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AN ANONYMOUS CLASS - THE GWR 81 XX CLASS 2-6-2TS - By Martin Smtth
BATTLE OF BRITAIN CHRISTENINGS - By D.W. Winkworth - There were only a handful of named engines at the formation of the Southern Railway but it was able to bequeath a host of stirring names to BR. With a world war recently ended, great sensitivity, crude political lobbying and individual egotism were all factors in determining how the Battle of Britain class names would turn out. It seemed so easy at first, but there were difficulties; it helped that thechief clerk in the public relations department had been the officer in charge of Royal Air Force propaganda during the War...
RENEWING MUSGRAVE VIADUCT - April-May 1944 - Notes by Peter Coster - Six fascinating photographs of a little-known bridge reconstruction - Musgrave Viaduct on the line from Darlington to Tebay and Penrith.
JUST ANOTHER DAY - Just another black and white day at Bletchley, an unremarkable place by the lights of the times, though its never-ending procession of passenger and freight trains now seems very remarkable indeed.
BONNY DUNDEE: 2 - A pleasant little follow-up to Bonny Dundewn BRILL Vol.8 No.7, April 1999. The A2s of Dundee' became something of an institution in 1966, rather like the 'Lions of Longleat' and many were the pilgrimages made to Tay Bridge shed; their last workings were reported monthly in the press and when they finally expired, even those of us marooned in the deep south of the East Coast line mourned what seemed like old friends.
FROM ON HIGH - Wonderful Panoramas from the camera of Barry Richardson, in the B.P. Hoper Collection - The GN main line, as you've never seen it before. Super pictures, from the commanding heights of the water softening tower at New England shed. With deep marketing cunning, a similar sequence, showing New England shed and its locos, appears in the latest BRILL Summer Special- so get it now, in its seventh wonderful year and still only £14.95.
CROSTI 9FS AT WORK - The Crosti 2-10-0s at Wellingborough enjoyed very little time actually working with their 'pre-heaters'; photographs of them at work, at odd times when the crew had not found a reason to fail them, are scarce things.
MORE GREENBATS - By Adrian Booth - A return to those curious creatures, from that lost world 'before the forklift truck'.
FOURUM - Strange Cavalcade
AROUND THE WORKS - The wagon repair pictures in BRILL Vol.8 No.8, May 1999 were vastly appreciated, for such subjects are a true rarity; so, more exotica from British Railways Illustrated!
LAST DAYS - Photographs by Paul Cotterell Bolton shed, 4 June in the dread year 1968; so that's why the barricades were going up in Europe...
A READER WRITES
A LIFE OF STEAM
The High Tide of Churchward passed, let it be said, to allow the Great Western a well-deserved spell of sitting back a bit; it was not exactly resting on its laurels, but could afford a pitying shake of the corporate head at some events on others of the 'Big Four'. This of course was not to its ultimate benefit, but such is the way of things... Whatever, the GWR Board surely hardly noticed the advent of the 81 XX class and even more assuredly, would have been stupefied to know of the interest such matters aroused in pages such as these, well over half a century later. The 81 XX 2-6-2Ts are an engaging subject, though they hardly amounted to much more than a period of 'fiddling' both in the idle and the pecuniary sense, in the 1930s. Most of the 'new' classes coming out of Swindon then (reflecting the ground gained on rivals in the decades before) amounted really to updates or rebuilds of older designs. The 'new' 48XX 0-4-2Ts were essentially an ancient Armstrong design dragged blinking into modern light, while the 'Earl' 4-4-Os were reconstituted 'Dukes' and 'Bulldogs'. All these years on, the tides of locomotive history are as well known as they will ever be, but an extraordinary wealth of detail remains to intrigue us still, and nuggets there .
are which yet await the researcher's bulging eyes
EARTH-SHATTERING ANNOUNCEMENT:
Only recently made aware of the invention of colour photography, and still suspicious, the Board of Governors of Irwell Press have met in sombre (if not entirely sober) convocation and by a narrow vote, 113-112, agreed that this new-fangled colour stuff should be given an occasional outing in BRILL.
