A Personal History of the Kelsby Light Railway by Sir Jacob Bradleigh

[BlueLightning]

Another great entry Red!!

 

and I hate being that guy again but a couple of small details. The first is that a baronetcy is not a peerage. The second is that you have David die in 20th July 1913 and then "under a year later Anthony, ............... was killed by machine gun fire on the first day of the Battle of the Somme" but the Battle of the Somme wasn't until 1916. We did not enter the war until August 1914, so a death on the battlefield under a year later would be impossible.

 

Gary

Edited August 10, 2018 by BlueLightning

[RedGemAlchemist]

Another great entry Red!!

 

and I hate being that guy again but a couple of small details. The first is that a baronetcy is not a peerage. The second is that you have David die in 20th July 1913 and then "under a year later Anthony, ............... was killed by machine gun fire on the first day of the Battle of the Somme" but the Battle of the Somme wasn't until 1916. We did not enter the war until August 1918, so a death on the battlefield under a year later would be impossible.

 

Gary

I don't know that much about the landed gentry and cr*p you're right. I'll fix that. Thanks Gary for the heads up.

 

EDIT: Errors corrected

Edited August 9, 2018 by RedGemAlchemist

[sem34090]

Another great entry Red!!

 

and I hate being that guy again but a couple of small details. The first is that a baronetcy is not a peerage. The second is that you have David die in 20th July 1913 and then "under a year later Anthony, ............... was killed by machine gun fire on the first day of the Battle of the Somme" but the Battle of the Somme wasn't until 1916. We did not enter the war until August 19184, so a death on the battlefield under a year later would be impossible.

 

Gary

Let me be the pedant for a bit...

[BlueLightning]

Don't know what you are on about SEM!! My post always said 1914....... What do you mean it says I edited it after you posted?????? [insert jester face here]

 

Gary

[Edwardian]

We did not enter the war until August 1918...

 

Gary

 

Sorry, Gary, I hadn't realised you were an American …

 

Hat …

 

Coat ...

[RedGemAlchemist]

Hewe

Hewe is the second stop on the KLR and, to us in the Bradleigh family, home sweet home. The first thing you see of the village is the spire of St. Augustine's Church, then my own home of Hewe Manor sat atop the hill overlooking the village. Then the line forks; once line heads down towards the Little Ouse and to the small wharf in the village. The other heads up, along the top of the embankment, over the bridge I mentioned in the introduction and into Hewe Station.
Hewe is tiny, the smallest of all the places served by the railway, and its station shows it. Only local push-pulls and light goods stop here in any situation other than emergencies, and most trains just belt past it at full speed as they head towards the next station at Berkham. The station itself is a miniscule one-room one-platform affair with a very sweet little building. It sits looking very lonely atop the embankment, on a loop offset from the mainline as to not hold up traffic to Berkham, accompanied only by the few structures it shares the platform with - an equally diminutive signal box and goods shed, a water tower, a coal bunker and a rather dilapidated crane. No engines are based here. Only a few trains a day stop here. It also shares its car park, sat at the bottom of the embankment, with a totally unique building which gets far more interest - The Wherryman, a charming little pub that predates the railway significantly (it was built to serve travellers on the river headed to the docks.) Not wanting to demolish the pub but needing to cross the river here to avoid running through either the centre of the village or the fields of an unsympathetic farmer, David Bradleigh, decided, with permission, to rework the plans to both. A large painting of The Wherryman in its original form now hangs in the pub, given to the owner by my family as an apology for causing so much inconvenience. They needn't have bothered - “the pub by the bridge" is a local landmark and a popular photo subject, and they've probably got more business now than ever!

Edited February 7, 2019 by RedGemAlchemist

[RedGemAlchemist]

Hewe Docks

Hewe is not the place you would expect to have a river dock, yet this tiny village not only has that but also has two stations and is at the end of its own branch, the other end of which is the small town of Alnerwick and its quarry. This dock has been used since the quarry opened to transport the stone to various places, and while this may seem an archaic way of doing this - and let's face it, it is - isn't everything here? That's part of what gives the KLR its charm.
Hewe Docks Station isn't big, and is used almost exclusively for goods. It's only a little bigger than the village's main station atop the embankment a few hundred meters away, but unlike that one it isn't really in frequent use for passengers - in fact only four a day, when a small single coach push-pull train arrives for to deposit passengers from the branch and pick up dock workers for their commute. The dock sees use from the usual cargo barges, but it's also frequently used by river boats as a temporary stopping point. With permission of course.
The docks are home to two locomotives, one owned by the KLR and the other owned by the dock authority. The story behind these two is actually pretty funny.

