BRITAIN'S NEW RAILWAY - PART TWO - IMPLEMENTATION AND BRIDGEWORKS - By Peter Coster:
The story of one bright, enthusiastic, young engineer's involvement in the largest single project ever undertaken on Britain's railways. From trudging the ballast of what was still a detenninedly steam railway, tape measure in hand, the young Coster (via National service in the Royal Engineers) moves on to the work at Euston. The railway by now was alive with modernisation work. A certain coyness about timescales and costs hinted at trouble to come and eventually to a dizzying confrontation, with the new Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples, ordering a moratorium. The Chief Civil Engineer duly ordered a stop to all major project and permanent way expenditure and the unthinkable loomed—electric haulage from Manchester and Liverpool with underpowered diesels from Stafford to London...

INSIDE BRIGHTON SHED - That unforgettable, haunting atmosphere, deep shadows and shafts of piercing light; the aroma of oil and soot and the strange heavy air. Delicious!

A CORONATION ON THE MIDLAND - An interesting diversion during the electrification days of the 1960s.

FOURUM - Up the Junction:
E4 0-6-2Ts on empty carriage work at Clapham Junction.

MANY MEETINGS:
Pacifics, 8F 2-8-0s, an A3, an Ivatt Mogul, a WD and an 01 all meet at Peterborough in the early 1960s.

WAR REPORT - Nearly a year after War's end, its dead hand still lay upon the peeling and down at heel Birmingham New Street station.

THIRTIES FILE - A postcard from Southend on Sea.

MEN AT WORK - Life with the steam locomotive.

NOCTURNE - More night time musings.

DIESEL DAWN - Westerns, The Great Might Have Beens - By Colin Bennett:
To the WR way of thinking, interpreting the 1955 Modernisation Plan in as straightforward a way as possible, there seemed obvious advantages to using hydraulic transmissions rather than electric. A 2,000hp EE Type 4 weighed more than 130 tons, while a diesel-hydraulic Warship, with 2,200hp, less than 80 tons. Why pay all that money for 50 tons of expensive and complicated locomotive, just for it to be dragged around the system for thirty-odd years? Wonderful calculations were made: 50 tons multiplied by a hundred locos gave 5,000 tons over thirty years, that is, 150,000 ton years and so many zillion extra gallons of fuel. The Modernisation Plan talked of doing away with unbraked freights, so the weight wouldn't be needed to bring those rattling four wheel mineral wagons safely to a halt. After the Warships came the Westerns, a class which promised a lot but through a number of relatively minor factors, failed to shine consistently. Many small but expensive (in time and money) faults and drawbacks effectively hobbled them for long periods. In any case, even before the class had been delivered, BR HQ, never easy with the whole idea, had effectively given up on the hydraulics. When, at the end of it all, there were found to be more locomotives than BR could use, a much-needed standardisation programme was enacted, and out went the Westerns and the rest. Racy and striking in their external appearance, they inspired a huge following, and their end was something of a circus of bad taste. Intemperate eulogies were written, tearful farewells duly made, 'scrap your own Western' stunts staged, and the Swindon workers even 'kidnapped' one. It was a short life, but an eventful one.

KINGS LYNN: 1 - By Richard Hardy:
Kings Lynn in January 1946, and a wind impeded by nothing more than the odd tree on its passage from Arctic Russia brings a frosting of ice to the mud of the Wash. When the Great Eastern built Kings Lynn engine shed about 1880, considerations of comfort went completely unheeded, and this remained the case till the end of steam. Into this freezing post-War scene steps Richard Hardy, keen but callow, the latest soft iron to be tempered in the furnace of 'the loco', where Mr E.J. Shaw reigned supreme as Shedmaster. Part One of engine shed life at Kings Lynn; in the manner of several towns in East Anglia there was more than one shed, and rivals (naturally) since time immemorial, the two in Kings Lynn (the other was the M&GN South Lynn shed) scowled at each other across the town.

A Reader Writes           

Cover photograph:
One of the 'London tanks', a 61XX No.6142, works an up parcels out of Southall station in the early 1960s. B. Richardson, B.P. Hoper Collection. Photograph left. Don't forget to place your BRILL/Bylines
order! The wonderful Smiths bookstall at Cambridge station, in 1933. Much modernised, it is still there, and Irwell Press magazines and books are familiar items. Pale and hardly discernible over on the right is a J15 with a van and a tank. Curious adverts on the upright posts include Greene King's long lost Cambridge Brewery and Stephens ink, while periodicals on sale include Good Taste, Melody Maker, Sight and Sound, Modern Home and Popular Flying. But not British Railways Illustrated.