Peterborough North

[HerbertHopkins]

 What a wonderful, elegant name for a steam locomotive

 

Quite agree, although some of the names that the LNER bestowed on A3's didn't work quite as well IMO. 'Pretty Polly' and 'Blink Bonny' have never seemed like appropriate names for top of the range express loco's to me. 

[great northern]

I shall be 'having' her as well(!), as LNER 2558, part of the 1930's Grantham allocation.   She 'stars' on the front cover of the Cawston 'LNER at Grantham book'. With the latter influx of A4's (and newer A3's) she became a GC engine (Leicester Central) for many years, before ending her days under Mr Townsend's charge at Top Shed (presumably the cleaners haven't gotten round to her yet?!). My father knew her well in her GC days and I remember our canal boat being named after her (complete with 60059 number!!). What a wonderful, elegant name for a steam locomotive (not so sure about the cabin cruiser!)

 She went into Plant for a casual repair in July 1958 and came out with one of the first double kylchaps. As far as I can see, all the others got them when they went in for a general overhaul, so there may have been some preferential treatment going on, perhaps confirming that she was a star engine. I have read somewhere, Peter Townend or Peter Coster???, that very soon after going back to Top Shed with the double chimney she was put on a crack express, and the driver refused to believe that she hadn't had a full overhaul, despite the rather run down external condition of the engine. I have a photo of her leaving KIngs Cross dated August 1958, and whilst not filthy she was not up to Top Shed's usual standards, so that is how she appears on my little bit of the ECML.

[great northern]

Quite agree, although some of the names that the LNER bestowed on A3's didn't work quite as well IMO. 'Pretty Polly' and 'Blink Bonny' have never seemed like appropriate names for top of the range express loco's to me. 

Or Sandwich for example? They really were a hit and miss selection. Some very evocative and suitable names, but others......oh dear. I wonder if they were there because some of the Directors of the LNER had won a few bob betting on them?

[davidw]

Agreed there were a magnificent set of names on A3's for me :

 

Windsor Lad

Camerionan

Diamond Jubilee

Prince Palatine

Tracery

Knight of Thistle

The White Knight 

Blenhelm 

Flying Scotsman 

Flying Fox 

Royal Lancer

Robert the devil 

Enterprise 

 

kinda hit the mark. Though some of the A4's names are an even clearer set of self indulgence by the directors. I'm so glad that Mallard hit 126 not  Andrew K McCosh

Edited May 19, 2013 by davidw

[The Stationmaster]

Or Sandwich for example? They really were a hit and miss selection. Some very evocative and suitable names, but others......oh dear. I wonder if they were there because some of the Directors of the LNER had won a few bob betting on them?

I think they got themselves into a situation where they started something and then had to dig really deep to keep it going - net result some less than obvious names from quite a way back apart from those which were currently well known.  Easy for us to overlook that attending race meetings was a popular pastime which meant good excursion traffic as well as the names of horses that were as much, if not more, in the public mind then as Desert Orchid etc became in more recent years.

 

For sentimental reasons I happen to have one or two Hornby LNER/ER pacifics and one of them is accompanied in its box by a cigarette card picture of the horse that bore the same name - which sort of puts a different slant on a reason for buying a particular loco.

[Oldddudders]

Or Sandwich for example? They really were a hit and miss selection. Some very evocative and suitable names, but others......oh dear. I wonder if they were there because some of the Directors of the LNER had won a few bob betting on them?

Rather like the late racing journalist - and WW2 hero - Richard Baerlein, who named his house Shergar, having backed the horse at 12-1 and recommended him to Guardian readers, whereupon the subsequently-famous-for-the-wrong-reason animal won the Derby easily.

[coachmann]

Cracking photos with the blue skies, but to really capture skies as they would have been on a real photo, you should really dulute them or fade them out at the horizon/base. Hope I'm not teaching you to suck eggs when I say the camera exposes for what it sees so skies will be mid tone ie: mid blue. In a photo you are exposing for the subject (train) and so the sky would come out rather over-exposed.

Edited May 13, 2013 by coachmann

[great northern]

Good grief Gilbert is that a female spotter (nearest end of platform) in the second shot of the Midlothian? If not his Headmaster (I know it should be Headteacher but this is 1958) needs to tell him to get a haircut and point out that his shorts look like some French girl's skirt.

Headboards - scrap value remember!

Hornby Gresleys - agreed.

Flying Pig - beautiful thing making even an A2/3 look sleek.