No.11 RICHARD
Richard is a locomotive with a mundane name but an interesting past. Built in 1910 by the Avonside Engine Company to a design similar to the locomotive they built for the NWR, No.106 Perseus, this small saddle tank's history between its construction and its arrival on the KLR is... murky at best and downright suspicious at worst. Again, our mysterious friend Missenden rears his head, recommending in a letter from 1920 that William should purchase the locomotive, which was up for auction at the time, in order to try and settle an ongoing dispute with the Hewe Dock Authority.
You see, a couple of years previously, William had tried to purchase Hewe Docks to be exclusively used by the KLR. Why he wanted to do this is unclear. Considering William Bradleigh's standoffish nature I imagine he had an argument with the then Lord Erstwhile and wanted to get back at him by preventing the WNR from using it. Anyway, the Hewe Dock Authority basically told him to take a long walk off their shortest pier. William responded to this with several dozen angry letters, then in 1920 he deposited Richard in the dockyard - without authorisation and without prior notice. What followed was a four year court case about whether this counted as breaking and entering, who was at fault for the entire debacle and most importantly considering that the 0-4-0 saddle tank had been dumped there without permission and William couldn't produce ownership documents when pressed, who owned the locomotive. It was eventually decided that Richard belonged to the Dock Authority and that was that for a while.
Fast forward to 1965. Richard was almost totally worn out as the Dock Authority didn't take amazing care of it, having no real care for running steam locomotives they just kept it in good enough condition to run and no better. So they decided to sell it for scrap. Enter my great-grandfather, who asks to purchase it off them. They agreed and he got the tiny engine for an absolute bargain. After restoring it, in 1970 he asked the Dock Authority of he could use the locomotive to run KLR dock workings.
No, said the Dock Authority, who had already purchased a Class 08 diesel shunter (Declan, see below) to do the work. Cue a lot of back and forth until finally the Dock Authority agreed - on the condition it wasn't actually kept in the docks itself. So it now resides when not in use in a siding near the goods station. And such the situation remains to this day.

DECLAN
Built in 1958, Declan spent the earliest days of its working life working as a station pilot at Blackstone-in-the-Strait before being sold by BR in 1965 and bounced from owner to owner before finally ending up under the ownership of the Hewe Dock Authority in 1969. It has remained there ever since, as the Dock Authority clearly have more idea how to run the compact diesel than the steam locomotive it replaced... And ironically now works alongside as of 1972. Painted in the pale blue-grey of the Dock Authority with the standard wasp stripes, its not exactly interesting or particularly noteworthy apart from its part in the story of how Richard ended up on the KLR. Edited November 5, 2018 by RedGemAlchemist

[RedGemAlchemist]

Upon reviewing the entry I wrote on the "Monster" it occurs to me that I may not have exactly portrayed my great-great-grandfather in the fairest light. I tried talking to my grandmother about him, only to realise she doesn't remember him. He died less than a year after she was born. But she gave me a list of various letters and such of William's from the family archives which I have hopefully used to create a much less demonising picture of him. I find it... hard to talk about William. Everyone in the family treats him like the dirty little secret, someone to be skimmed over, which I find kind of shocking and extremely unfair. Admittedly the thought of ending up in a similar situation terrifies me, especially as my baronetcy hasn't exactly gotten off to the best start. But, as I will now probably do for a few other important figures in the history of the KLR as well, here is a short biography of him, warts and all.

 

 

 

 

Sir William Bradleigh, 3rd Baronet Bradleigh of Hewe

 

 

William Sevastopol Bradleigh (sadly his name was a victim of his father's eccentricity) was born on the 14th February 1878, the only child of David Bradleigh and his wife Annabelle to survive birth - and almost didn't make it even then. He was a few weeks premature and extremely weak. David was convinced he would not survive and so left the hospital before even being told whether his wife had survived the birth.

William's youth really only went downhill from there. He never went to school as he was too ill most of the time and so was homeschooled by Annabelle. David wanted little to do with him. He was afflicted with polio at the age of five which was treated badly and resulted in him losing one leg and most of his use of the other, putting him permanently in a wheelchair by age nine. The only solace was a young girl named Elizabeth, the daughter of one of the maids, who was his only real friend, and would later become his wife and carer.

William thus grew up lonely, cynical and angry at the world, becoming a highly intelligent, charismatic and witty but also volatile and irrational young man who firmly believed that he had to be better than his father to be at all noticed. He HATED David with a passion, but adored his mother, one of the few people who truly understood him. When she died in 1889, it is said the nine-year-old William threw the largest, heaviest object he could lift at the nurse who told him and then locked himself in his room for a month, only allowing two people in - his nanny and Elizabeth.

