Welcome to British Railways Illustrated Volume 4 No.l. Once again, something of a (smallish) landmark in the brief but hectic story so far - the first in our fourth year, marking three full years of publication - though in truth the several Summer Specials and Christmas Annuals (the former just issued for 1994, the latter to come in a month or so) have given us the equivalent, in pages, of something like a whole year extra. BRILL has truly given re-birth to the genre of The Annual and indeed, no railway journal now seems complete without one.
As hinted last time, this issue continues a well-established interest in our bigger yards and this time it is the turn of the Southern, with that system's principle site, the wholly new yard and shed at Feltham. Begun by the LSW in its dying days, it was completed by the Southern and only came to an end under BR in the ‘sixties, with the demise of steam.
The geology underlying Britain is such that more and thus more varied rocks underlie us, imparting more varied scenery in a smaller area, than anywhere else in the world. Thus while many hundreds of miles have to be traversed on most continents before some change in the landscape begins even to make itself dimly felt, in Britain it is quite possible to drive from flat clay lands to deeply incised limestone cliffs and back down to sand dunes and lonely estuaries all before tea - and that’s leaving after lunch! In the concentration of rocks and landscape variety, the United Kingdom is unique. Rail and rock in these circumstances could often be joined to remarkable effect and were wedded, in The Peak, in a unique, glittering jewel-like way. With closure the country threw away one of its greatest lines, scenically one of the finest imaginable, and a calamitous loss was visited upon us. That it went with so little fuss is something extraordinary again but in the first of two items (or maybe three...) to celebrate this lost glory, the Peak Forest Scenic Tour takes us to places where scenic beauty and engineering marvel combined in unforgettable grandeur. If it is recalled only dimly in these pages, we will have done more than a half good job.
The steam - diesel era did not last long and for any given piece of line the new traction sat uneasily next to the old order for an even briefer spell. There was almost a military feel back in the ‘sixties and BR official crowing could often read like despatches from the Front as steam was pushed back at an ever quickening pace and confined within smaller and smaller pockets, to be harried, cut off and extinguished. Steam to Diesel on the Eastern Region was prompted, provoked even, on Tony Goodhay’s part, by the sense of shock, relived upon turning the pages of an ancient Railway Magazine. The bare official statistics issued by the Eastern Region brought back those days when one was reduced to gazing at far corners of the map, to simply wonder where it had all gone. At least then it was possible to hurl the latest bad news in the grate and ease the burden by a frantic last trip - usually to find the shed in question but lately closed...
One or two smaller but nevertheless appetising morsels make up the rest of this month’s offering - principle amongst them is Aberbeeg - From On High. An unusual approach to the story of a shed and if you will forgive the slightly strangulated title, a story of some considerable interest - again in a sense prompted by poring constantly over old records and material. Why was the shed at Aberbeeg, wholly unremarkable in all other respects - unprepossessing even - photographed so frequently as a panorama from high above, when such informative and rewarding views are so few and far between when it comes to almost all other sheds? Only Rose Grove, at the fag end of steam, as a new (more daring? reckless?) generation overwhelmed the traditional shed guardians, was so tellingly recorded ...