Penultimate shot my fave.

Quack.

I have examined the oik in question, and can see no sign of female characteristics. The young chap is even wearing a tie. I doubt very much too that girls would have been tolerated at the platform end back then. We were only 12 or 13, and very naive compared with the youth of today, so we hadn't worked out that they might actually be of any use at all, and certainly not when out spotting. The shorts are a decorous knee length, so that leaves only the hair, which might be a week overdue for a short back and sides. Anyway, Bachmann made him, so any further complaints should be addressed to them.

[lmsforever]

Does look a bit feminen are you sure ,could be starting a trend for spotting .

[Oldddudders]

Does look a bit feminen are you sure ,could be starting a trend for spotting .

Hopefully gender and sexual orientation are not significant in our hobby.

[Mallard60022]

Actually, I never saw a girl spotter until sometime in the late 70s or early 80s as I passed a station on the outskirts of Crewe! When I was shedded at 15A there was a chap and his girlfriend who were both part of our 'gang' that used to park up at Findon Road Bridge. I think she was interested in trains but it might have been us handsome blokes?

Now then G, I know ER loco's never failed but, just for fun, how about some 'drags' (arriving at PN) by unusual loco's? This is not a follow on from spotters looking like they are dressed in strange garments.................................................... 

Quack.

[great northern]

I think they got themselves into a situation where they started something and then had to dig really deep to keep it going - net result some less than obvious names from quite a way back apart from those which were currently well known.  Easy for us to overlook that attending race meetings was a popular pastime which meant good excursion traffic as well as the names of horses that were as much, if not more, in the public mind then as Desert Orchid etc became in more recent years.

 

For sentimental reasons I happen to have one or two Hornby LNER/ER pacifics and one of them is accompanied in its box by a cigarette card picture of the horse that bore the same name - which sort of puts a different slant on a reason for buying a particular loco.

As deep as the GW did to find yet more Halls Mike?   Seriously, I'm sure you are right. These themes seem like a good idea at the time, but if there is a fairly big class to be named the bottom of the barrel may have to be scraped to keep it going. I take your point too about public knowledge - we tend to look at these things through 21st Century eyes, when as you say the sport of kings may be somewhat less followed. I wonder if the LNER publicity department informed the public that the locos were to be named after racehorses at the time when it was done?

[great northern]

Actually, I never saw a girl spotter until sometime in the late 70s or early 80s as I passed a station on the outskirts of Crewe! When I was shedded at 15A there was a chap and his girlfriend who were both part of our 'gang' that used to park up at Findon Road Bridge. I think she was interested in trains but it might have been us handsome blokes?

Now then G, I know ER loco's never failed but, just for fun, how about some 'drags' (arriving at PN) by unusual loco's? This is not a follow on from spotters looking like they are dressed in strange garments.................................................... 

Quack.

More memory loss Mr Duck. It isn't so long ago that I posted a photo of double headed station pilots dragging the Flying Scotsman into PN after a failure. And that is quite enough on the subject of drag I think.

[great northern]

Cracking photos with the blue skies, but to really capture skies as they would have been on a real photo, you should really dulute them or fade them out at the horizon/base. Hope I'm not teaching you to suck eggs when I say the camera exposes for what it sees so skies will be mid tone ie: mid blue. In a photo you are exposing for the subject (train) and so the sky would come out rather over-exposed.

Thanks Larry. The skies I use were kindly sent to me by Andy Y, and I have worked out enough to be able to do a bit of simple layering to get them behind my photos. The difficulty is of course that usually the quality and direction of the light differs from that in my room, which itself often differs from one minute to the next. North light would have been so much better......... I do try, when I remember, to lighten the sky before adding it, but fading them out is beyond my very limited photoshopping skills. I'm always more satisfied with the results when I use a cloudy or part cloudy sky, it's the blue I really struggle with. I don't think 1958 was a very good summer anyway!

[jwealleans]

I don't think 1958 was a very good summer

 

 

A quick Google shows you were one year out, Gilbert - instead of this, you could have had this.

[great northern]

 

A quick Google shows you were one year out, Gilbert - instead of this, you could have had this.

Thanks Jonathan, I'd forgotten yet again that almost any information can now be found with a couple of mouse clicks. Anyway, I'm prototypically correct then - August 1958 was dull and wet, so I can do without the blue skies. Now the summer of '59 I do remember, as we went on holiday to Criccieth and every day was fine and warm, sitting on the beach watching these strange antiquated locos trunding by on the cliff top above.Of course I didn't realise at the time that I was seeing the last days of the GW 90XX's. I also remember that the hotel owner's daughter showed me that girls were worth spending time with in some respects at least, but we'll say no more about that on a family friendly thread.

