minutes following thirteen min-late start. 60067 Ladas left punctually and took it reasonably easily until it caught up with a late-running Cambridge Buffet express after Welwyn and suffered a series of signal checks behind it all the way to King’s Cross, arriving three minutes late.

  Over the weekend of 9/10 December I visited a girl friend I’d met at Lindors who was now at Nottingham University. I decided to go down on the Friday evening on the 4.25pm from Marylebone and was most surprised to discover our motive power was a Woodford Halse ‘K3’ Mogul, 61910. With a 260-ton load (six coaches and three vans) it made a spirited climb to Amersham, accelerating from 20mph around the Rickmansworth curve to 45mph at the summit of the six-mile, 1-in-105 bank — much better than a similarly loaded ‘Standard 5’ back in the summer. We continued on our merry way, touching 70mph between stops, and arrived punctually at Nottingham Victoria. My run home on the Sunday was rather different. I was very surprised to find Stanier 2-6-4T 42453 on the five-coach 6.15pm from Nottingham Victoria, while at Rugby Central we were all transferred to a coach, to avoid an engineering ‘blockade’. At Woodford Halse there was 61910 again, on another five-coach train which took us as far as Harrow-on-the-Hill, where it was ‘all change’ once more, this time to the Metropolitan Line. I have no idea now of any comparison with schedule — my notes state simply that ‘61910 romped home with much smoke and noise’!

  In the early New Year I attended the wedding of a college friend (my table-tennis partner) in Germany, involving runs on the Cologne–Hamburg main artery behind oil burning ‘01.10’ three-cylinder Pacifics and an horrendous rough return crossing on the Ostend–Dover cross-Channel ferry. I came back to a month’s training at South Lambeth goods depot, where I learned a lot (mainly how not to conduct industrial relations) but commuted from my home at Woking, as that was easier, spending such free time as I had on evening excursions to Banbury, Peterborough, Swindon and Rugby. More ambitiously, I took a couple of Western triangular trips, on the first occasion travelling behind 5092 Tresco Abbey (88A) on the 8.55am to Cardiff (which was actually early!), a ‘Hall’, 5962, across to Bristol Stapleton Road on a Cardiff–Salisbury service and 5031 Totnes Castle (84A) on the ‘Cornishman’ to Birmingham Snow Hill via Stratford-upon-Avon, returning to London on the 4.30pm Birkenhead with 5019 Treago Castle (84A), which left Birmingham 20 minutes late with twelve coaches (445 tons) and arrived in Paddington 35 late despite being driven hard between innumerable checks — 87 at Blackthorn, 50 at Saunderton Summit and 85 at Greenford.

  Six days later I tried the Saturday ‘Pembroke Coast Express’ again, this time with a shining double-chimney ‘Castle’, Landore’s 5078 Beaufort, and hoped for a different sort of run. No — it ‘dribbled’ all the way to Swindon without exceeding 62mph, blowing off steam so hard that its exhaust was inaudible from the first coach. We arrived at Newport ‘on time’ according to the WTT’s revised timings but fifteen late by the public timetable. I had a short snippet behind ‘King’ 6003 (now transferred to Cardiff) to Pontypool Road, as I wanted to get the Crewe ‘Scot’ turn on the 7.30am Penzance–Manchester. The day deteriorated further: in lieu of a ‘Scot’ I got, on a light load, a Bletchley ‘Black Five’ (45004) I’d had before, and there followed an awful run from Shrewsbury to Wolverhampton behind a badly steaming ‘Hall’, No 5985, replaced at Wolverhampton by a Stafford Road ‘Castle’, 5045 Earl of Dudley, which struggled with a tender full of ovoids and coal dust, depositing me at Paddington nearly an hour late, with most connections long gone. I think this day marked the nadir of Western performance as far as I was concerned.

  ‘A3’ 60059 Tracery ready to depart King’s Cross with the 6.26pm to Hull in the summer of 1959.

  I experimented with a different sort of triangle on 2 February, heading to Grantham on a Bradford train with ‘A1’ 60122 Curlew and catching a DMU train for Derby Friargate as far as Nottingam, whence I returned on the 5.15pm to Marylebone and was surprised to get a ‘B1’, 61187, instead of the more usual ‘Standard 5’ on this service — and got the only 80 I’ve ever had with a ‘B1’, between Brackley and Aylesbury. Timings were relatively punctual, at least in comparison with the trip described previously. Another couple of trips to Peterborough later in the month — out on the 6.26pm to Hull (‘A4s’ 60008 and 60025) and back on the last up Hull (both times with Doncaster ‘A1’ 60157 Great Eastern) — were reasonably punctual without being paricularly noteworthy.

  On 26 February I resumed my Reading lodgings as a base from which to perform my training at Oxford — with unwary strangers I can impress by referring to ‘my Oxford days’! At both Oxford and Reading I had to mix day shifts with some evenings and nights, mainly to observe the parcels working at both the platform and the cartage bays — parcels and GPO traffic was still important in the early 1960s. This gave me quite a lot of scope to ‘fill in’ with main-line steam workings between Reading, Oxford and Paddington, as I had little to do at my lodgings, which were B&B only, and my cooking skills were undeveloped. On 26 February 1962 I made my way from Woking to Oxford via London, using the 11.15am Paddington, as the Stationmaster did not want me until his weekly morning staff meeting was over. There was heavy snow all the way — a good start to a week when I expected to be out on the platform for most of the day. However, despite the weather 5099 Compton Castle managed to keep time without exceeding 67mph in the difficult visibility. It seems that the 4.5pm Hereford was initially my evening commute back to Reading — I was obviously prepared to wait well beyond my finishing time to get steam rather than go earlier on a DMU. 7920 Coney Hall, 7005 Sir Edward Elgar and 7009 Athelney Castle, all Worcester engines, did the honours. The first two both took things too easily, dropping a couple of minutes with their eight-coach trains, and the only energy was
displayed by 7009, which had ten coaches (345/360 tons) and maintained the 34-minute schedule despite a 10mph signal check at Didcot East Junction, reaching 73mph at Pangbourne.

  By the end of the first week I discovered that I could catch the 5.30pm Oxford–Paddington, non-stop in 60 minutes exactly, at a start-to-stop average speed of 63mph. This required ‘Cheltenham Flyer’- or ‘Bristolian’-style running from Didcot to London, and I worked out that I could get home to Reading nearly as quickly by catching this and the 7.5pm Paddington–Cheltenham as I could by waiting for the 4.5pm Hereford; it was certainly much more fun, and there was no cost, as I had a Divisional ‘free pass’ throughout my London Division training! The first two runs were on five coaches only (161/170 tons); after that I had the same Hawksworth six-coach set (189/205-210 tons). I did this for five working days, until my shift pattern changed, and then got in another four days before transferring to Reading station. The crew were Oxford men and stayed on the turn for the whole week. The train was booked for an Old Oak ‘Castle’, although on Saturdays Oxford had to provide the loco, usually a Hawksworth ‘Modified Hall’. The two days of the first week and the first three days of the next were with men prepared to enjoy themselves and run at high speed; the last week was disappointing, as the driver was content to aim at the scheduled time without building anything in hand. Two of the runs sustained 87mph over long stretches, one touched 88, and one 86mph. Only one run lost time for loco reasons, this being on the Monday of the second week, when 5066 had been left on shed at Oxford without much attention to the fire, and clinker had formed. It set off in the usual style to Reading, but then it was winded, and speed dropped alarmingly to around 50mph between Reading and Slough before the fireman recovered the situation, following which speed rose again to the 70s by Acton. The nine runs are summarised as follows: