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comments on the captions or photographs. The site's webstats show that whilst
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spending over an hour viewing the site, only a handful make the effort to
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Wonderful site, keep up the good work.
Now, a question. How could I find out what colour rolling stock was used by the
London & Birmingham railway before it became part of the LNWR?
Neville Philpott
Phil - Many thanks for your kind comments
about the website. Regarding your query regarding the livery of L&B coaches
if you look at this image it might help. Its from
London and Birmingham Railway Centenary souvenir produced in 1938 by the LMS
and one would assume that the LMS would have the records to be able to
illustrate the rolling stock of the period. As you will see the coaches carried
different liveries reflecting their class of carriage. Hope this helps.
Following my response to Dave's
earlier entry Dave replied with the following.
Dear Mike - I am sorry I
don't have any photographs I could pass onto you. My brother who I haven't seen
in years and is two years younger than me was the photographer. As we were sons
of a railwayman we used to travel around quite a bit train spotting so his
photos tended to be at Bristol, York or Kings Cross. I just remember Saltley,
Aston and Monument Lane as sheds that you would go past as a kid and try and
scribble down as many numbers as possible in a few seconds. I did go round
Saltley and Aston a few times as I was older.
Aston was a strange shed
as I don't recall it having a turntable as there was limited space. From what I
recall it seemed to provide motive power to north bound trains out of New
Street., i.e. Glasgow, Blackpool. One of the biggest events was when the ex
Cardiff Canton Britannia's (Morning Star, Ariel etc) were moved there after
Canton went diesel. Mind you, the Brits seemed to spend a lot of time on
freight work from what I can remember around Bescot.
Saltley, of course,
was where the freight locos that came into Washwood Heath Yard were serviced.
They also had the mechanical stoker fitted 9Fs for the Washwood Heath -Carlisle
run. I have seen photos of the odd Royal Scot on Saltley shed but I don't think
from what I can recall in my Ian Allan book that they ever had any "namers"
allocated.
Monument Lane was somewhere that I never went around. Of
course now it's a housing estate but again I think it was mainly a freight shed
with servicing locos off freights coming into Monument Lane Goods.
I
think you are doing an excellent job. When I watch programmes like Time Team
trying to uncover history long buried, people like yourself perform an
invaluable task in making history available now. It's just such a pity that so
much of the stuff we used to produce ourselves is now produced
elsewhere.
One final point, there is an excellent book out on
Bournville Sheds in Birmingham. My daughter bought it me for last Christmas.
It's The Railways of Cadburys and Bournville Shed. It is mainly devoted to the
internal railway system that Cadburys used to have BUT I was delighted to see
that the portion on Bournville sheds was much bigger than I anticipated. It
gave the history of the sheds, the types of locos it had allocated and the
"turns" it covered. The photos even went back to the 1920s. Unfortunately, I
lent it someone recently and haven't had it back yet. Once again,
congratulations on a job well done.
Kind regards - David Dalton
Wonderful site that keeps the memory of
steam alive. Thanks for allowing people to see it. I am an ex-Burton-on-Trent
boy living in Australia.
Phil Banton
As a former resident of Warwickshire when
Birmingham was part of the county, I really love this site. I used to train
spot at Shirley station as a kid. I am now 64.
Barry J Purslow
Congratulations on an excellent site. I
too came on it purely by chance. I found the sections on Saltley and Monument
Lane sheds fascinating. A big thanks to you.
David Dalton
This website is excellent, and a valuable
tool to those writing about railway history. It must have taken an enormous
amount of work and knowledge.
Geoffrey Kingscott - Author of 'Last Train
from Trent Station', 'Lost Railways of Nottinghamshire', 'Lost Railways of
Leicestershire & Rutland', 'Lost Railways of Derbyshire' and 'Lost Railways
of Northamptonshire' (due out in October 2008).
Robert Hayles has provided a response
to my reply to previous entry as follows:
Hi Mike, next chance I get I
will go into the collection and see just what is in there. From memory there
are pictures of me as a 4 year old in 1954 on the miniature railway, it was
gone well before 1960, as I regularly travelled to Rugby to spot about that
time.
Rugby was an interesting junction at that time, we went mainly
for the GC trains, by that time it was V2s, B1s, 9Fs, WDs etc, with a regular
WR Hall every Saturday. On one occasion it failed to turn up and had a SR
unrebuilt West Country instead. The West Coast mainline rarely produced
anything unusual but was still fascinating. My father has had several photos
published and held an official lineside pass between Lichfield and Tamworth in
1953, the document is in the collection.
I am moving property to be
nearer my work in North Staffs and will live back in Cheshire where I was from
1992-2004, close to another favourite railway spot, Crewe. The other series of
photos that will I'm sure interest you is the tragic smash of 1955 which
wrecked most of Sutton Coldfield station. Apart from Steam locos my other
passion is Birmingham City Transport and I own a BCT Double Deck bus dating
from 1952.
Regards - Robert Hayles
I spent my happy days as a trainspotter in
the mid 50's early 60's with my late father. Spent lots of time at Rugby,
including entry into the sacred testing plant. My fathers photo collection
includes pictures in the testing plant and one unusual shot of a Duchess on the
'Royal Scot' on Coronation day complete with a commemorative smoke box disc.
Plus an A3 on GC viaduct and the prototype Deltic at Rugby Midland. One of
these days I will get the negatives out and scan them on to my AppleMac with a
view to publishing. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
P.S Do you
remember the live steam miniature railway where the new platform is ???
Robert Hayles
Hi Robert - Thanks for sharing your
memories and wetting our appetite regarding your fathers collection of
photographs. You could always consider practising publishing one or two on the
site!!!
Although I did live near Rugby in the 90s I never heard of the
live miniature railway.
Hi, I've literally just stumbled across
your website, well done! My interest is the GC and Rugby in particular and so
feel I should add a word or two concerning the two photos of the howitzers
being loaded. I first saw these as part of a large framed 'montage' hiding in
the back of Rugby library in the early 90's. Other photos showed troops on the
way to the station and on the Hillmorton Road bridge outside the booking
office.
Interestingly one showed artillery horses being loaded into
cattle vans. All the loading photos were taken in the GC goods yard, around the
loading dock which was situated at the rear of the yard and which had an end
loading facility, very useful for big guns! Construction of the ordnance depot
at Barby wasn't started until June 1943, by the way. Hope this helps.
Cheers - Tony West
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