[Grafarman]

All sorts of songs for that last post GB:

 

'Just a small town girl...'

'That was the Summer of '59...' (sorry!)

 

Of course 1959 was the year of 'Whole lotta loving' (Fats Domino) 'Venus' (Frankie Avalon) and 'Dream Lover' (Bobby Darin)

 

But maybe, most appropriate: 'The Story Of My Love' (Conway Twitty)

 

Sorry; couldn't resist...

Edited May 14, 2013 by Grafarman

[Mallard60022]

Conway Twitty was just along the coast from Criccieth!

Quack

[New Haven Neil]

Hmm, poor summer of '58 explains my birthdate of spring '59!

 

I really must learn some simple photoshopping, as I think it does add much to your photos Gilbert, even if the light is wrong or whatever - it's better than the b**kcases.....

[robmcg]

Thanks Larry. The skies I use were kindly sent to me by Andy Y, and I have worked out enough to be able to do a bit of simple layering to get them behind my photos. The difficulty is of course that usually the quality and direction of the light differs from that in my room, which itself often differs from one minute to the next. North light would have been so much better......... I do try, when I remember, to lighten the sky before adding it, but fading them out is beyond my very limited photoshopping skills. I'm always more satisfied with the results when I use a cloudy or part cloudy sky, it's the blue I really struggle with. I don't think 1958 was a very good summer anyway!

 

I wouldn't worry to much about the blue skies, as in my humble experience most actual skies wouldn't be believed if they were presented accurately. In other words, it's really an effect we want.  I used to do lots of railway photography b+w mostly in the 1960s and spent many an hour exposing expensive paper in a darkroom, 'burning' skies with extra exposure, or to put it another way, blocking light from parts of the picture... usually to highlight such as steam engine rods and motion.  The great photographers did this all the time Eric Treacy, M W Earley,  E R Whetherset, F R Hebron, E D Bruton,   and although I cannot prove exactly what they did, they mostly made the picture present what the eye does automatically. Brilliantly, I might add.

 

The only time layered backgrounds look odd to my eye is when the horizon is awry, and that doesn't happen at Peterborough North.

 

Rob

Edited May 18, 2013 by robmcg

[robmcg]

I hope I'm not intruding too much with the blue sky thing but today I took this photo of an Bachmann model of an engine which would have passed through Peterborough North many times perhaps in 1958...  Peppercorn A2 60533 'Happy Knight'.

 

From what I read this was at the time the only non-Scottish Peppercorn A2 and was in No.2 Link at New England. Others may have better information.  My Irwell 'Book of A1/2 Pacifics' suggests that riding at speed was not quite up with Gresley standards and it may be why it was not diagrammed for 'top' trains, but I think it may have appeared from time to time on them.

 

The engine has a very dirty fire considering that it's blowing off, but I like the atmosphere. Not sure if New England shed looked very much like the Bachmann shed in the photo either!

 

Cheers,

 

Edited May 18, 2013 by robmcg

[great northern]

Thanks Rob. 533 was the only Peppercorn A2 South of Tyneside, and for some reason not a well liked engine, as it was passed round the Southern Area sheds very regularly, though New England kept getting it back. In the Summer of '58 though Top Shed had it for a few months, so it was rather cleaner than normal. There are a few shots of it on top link work - Grantham also had it for a while and used it on top jobs, but most of the time it did nothing that justified its high tractive effort. Below is the only photo of New England shed I can find taken from a similar viewpoint to yours, and which I can reproduce acknowledging Andrew C Ingram's copyright.

Most of the locos are in typical New England condition.

By the way, Grantham had lost all of its A1's by 1958, and was operating A3's only. I bet the shedmaster was relieved when they started getting double kylchaps, as they were diagrammed for some top turns, on which the single chimney engines were not much seen in the mid '50's. Having said that Grantham always had a very fine reputuation for the condition and appearance of its locos, and so will have got the best possible performance out of the single blast engines.

[Mallard60022]

Is that the 'famous' watering gantry I spy Gilbert? Answer this for 4000 posts - congrats mate.

P

Edited May 19, 2013 by Mallard60022

[thecheesemiester]

It may well be

[thecheesemiester]

I think it is at least

I am not great with this kind of thing