He and Elizabeth privately married in the August of 1894, which was scandalous for two reasons. They were only sixteen at the time, and it was later discovered that Elizabeth was already pregnant with their first child. Anthony Bradleigh was born on November 25th 1894. His godfather, interestingly enough, was one Theophilus O'Doolite. Quite how this happened when William hated his father and his friends so much is unclear to me. William and Elizabeth clearly enjoyed being parents as on New Year's Eve 1900, their daughter Caroline was born, and then on January 6th 1905, their now legendary youngest Edward.

By all accounts William was a mixed bag of a father thanks to his various issues and erratic temper. He also resented his elder two children somewhat for spending so much time with their grandfather. Edward, however, did choose to spend a great deal of time with William. He wrote at length about him in his autobiography about his childhood, A Life on Rails - My Childhood As a Bradleigh published in 1972. He puts it far better than I ever could.

 

"My father wasn't exactly of many words, but the ones he did have for his youngest son were sharp, almost imperceptibly so, and tinged with a sadness I still wish I could truly understand. I still think of him sometimes, sitting at his writing desk drawing a plan for some locomotive or bridge or something that even the most casual glance could tell could never work in a million years. His complete ineptitude, is in retrospect, embarrassing, but I can't help admire his fire and tenacity. It however does sadden me to think that this man, who gave me life, would spend so much of his own energy creating things that would never work that it would eventually destroy him. I wish in occasion that he had had my life and I his, just so that he could finally have the success that eluded him for his entire earthly existence. And so every time I think of him a great melancholy washes over me. This is my father, the black sheep, the failure. This is my father, and despite all of that I truly, deeply miss him."

 

When his father died, William was actually in prison, having been protesting the possibility of war with Austria-Hungary (ostensibly because of the loss of life but truthfully, as he would tell Elizabeth and Edward and as Edward would note in the aforementioned book, to stop Anthony from having to go off to fight as he was already in the army by this point.) his response to this was simply "I should be happy as the monster is dead; instead I fear for my son." His protest was fruitless. World War I would happen and Anthony would die at the Somme at the tender age of 20.

Anthony's death destroyed William. He would never truly recover, and after the debacle with "The Monster" rarely left his office. Missenden, as mentioned when I was talking about Hewe Docks, also appears again around this time, seemingly helping William run the KLR to an extent as his mental state continued to deteriorate. He would send Edward off to live with his friends the Hatts on Sodor in 1919 (unwittingly creating a bond between our families that continues to this day) and he would marry Caroline off into the Erstwhile name in 1921. He would never see either of them again.

He and Elizabeth drifted further and further apart and he retreated increasingly into himself. His spending on the railway stopped completely in 1926, and Elizabeth would take over as head of the railway.

Finally it all became too much for him. In the early morning on October 9th 1932, Elizabeth was awoken by a gunshot from the study on the third floor. William had killed himself with Anthony's pistol (it had been given to him by Anthony's superior officer and he always kept it in his desk) after having slid himself from his wheelchair into the chair in which his father had died. A note on the desk simply read "Elizabeth, I am sorry." He was 54 years old.

Upon hearing news of his father's death, Edward burst into tears of sadness and rage and demanded to be at his funeral. Caroline, much more coldly, remarked "Oh. Is that all you had to tell me?"

William was buried in a grave with a blank tombstone, as per his request in the will he left in his desk. The location is unknown. Only three people attended the funeral - the priest, Elizabeth, and Edward. All three took the location to their graves.

As much as he wished to be forgotten at the end however, William had one major legacy. Edward attributed repeatedly his drive, passion and determination to progress and succeed and be the best he could possibly be to seeing what happened to his father when he let sadness and failure define him. In a television interview in 1959 he said "I suppose in a way my father's darkness taught me how to live life with a smile on my face. And I thank him for that." William may not have been the most successful on his own, but ultimately, in setting up his son's success, I say he kind of won in the end.

Edited February 7, 2019 by RedGemAlchemist

[RedGemAlchemist]

Lady Elizabeth Bradleigh

Elizabeth Gloria Hallwood was born on the 16th May 1878 in Alnerwick, the youngest of six children, and grew up alongside her siblings within the halls of Hewe Manor where their parents worked as staff. She grew up as a very pretty and friendly young girl but extremely precocious and independent, something that would carry on into her later life. I have just talked about her entire married life in the bit about William, so I'll not talk about it again here.
When her husband resigned from the position of CEO of the KLR, Elizabeth took over the reins, officially becoming the head of the KLR on 7th June 1926, becoming the only person to run the KLR who was not born into the family and to date the only woman - though Nana Em came close.
Elizabeth rapidly proved to be an incredibly capable CEO, and simply shrugged off the cart load of inevitable criticism and misogyny that the time obviously dumped on her. It's been said, most notably by himself, that Edward got his business acumen from his mother, even though it was the company he kept in his teens and early twenties that moulded it. Edward and Elizabeth were extremely close and she kept in touch with him constantly during his exile on Sodor.
She managed to just about balance the books after the near collapse William's illness had caused, and began to work on improving the railway again. It was her that worked on expanding Berkham Works into what it is now. It was her that oversaw rebuilding the facade of Telham into the building David Bradleigh had envisioned but not been able to realise because of the budget. And it was her who worked the KLR through the attempted and failed absorption into the LNER.
After her husband died in 1932, Edward took on the Batonetcy but chose to remain on Sodor for a few more years, extending Elizabeth's tenure far beyond what she expected. Caroline was quickly disowned after her remarks about William and the rest of the family. Elizabeth also became a notable supporter of the Suffragette movement at this time, and the family archives have numerous letters sent between her and a certain Emmeline Pankhurst.
And so she soldiered on, seeing the KLR through the Great Depression and the Locomotive Theft Scandal of 1935 and the arrival and departure of a few locomotives (though never attempting to design one herself thankfully, knowing it would be a disaster) before Edward triumphantly returned to Hewe Manor on the 1st April 1937, bringing with him the daughter-in-law and grandchildren that until now she had never met. She adored her grandchildren and always spent as much time as she possibly could with them.
On the 6th of the same month she stepped down from the role of head of the KLR, ending the tenure of the first and so far only woman to run the KLR and paving the way for her son to lead the KLR to great things.
Her life continued to be interesting as hell after her tenure as head of the KLR. She continued to be a fervent supporter of equal rights and of preserving our national heritage. During the war she travelled around the country giving speeches to motivate the women of the UK to support the war effort, though she notably also supported her son's decision to object to the ongoing conflict, stating "Edward loves this country. He just loves peace more." In the Fifties she continued to travel the county, writing her thoughts and sketching what she saw, despite being in her seventies! But after a minor heart attack in 1958, she finally decided to return to Hewe for good, where she was basically treated like a queen.
Elizabeth died on December 17th 1965 at the age of 87 after suffering a heart attack in her sleep, - fortunately managing to last long enough to see the births of her two great-grandchildren (one of them being my dad) and is buried at St. Swithin's Church in Alnerwick, within spitting distance of the house she was born in. Edward described her poetically at her funeral as "the rock my family is built upon". And considering the influence she had on them all he's not wrong. She taught both Edward and her grandson Edward Jr to embrace who they were and not let the job they were doing force them to be someone they weren't. She taught her granddaughter - my grandmother - that just because she was a woman didn't mean anything and that she could be anything any man was - so she became a mechanical engineer, built multiple locomotives for the KLR and other railways and became CME of the KLR for over three decades. She was a truly inspirational woman... Which makes it a shame that nobody really talks about her.


As always critique is appreciated. Edited August 19, 2018 by RedGemAlchemist

[RedGemAlchemist]

Alnerwick

Let's take a jaunt down the branch line for a bit. Alnerwick is the only other full station served by this short branch, though there are two small halts, and is a small town dominated by the Alnerwick Quarry. The town's station is quite small, and has only a single passenger service provided by a single coach and a single engine.

No.6 WANDERER (1)
The first of the two locomotives to bear the name Wanderer was built in 1862, and was a Manning Wardle L Class which has the distinction of being the oldest locomotive to ever run on KLR rails. It arrived in 1927 under the jurisdiction of Elizabeth Bradleigh and spent quite some six years running the branch line pretty much single handed. Sadly by 1933 the locomotive was totally worn out and was sold and scrapped.

No.6 WANDERER (2)
The second and current Wanderer is very much an outcast amongst the KLR fleet. While the KLR's other locomotives are either made in-house, bought from other small railways, or reworked locomotives pawned off to them by the LNER, Wanderer is not only none of those things but is not even from Norfolk! Wanderer is a GWR 4800 class 0-4-2 branch tank originally numbered 4875.
The story of how Wanderer ended up on the KLR is probably the biggest scandal in the history of the railway. During the late 1920s and early 1930s the railway was having an issue with motive power due to the complex situation in management causing deliveries to be delayed and some engines to never arrive at all. Thus, the CME at the time, James Donaldson, who was known for not being a particularly scrupulous individual, purchased several locomotives through illegal backroom deals, and Wanderer was one of them, being purchased in 1934 and smuggled to the KLR from Swindon. Donaldson was eventually discovered in 1935 arrested on charges of corporate espionage, theft and tax evasion, and spent the remaining 6 years of his life in prison before dying of a stroke. However, while the rest of the locomotives were returned to their rightful owners, Robert Horne and the GWR for unknown reasons allowed the KLR to keep 4875. It was then painted in KLR black, and given the name Wanderer (reflecting its history of "going walkabout", also somewhat prophetically reusing the nameplates and numbers of the previous No.6). And it has remained at the KLR ever since, working on the Alnerwick branch where it runs the only passenger service - a push-pull from Alnerwick to Kelsby and back again with a single second hand LMS suburban brake coach, which really isn't that far off what it would have been doing anyway.

WANDERER at Alnerwick Quarry, circa 1941

Edited September 6, 2018 by RedGemAlchemist

[RedGemAlchemist]

Alnerwick Quarry

The quarry dominates the entire of the town, expanding its borders to a pretty gigantic land area. Nestled within the massive hulks of overarching stone elevators and offices are the sheds for two locomotives. That being said, there have definitely been more than two.

No.4 MASTODON
Built at some point in 1929, Mastodon is an engine shrouded in mystery. Quite why or when it was transformed from a pretty usual Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0 side tank to the gigantic-boilered, overpowered monster it is today is completely up for debate and no matter how hard I tried I cannot find any records of it between construction and about 1940, by which point it had already been rebuilt. It was originally unnamed, just numbered as No.12. It spent years running along a line at the bottom of a valley in Wales, running dozens of coal wagons up and down the line, before being sold when the line closed in 1946 when the mine became too costly to keep open (the KLR Museum has several photos of it hauling massive lines of loaded coal wagons along its old line). It, along with No.5 Geoffrey Lake (which contrary to popular belief does not originate from the same railway) arrived in 1947 on the KLR and the two locomotives immediately caught the eye of my grandmother who took an immediate liking to them. It was her that then convinced her father to purchase them for the KLR and they then stayed. Emily's other interest (that of prehistoric creatures) inspired Mastodon's name. The two engines have remained here ever since.
Mastodon is not an engine that will be winning any beauty contests. It is a monstrous engine, compact but gigantic, with the highest boiler pressure and largest boiler of any of the KLR's locomotives despite a wheelbase that is not that much longer than average for an 0-6-0 tank. It towers over the other tank engines on the line, sitting high on its chassis with low cylinders that almost scrape the ground and a very long cab which for some reason contains the entire of its firebox (what the possible purpose of this was we will probably never know.) However, what it lacks in grace it makes up for in torque.
Mastodon is almost surreal in its sheer pulling power, outperforming every single other tank engine on the KLR in haulage tests. Its high boiler pressure, massive weight and slow speed grant it strength that outweighs the KLR's other goods tanks by a clear margin and even some heavy goods locomotives twice its size! To this end, it performs a similar task today that it did in its old stomping ground: it can usually be found hauling wagons of gravel and other aggregates from Alnerwick Quarry or returning empties to the Quarry for refilling. It was built as a beast of burden; it is only good at one thing, but that one thing it does very well.
Or, rather, does when it is in use. Mastodon nowadays is rarely used anymore. The engine's unique design makes it incredibly difficult to repair, and the wear and tear of the work it does combined with dozens of breakdowns and mechanical issues due to that same unique design rapidly takes a toll; so it has been largely supplanted by the quarry's other current locomotive. As of 2010 it remains in "reserve" on the KLR's books, but most of the time it simply sits in its shed in the quarry except on days of exceptionally high traffic. You can just about see it through the fence, but sadly not that clearly. Kind of a shame really. Edited September 6, 2018 by RedGemAlchemist

[RedGemAlchemist]

No.12 MAMMOTH

Built in 1922 and arriving on the KLR in 1966 after a life working for the National Coal Board, the ironically named Mammoth (as its actually one of the KLR's smaller locomotives) is a Hawthorn Leslie 0-6-0 resembling an LNER J72 which was purchased for the precise reason of alleviating some of the workload of the unreliable, ailing Mastodon. It was not expected to take over from it completely, which is pretty much what has happened as of the late 2000s as its compatriot became increasingly hard to maintain. Mammoth is nowhere near as powerful, but is more reliable and efficient and is more than powerful enough to do the job required on most days. The small side tank may not be as unusual as Mastodon but its still rather eye-catching in its own right. It's not as unique or as iconic, but it does its job and does it damn well.

Edited November 11, 2018 by RedGemAlchemist

[Edwardian]

"William Sevastopol Bradleigh"- Brilliant! 

[81A Oldoak]

What on earth does this have to do with "Pre-Grouping-Modelling and Prototype?... surely this belongs on another thread.... miscellaneous or something... I`ve already stopped looking at the layout matters thread, because the main page is stuffed with layouts that are long finished, and simply take thousands of identical pictures, interjected with Jenny Agutter... and here in pre grouping its becoming the same, just fictional descriptions of models that will never be built, endless pictures of 3d layouts, and pretty bad literature. RM web is getting boring, and too big to get an overview. Sorry, red gem, nothing personal, but its something thats getting me grumpy.

 

To the best of my knowledge, I am in no way related to this...person. 

