Hello everyone

November already, where has this strange year gone? Never in our wildest dreams all those years ago noting down steam and the new diesel and electric loco numbers could we have imagined living with Covid. Sadly, we are for now and unlikely to be able to meet in the church hall again this year. We hope this newsletter will help us keep in touch and would welcome your input to add to the interest. This could be a favourite photo, an amusing tale, latest news or anything you think would interest us all. Email it to me at lenandpam@hotmail.com for inclusion next time.

Steaming towards Codsall

Locomotive Services Limited is a train operating company founded in 2018 by Jeremy Hosking and based in Crewe. The company operates rail tours using heritage steam and diesel locomotives and uses the Crewe-Shrewsbury-Wolverhampton-Crewe circuit to test the locos and stock. Many of his locos, both steam and diesel have passed through Codsall and here are some photos along the line.A dull old day as LMS Stanier Class 5 4-6-0 45231 Sherwood Forester powers through Cosford preparing for the 1:137 steepening to 1:100 climb ahead. Once there were 842 of

these to see and our intrepid photographer Derek Horton probably wouldn’t have bothered to brave the rain and take a photo in the past!

Derek Horton was rewarded with much better weather when SR West Country class

pacific No. 34046 Braunton passed Cosford hauling more modern stock. This loco recently undertook a tour of lines in the midlands ending at Bridgnorth on the SVR where it failed with a hot little end (this is the leading end of the connecting rod) a problem discovered just before its return journey. As I write it has been repaired at Bridgnorth and is out on test on the SVR.

Railway Club

No 1 November 2020NotesRailway Circle

And here is Braunton on Wednesday 28th October on a test run top and tailed with fellow Locomotive Services Ltd stablemate LMS Royal Scot class 4-6-0 No 46100 Royal Scot which had visited to use the wheel drop at Bridgnorth and was also on test. Incidentally, 6960,

‘Raveningham Hall’ also comes under LSL auspices and so SVR has had three locos from that stable, all residing in Bridgnorth

I did enjoy a rare trip out on the Severn Valley Railway in late October travelling on the Adventurer at 11 am from Bridgnorth through to Kidderminster. Our reserved compartment included a Covid brochure detailing the special arrangements regarding social distancing, use of masks, and hand sanitising together with timings. The 7-coach train was hauled by Hawksworth GWR 1500 class 0-6-0PT shunting engine No 1501, one of ten ordered by the GWR but not delivered until 1949 in BR days. Half of the small batch went new to the London area for empty stock workings out of Paddington where I remember well their very non- GWR looks. Little did I think back then that they, or indeed I, would end up in this part of the world! The train was well loaded with a lot of families in this half term week, the train staff their usual friendly and helpful self and the powerful pannier made light work of the banks alongside the banks of the Severn. Arriving at Kidderminster after stopping only at Bewdley the King and Castle beckoned for a first pint in a pub since lockdown for me! On the return Journey we had an 80-minute stop at Highley to visit the Engine House which

involved the train setting back after we had alighted before shunting to the yard to allow the working that started the day at Kidderminster to pass. I always feel a tinge of sadness visiting the Engine House looking at the splendid array of very clean but very cold and lifeless locos whose cost to return to steam would stretch even Mr Hoskins wallet. How useful would BR Std tank 80079 or Ivatt class 2 No 46443 2-6-0 be on the railway today. The giant 2-8-0 Gordon seems to have been there forever as does

the little Hunslet with the large name The Lady Armaghdale.

Photo: Alan Campbell

Guest Photographer SpotI asked our old friend Simon Dewey if he would contribute some of his photos with a tale and I’m delighted he readily agreed.

July 1960, Oxley shed.One early evening in July 1960 I bumped into a friend, also a train spotter (in those days this was an acceptable description) who said that “Bulldog” was on Oxley shed. “Bulldog was one of the first Diesel hydraulics introduced on the Western Region under the Modernisation Plan, Nos D 600 to D604, the first of the “Warship” class, built by the North British Loco Company in Glasgow in 1958.Members of the class had occasionally passed through Wolverhampton on their way to or from their makers for attention (the class were prone to problems) and the chance to see and photograph one was too good to miss.I duly sped home, picked up my mother’s camera and swiftly cycled to Oxley, parking my bike behind a bush on the scrubland which bordered the site of the shed, scaling the bank, getting through the dilapidated chain link fence and then alongside the shed building to the yard at its Southern end.There, rather than the Diesel I had gone for were two “Dukedogs” 9004 and 9015, on their way under their own steam to Swindon for scrapping– my friend had got his loco descriptions wrong and I had jumped to the wrong conclusion of what was on the shed! Rather than be disappointed I was quite pleased since only 2 others of the class remained in service and these for only another couple of months. No one was about so I clambered over both locomotives, my recollection being of steam leaking through the cab floorboards of one if not both engines.Presumably they set off to meet their fate the following day but I saw them again, the following month, on the Swindon scrap line when visiting behind “City of Truro” on an SLS special. 9004 was cut up that month but 9015 not until the November according to the records.

