HEART OF THE SOUTHERN - EASTLEIGH SHED - By Ian Sixsmith - The LSWR had two or three small sheds al Bishopstoke, outside Southampton from the earliest days of the 1840s, though its main locomotive work was conducted in the city itself. With growing prosperity, and Bishopstoke now called Eastleigh, the company set up a whole town for itself, progressively moving staff and plant from London and Southampton. Over some twenty years the great works moved lock stock and barrel to Eastleigh and a huge new running shed was also established. It was 7 January 1903 when Drummond, the Locomotive Superintendent, wrote to the Board that 'the Running Shed at Eastleigh is now occupied... and that the old Loco Yard al Northam is out of use'. The place rapidly became
DIESEL DAWN - LONG HAUL FROM LANCASTER - By Don Townsley - In the days when locomotive building firms clotted the country, still providing locos and equipment to the world, let alone BR, everyday contact between administrative and technical personnel at all levels usually meant that only a phone call was needed to set up a trial run for more or less any private product. Today, even if we had the range of private builders, red tape would assuredly strangle such an idea at birth. Haifa century ago it was very different indeed. In October 1951 Hunslet of Leeds built a diesel destined for Peru and ‘needed to run a few tests’. The firm simply borrowed a dynamometer car and a test train and, while the Pennines could not quite match the Andes for altitude or temperature range the ‘backbone of England’ did just fine!
ON THE BELT - By Allan C. Baker - By the time of its reorganisation in the 1920s, Crewe Works occupied something like 136 acres, of which 44 were covered. At its peak. Crewe employed over 10,000 people. The great mover in these developments was Hewitt Pearson Montague Beanies (1875-1948) the last Chief Mechanical Engineer of the LNWR, and a Crewe man through and through. Beanies it was, as the Divisional Mechanical Engineer at Crewe, who devised a ‘belt’ system of repairs, in which locomotives were stripped and then progressively reassembled in separate defined stages, moving from stage to stage to a strict timetable, emerging in to the light at the other end requiring only paint, brick arch, and so on. Different belts specialised in different locomotive types and two belts were reserved for new construction. As conditions changed (as when the diesels and electrics began to come in) the work of the belts could be adapted to suit. From 1920, when locomotive general repairs had averaged fifty days. Beanies brought the work of repair down to just twelve days.
AN EARLIER MILLENNIUM - Hope never to hear ‘2000’ again? Well, try 1000 as ail antidote.
PACIFIC CLOSE-UP (and own-up) - Peppercorn Al Pacific 60147 NORTH EASTERN al New England in all its glory, about 1963.
FRONT ENDS AT OLD OAK - Half a dozen Halls and pair of Castles.
THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH - Photographs by Alec Swain - There has been some pretty special traffic passing through BRILL lately, including giant power station boilers and pigeons but - until now - no elephants. No, this is not some lastgasp late revenge of that cheap sherry last Christmas but real pachyderms in their natural environment, the waving, grass-clad savannah of Wembley.
BROKE IN THE SNOW - Any locomotive can look sorry for itself when bashed about a bit, and twice as bad with a covering of snow...
FOURUM 
Days of Woe - BR Standard Class 5 4-6-0 73158 makes a brave show despite the lateness of the day, at Chester General in 1967.
A Reader Writes
A Life of Steam 

Cover photograph: A Princess Royal at Polniadie - the Glasgow shed’s very own 462(13 PRINCESS MARGARET ROSE - on 4 November 1951. By cleverly using this photograph we manage to publicise at the same lime the latest Irwell publication THE BOOK OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL PACIFICS 196 pages, hardback. £14.95 - phone any number or write to any address on this page: cheques, postal orders, credit cards, cash accepted and all legal and some illegal offers considered). Get it now and collect the increasingly valued series; ROYAL SCOTS and CORONATIONS already in the bag - what could be next? 

Contents Page Images:
Top - The train spotters, while - to a man - growing up as perfect pillars of society, had a ‘civil disobedience' impulse in the face of crude injustice. The Corona hottie is proof enough that this particular oppressive edict of the authorities had been recently and rightly defied.
Bottom = 'Fail end of THE ROYAL SCOT, hurrying north on the down slow at Bushey. Photograph J.G. Walmsley.