[Edwardian]

What on earth does this have to do with "Pre-Grouping-Modelling and Prototype?... surely this belongs on another thread.... miscellaneous or something... I`ve already stopped looking at the layout matters thread, because the main page is stuffed with layouts that are long finished, and simply take thousands of identical pictures, interjected with Jenny Agutter... and here in pre grouping its becoming the same, just fictional descriptions of models that will never be built, endless pictures of 3d layouts, and pretty bad literature. RM web is getting boring, and too big to get an overview. Sorry, red gem, nothing personal, but its something thats getting me grumpy.

 

 

To the best of my knowledge, I am in no way related to this...person. 

 

Pre-Grouping prototype Jenny Agutter and friends ....

[RedGemAlchemist]

"William Sevastopol Bradleigh"- Brilliant!

Yeah. David Bradleigh was a bit of a nutcase.

[DonB]

 

 

 

 

Pre-Grouping prototype Jenny Agutter and friends ....

Railway Children, 02.jpg - Size 161.81KB

 

not only pre-grouping but also they've forgotten to connect the fiddle yard !   

[Caley Jim]

not only pre-grouping but also they've forgotten to connect the fiddle yard !   

Someone has pinched the cassette!!

 

Jim

[Regularity]

Pre-Grouping prototype Jenny Agutter and friends ....

Interesting “pre-grouping” lorry visible on the right - literally ahead of its time.

 

As an aside, Sally Thomsett was actually a year older than Jenny Agutter, despite playing her younger sister.

[RedGemAlchemist]

Unnumbered GOBLIN

Built by de Winton in 1905 for what was then the Alnerwick Quarrying Company Ltd.,this small vertical boiler tank locomotive arrived on the KLR as the quarry's original locomotive and was one of the KLR's original three locomotives. It never received a number, just the name Goblin. It served diligently until 1947, when Mastodon arrived and was assigned to the quarry to assist with the increasing stone traffic. It didn't last much longer. It was destroyed later the same year in a rather unusual accident where it was crushed between a line of ballast wagons and a brick wall. Unable to be repaired in its almost flat state, it was scrapped. Its front buffer beam however ended up in the KLR stores at Berkham for some reason and thus found its way to the KLR museum where it remains to this day.

 

No. 7 WANDERING STAR

The quarry seems to like Hudswell Clarke tank engines. Another short lived resident, Wandering Star was a unique 0-8-0 side tank engine that was built to order by the KLR in 1944. It only lasted a rather uninteresting three years before being heavily damaged in a collision in 1947 with Wild Rover and... you know the rest. This left Mastodon as the sole locomotive working at the quarry until the arrival of Mammoth several years later. Kind of a shame really, from photos it was quite an interesting looking locomotive in its own right even before becoming part of one of Edward Bradleigh I's more bizarre experiments.

Edited October 7, 2018 by RedGemAlchemist

[RedGemAlchemist]

Before I start talking about Berkham I might as well talk about the man who gave it the reputation it currently has as the Frankenstein's workshop of the railway world. I will try and remain unbiased as I do so, as while I idolise Edward Bradleigh I I also acknowledge that he was a human being. He was just as flawed as any of us. Many things could be said about him, to be honest, and it will be difficult to sum him up in just this short biography.

 

 

 

 

Sir Edward Bradleigh (I), 4th Baronet Bradleigh of Hewe

 

 

Edward William Bradleigh was born on the 6th of January 1905, the youngest of William and Elizabeth's three children. He spent much of his childhood sitting with his father in the drawing room of Hewe Manor, watching his father work.

Edward's intelligence showed itself at a young age. According to William's journal he was reading Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stephenson by the age of four, and by eight he was painting landscapes. In fact he considered painting to be his true passion, beyond even his love of railways. Many of his works hang around the Manor today - including one he painted at the age of ten directly opposite me in this room. It's truly astonishing that a child could paint better than most adults. Certainly better than I ever could.

As for his relationship with his siblings, while he was always distant from his sister Caroline, he and Anthony were always extremely close. Anthony's death when Edward was nine years old traumatised him, but while his father withdrew deeper and deeper into himself as of trying to hide from his own sadness, Edward instead projected an air of confidence to hide his from all those except his closest family and friends. However, like his father he suffered from depression which also began to make itself known around this time, but chose to hide it behind humour rather than let it consume him like his father did. In his teens he began smoking as well to help alleviate some of the anxiety.

His exile to Sodor in 1919 served actually to give him a breath of fresh air as he found himself in the bright and cheerful city of Tidmouth and under the watchful, nurturing eye of Topham Hatt far away from his increasingly dysfunctional family. The teenage Edward also found a lifelong friend in the form of Topham's daughter Barbara, who shared both his love of steam locomotives and of the British countryside, and a surrogate younger brother in his son Charles. He also seems to have picked up Topham's famously flamboyant fashion sense, as he began dressing very brightly around this time, a trait that would carry on for the rest of his life.