Interesting article in the Sunday Times about the demise of the last Ian Allan shop near Waterloo Station in London, our local one in Birmingham having already closed in 2019 of course. You should be able to expand your screen to read it!

Here is a young Ian Allan (far right) sharing centre stage with no less than Laurel and Hardy at the reopening of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway in 1946. In 1942 Ian Allan, then working in the public relations department for the Southern Railway at Waterloo station, decided he could deal with many of the requests he received about rolling stock by collecting the information into a book. The result was his first book, "ABC of Southern Locomotives". This proved to be a success, contributing to the emergence of trainspotting as a popular hobby in the UK. Magazines, transport books, shops and a travel agency were to follow and took a lot of our money! He died in 2015, aged 93, not a bad innings for someone who lost a leg in a camping accident in 1937 with the Officers’ Training Corps.

Who remembers the Blue Pullmans, the luxury trains used from 1960 to 1973 by British Railways. There were two versions, built by Metro-Cammell in Birmingham: two first-class six-car sets for the London Midland Region (LMR), and three two-class eight-car sets for the Western Region one of which is seen below at Wolverhampton Low Level. The WR sets operated from London Paddington to Birmingham and Wolverhampton, and to Bristol, Cardiff and Swansea. The LMR sets operated the Midland Pullman between London St Pancras and Manchester Central via the Midland Main Line. These were not the first Diesel Electric Multiple Units, that honour went to the humble

Hastings 6 car sets, one of which still makes outings on the main lines.

The Birmingham Pullman ran in the morning Wolverhampton Low Level to London Paddington, via Birmingham Snow Hill and through High Wycombe, with a poorly patronised fill-in journey from Paddington to Birmingham Snow Hill and back, before the evening return to Wolverhampton. The Bristol Pullman from Bristol Temple Meads to London Paddington and back, twice in a day. The success of the design concept, if not the actual trains, led a few years later to the very successful and long-lived HST sets.Locomotive Services Ltd have recently reinvented the train, seen here passing Stafford on Friday 30th October fresh out of Eastleigh works in Blue Pullman / Midland Pullman livery formed of HST Power cars 43055 + 43045. Locomotive Services Ltd under their Statesman Rail trading name, had

planned to run a rail tour on Saturday the 14th November 2020, featuring the Class 43 HST but this will be cancelled by the lockdown.

Quiz TimeNot railways for a change but the stars of the 1962 summer shows in Great Yarmouth. Back then there was something for all the family in the seaside shows, often on the end of the pier, but can you name them? Can’t say I have ever heard of the blond singer but apparently she was a big star at one time. Bob Hope said "she has a beautiful voice and she's England's answer to Marilyn Monroe" but by the 1980s she was working in Boots the chemists in Marylebone High Street! Ronnie Corbett, in his autobiography, High Hopes, described her as "the glamorous blonde singer who specialised in plunging necklines and was a tremendous success in the '50s and '60s. But her career had its ups and downs--unlike her neckline, which mostly had its downs."

CluesBack row: PC,PJ,MW,K BrosFront row: KD,RM,JC,HS,Y,BF

This wonderful picture taken from Bewdley South signal box shows the tall wooden bracket signal, erected as recently as 2006, which has suffered serious rot and a timber expert advised its

replacement as soon as possible before it fell down! The smaller wooden bracket signal opposite will also need replacing but is not as urgent.

It was decided to replace it with a temporary signal post seen below which was an excuse to fire up their big red toy, a Cowans Sheldon 30-ton steam crane one of a batch of 8 built in 1960.

Cowans Sheldon were a long-established manufacturer of cranes of all sorts at their St Nicholas works (yes, really) in Carlisle who made their first railway recovery crane in 1866 and the world’s largest floating crane in 1933 which could lift 350 tons, but their fate was dictated by the decline in the

British engineering industry. They were sold to north east based materials handling group Clarke Chapman in 1969, who also acquired Wolverhampton boiler maker John Thompson in 1970. Manufacturing in Carlisle ceased in 1987 and beefburgers are now fried where once some of the world’s greatest cranes were made. Clarke Chapman retained the name for their long-welded rail transportation delivery and recovery systems division.

Roger’s Train Spot

We hope you enjoy this News Letter which we would like to distribute as widely as possible amongst the Codsall regulars. We desperately need the emails of as many of the people who normally attend as possible so if you can help please send them to me at lenandpam@hotmail.com

Stay Safe and Mind the gap!

I thought you could give us the latest news on preserved happenings here or anything else you wanted to contribute…………………………

A photo with a story perhaps……….

A train spotting memory……….

A railway day out…………..