Welcome to British Railways Illustrated, Volume 5 No. 8. In an earlier issue, Vol.4 No.9 of June 1995, Allan Baker recounted some local shortcomings in the London Midland regime of repair and maintenance, and the steps taken to remedy them. This delving into the minutiae of maintenance matters and the reminder that steam working was not always a bowl of cherries proved fascinating. The author's suggestion that a few more of his auditing extracts be published in the not-too-distant future proved prescient - hence. Motive Power: Some Procedure and Practice II. A sad Tale emerges in the early 1960s at Shrewsbury, a shed which in less than fifteen years had suffered endless reorganisation - to-ing and fro-ing between two Regions that at many levels still saw themselves as rivals. Punch drunk by change, it was small wonder that when An Inspector Called, problems emerged.... The Trials of 63606 serve as paradigm for the mess and confusion of the last sad staggering days of steam, at just one location, Frodingham-Scunthorpe in 1965/66. Here is the verdict of its own shopping card: Motion much worn, Tyres worn on tread, Axleboxes worn on crown tops; Axleboxes knocking (side play); Engine in general run down condition. What A Way To Go... Some engines went to the scrap yards in better nick! It serves as much as. anything to mark the stumbling collapse of the old order in a district once entirely devoted to, and dependent upon steam, to bring in its coal, coke and ore, and take out its world class steel products. There was at least one great event in 1966 apart from England winning the World Cup at Wembley - though this other cataclysm was hardly welcomed among enthusiasts scrambling around for the last remnants of steam. The event was the first great main line electrification, making its way at last into the capital. In 1965 it had still been possible to creep along that canal path to Willesden shed and into an ancient steam-wreathed world of crowded, hissing and gasping engines. It was possible to believe that The End would never come. Alas, the electrics were implacable. Within months Willesden shed was no more and in 1966 the Great New Timetable was in operation. We did have a glittering new railway however, spiced by tales of woebegone Black 5s coming to the rescue of E3104 or whatever. Now, those days are ancient history in their turn, and are the stuff of Unexpected Nostalgia in their own right. Steam never lasted long enough for the ideas of the BR engineers of 1948 to see full fruition. Nowhere, really, did the Standard loco designs achieve the ubiquitous presence envisaged at the beginning. From Kent to Cornwall describes the introduction, impact and use of the various 'standard' tanks on the Southern Region, from the Fairburn and Ivatt precursors to the BR versions. On no other Region, perhaps, did the Standards get such a hold and achieve such general acceptance. We kick off with the Eastern Section - details of the locomotives' activities on the Central and Western Sections to be dealt with in later issues. There are too many varied delights in this issue to list fully, but a particularly good Fourum deserves a mention for once. It presents a set of pictures, almost laughable now in their coyness, but with a deadly serious intent. Such contrived scenes from well over half a century ago interest us from many angles - social, nostalgic, even casual details, of wagon lettering or staff uniforms. The LNER thought to restrict the terrible yearly toll on life and limb. This had long been seen as inevitable, a regrettable part of constant shunting and train movement, in all weathers, day and night. Such efforts at education seem quaint now. yet these historical oddities are but the surviving indications of a once enormous problem - the matter of casual death and injury on the railway. The railway was far from the Graderind of Victorian imagery but it was a creature of its times. This extract from the London and North Western Minutes of 14lh October 1908 illustrates how the companies offered some redress at least- By die light of their times the companies did their bit. But it was a hard world.... 'On 26th September 1894 Ganger Tomlinson's son llhen rÃ