In 1924, after finishing his schooling, he began working as an apprentice at Crovan's Gate works under Burnett Stone.

It is also around this time that he met his future wife, Lillian Kyndley, who worked in a nearby shop. The two began courting and married in 1928. Their first child, my grandmother Emily, was born on the 16th of September 1931.

Upon finding out about his father's death, he made an immediate beeline back to Hewe, but then returned to Tidmouth shortly after, leaving his mother in charge of the KLR and buying a large seafront home. (This house, 27 Wollsley Road or "The Beeches" as it states gaily on the sign by the front door, is still in the family today - I use it as a summer home and also stay there when I'm in Sodor for other reasons. The kids love it.) Lillian and Edward's second child, Edward Jr., was born there on April 22 1934. The entire time between his father's death and his return, he was working, drawing up hundreds of designs for locomotives, using his experience working at Crovan's Gate and the input of his ever-supportive wife to inspire him.

His return to Hewe on April Fool's of 1937 caused quite a stir amongst his workers. Here they were now led by a man who wore salmon pink suits to the office and talked to them like friends rather than workers. A man who enjoyed working in the works himself. A man with a love of his railway and a boundless imagination.

However, the family soon found itself mired by controversy. Edward's pacifism turned him into a target for those looking to point the finger for Nazi sympathisers leading up to and during World War II. Then things went from bad to worse in 1952 when his son Edward Jr was publicly outed as homosexual, and he made himself a target once again by defending him. Nevertheless he held it together, and kept the KLR running through the War and into the railway's golden age of the late Fifties and early Sixties. Edward's flashy, witty, almost Willy Wonka-ish public persona made him a media darling in the age of television, especially with his very public feud with the heads of British Railways, and he saved the railway from the Beeching Axe thanks to his massive public campaign. However, by the late Seventies, he was appearing less and less in public. The few times he appeared he was looking increasingly gaunt and ill.

On November 17th 1979, Edward collapsed at a WNR gala at Castle Aching while he was giving a short interview with a television news reporter. He was rushed to the Norfolk and Norwich hospital, but sadly he died en-route. It was later publicly announced why: he had been battling lung cancer since 1976, caused by being a habitual smoker since his teens, and it had spread to his brain and caused a massive hemorrhage. He was 74 years old. He was buried, as per his wishes, in Tidmouth churchyard on Sodor, and his death was mourned throughout the railway community. Edward Jr. said at his funeral that he wished that he had been the one who had died instead as he could never live up to him. Bit harsh, that, in my opinion, but there you go.

There's a lot that could be said for Edward Bradleigh I. Talented painter. Mechanical wizard. Tortured genius. Media circus clown. Social pariah. Free spirit. I just call him a man. A very intelligent, very troubled, inspirational, flawed, genius dandy who deserves to be seen for more than just his accomplishments as the man beneath is even more interesting.

Edited February 7, 2019 by RedGemAlchemist

[RedGemAlchemist]

Berkham

Berkham is the second largest station on the KLR behind the main terminus at Telham, though this is only because of Telham being a joint terminus with the WNR. Berkham Station proper is home to three locomotives, not including whatever is in the massive seven-road workshop - the main KLR works are here, sitting at the end of the goods yard. As such they will probably have the longest list of locomotives of any part of this run-down, but for now let's focus on the residents both past and present of Berkham sheds.

No.8 EASTERN RAMBLER
Eastern Rambler is an odd sight for most visitors to the KLR, and is not a victim of the Eastern Region of BR's continuation of the LNER tradition of dumping old locomotives they no longer wanted onto the small railway, but rescued by the dedicated efforts of Edward I to save it. Also, this locomotive's current condition, while smart-looking, is kind of a shame as were it not modified into its current form it'd be the last of its class.
Eastern Rambler is a noticeably modified LMS 4P 2-6-4 passenger tank. Built in 1934, it began life as LMS 3425 and originally worked in the West Midlands. It was shunted around from LMS area to LMS area throughout its working life, eventually ending up working on a Hertfordshire line around St. Albans, thus ending up in the Eastern Region's books. The locomotive was worn out through lack of maintenance by 1959, and after an accident where an iron girder ripped off its funnel, dome and smashed out both spectacle plates it was put up for scrap in 1960.
Enter Edward I, who had often admired the out-of-place locomotive while in St. Albans for business reasons, referring to it as "an hardy creature from the West, who has travelled East in search of greener pastures" in his journals. Upon discovering that 3425 was being sold for scrap he rushed to purchase it. After much deliberation, 3425 arrived on the KLR in 1961, and was repaired using LNER parts and set to work on the KLR mainline. Its name is derived from a similar description of it from elsewhere in Edward's journals.
Eastern Rambler is something of a workhorse, often performing heavy goods work up towards the Telham end of the line while also being on the heavy passenger rota with the likes of Edward Bradleigh I and Black Shuck. Massive, powerful and elegant, it is the largest tank engine the KLR owns and is also among their most reliable locomotives, while also being one of a kind in more ways than one.

