ALL CHANGE AT ONGAR - Not many country branches became part of the London Underground and it was hard to believe that Blake Hall, or North Weald, were stations on the same system as Marble Arch or Oxford Circus. The closest acquaintance most users of the London Underground got with the line was a chance reading of one ofLT's charming Country Walks. The line was highly unusual in the 1950s, for it provided the delightful spectacle of ancient Great Eastern 2-4-2Ts alongside Tube cars more usually associated with the deep tunnels of London. The line had an eventful time, even though it was characterised in later years as a place 'where time stood still'. First mooted in the 1930s, electrification only groped its way to Epping ten years later, with changes made to the working of the final Ongar section at various intervals. As the money ran out for the last few miles, a slightly up-graded steam push-pull 'shuttle' was institutedand this was eventually replaced by a simple electric version of the F5 and two coaches. Hence, ALL CHANGE AT ONGAR
'STEAM ON THE TUBE' By Paul Wilmshurst
NO BAD 'UNS AMONG D's - Keith Miles - Thus spake Charlie 'Wag' Harrison, famed Rowsley driver, who had joined the LNWR aged fifteen in 1917 as a caller-up at Buxton, finding his way to the Peak in 1940 by way of Lees shed. Yet many found these ex-LNWR 0-8-Os the damnedest uncomfortable locomotives ever invented. George Whiley, another Rowsley driver certainly thought so - going to work one morning he got the news that the engine awaiting him was a dread Super D. Actually, it wasn't, it was a cruel jape, but it was enough to make George turn round, climb to the signal box and ring in sick! Readers, after this fond account, will have their own verdicts!
THE UNFORGIVEN - Edward Thompson will never be one of the hallowed names in the enthusiast pantheon. True, he did little to improve the look and performance of a handful of Gresley locomotives but once he settled down to new Pacific construction the class only got as far as fifteen before being terminated by his successor. These were the A2/3s and, working in their intended roles, they seem to have made a fair fist of it. The Pacific shenanigans, in any case, paled into insignificance compared to the healthy restocking of the LNER (doubtless with an eye on Stanier's activities) that Thompson oversaw, injecting hundreds of modem, mixed traffic 2-6-Os, 4-6-0s and 2-6-4Ts. He did his job insofar as he had to look to the future and predict problems, but the slights against the work of Gresley will always predominate in our perceptions of
HEIRON'S TUNNELS - More impressions from George.
LEVENSHULME - Notes from the Home Front - By Eddie Johnson
ON THE BORDER LINE 
DIESEL DAWN......AND DIESEL DUSK - Highly unusual pictures of DELTIC at Edinburgh Waverley in June 1959, contrasting with a much more everyday 10001 at - where else - Willesden roundhouse.
FOURUM - Southern Shunts - Obscure comers of the Southern photographed by Derek Clayton.
WAR REPORT
ENDPIECE
A READER WRITES
A LIFE OF STEAM

Cover photograph. Front ends at Kingmoor, about 1963. J.G. Walmsley, B.P. Hoper Collection 

Rear: An unusual picture of a B1, Yorkshire's 61169 at Bristol Barrow Road shed, 9 August 1963. Period points are the local Swindon-built shunter trundling by on the main line, green 2-6-2T 82037 behind the ash wagon and West Indian labourer — master of his task in a remarkably well-kept ashpit