Not EASTERN RAMBLER, I couldn't find any good photos, but another of her original class

Edited October 13, 2018 by RedGemAlchemist

[RedGemAlchemist]

No.5 GEOFFREY LAKE

Built by the North British Locomotive Company as one half of a pair of locomotives, Geoffrey Lake (originally No.7 Billinton) was built in 1939 as an attempt at copying the LBSCR's E2 class tank engines, which the owner at the time was fixated with. Quite why they wanted to copy a class of rather unreliable tank engines is beyond me but there you have it.

Built to help with the extra demand placed on Blackstone's docks, neither locomotive proved especially reliable or useful -having inherited many flaws through their E2 ancestry- and with the docks' preexisting pair of 1905 0-6-0Ts still being in good shape, the newcomers saw little work, being used only when necessary. Out of the two Marsh was more reliable than Billinton, so the latter spent much of its initial decade inactive. In 1947, with nationalisation looming and the docks no longer requiring more than one loco at any time, the NBL pairing was put up for sale, with Marsh being purchased by the Southern Railway and Billinton by the KLR, arriving at the same time as Mastodon.

Marsh survived on British Railways until 1957, when it was transferred to the National Coal Board South Wales area, passing through various collieries, finishing up at Maerdy Colliery in the Rhondda Valley alongside former GWR Pannier No.9792 and Peckett No.2150, the former Marsh being withdrawn finally in 1975. It was sent into store at the nearby NCB Mountain Ash workshops. By this time, Marsh had undergone some modifications to its cab to reduce its loading gauge and to its bunker to increase capacity but was otherwise in entirely original condition. The locomotive lay, dumped and forlorn, yet unusually well-kept for a Mountain Ash loco until 1986, when it was purchased by Caroline Barnes-Bell to form an exhibit in a new museum in its initial home - Blackstone-in-the-Strait. A cosmetic restoration was undertaken, and today Marsh can be seen wearing it's original colours in the museum - a peaceful retirement for a loco that was worked harder than many a Hunslet Austerity in its later years.

Billinton has fared with a rather more peaceful life after leaving Blackstone. It has been almost as little-used on the KLR as it had been at Blackstone, though occasionally being drafted in to enact station piloting duties, the occasional turn up the Alnerwick branch and some amount of works shunting at Berkham. The locomotive's appearance has remained entirely unaltered with the exception of the addition of KLR passenger livery, unlike Marsh's, and Billinton - now known as Geoffrey Lake under KLR ownership after one of the line's benefactors - has remained in quiet and almost constant working order since purchase. It's not the most reliable or most commonly used locomotive, mostly being used, as noted, as a backup engine. It's also a little generic. But it does its job, and it's part of the KLR family. Catch it while you can though - it's going on loan to Blackstone in February, to run alongside its sister locomotive for the first time in over 60 years.

 

 

No.14 NORFOLK REBEL

There is a commonly repeated "fact" that the KLR has never had any diesel locomotives. This is not true by any stretch of the imagination. The KLR has owned several and currently owns four. The largest of these is Norfolk Rebel, one of only three Metropolitan Vickers Type 2 locomotives (also known as BR Class 28) left in existence. The other two, for those interested, are D5705 on the East Lancashire Railway and D5702 on the NWR.

Norfolk Rebel was built in 1959 and was originally marked as D5706 due to an administrative error. It spent two months under that number before the error of there being two D5706s was noticed and its number was permanently removed, rendering it with D57XX. It spent its working life running goods trains up and down the East Coast Mainline, although much like the rest of its class it was unpopular due to reliability issues and the level of noise and fumes it produced. Thus it was unceremoniously dumped on the KLR in 1969. At this point D57XX was a rusted out wreck and BR just wanted rid of it, so the fact it barely moved under its own power was inconsequential.

It is not an understatement that Edward Bradleigh I was not a great lover of diesel traction, but for whatever reason he grew something of a soft spot for D57XX. He spent the next few years restoring it to a working condition, including replacing the troublesome engine and much of the internal workings with those from a much more reliable Warship. It was then painted in a variant of KLR goods black (with a yellow front, white roof and window frames motif), named after Robert Kett for... some reason, and set it to work on the line's heaviest goods trains, beginning service in 1974.

Since then, Norfolk Rebel (now with the unimaginative nickname of "The Black Box" courtesy of the work crews) is the backbone of the KLR goods fleet. It is not only the largest diesel the line owns but one of the most powerful locomotives it owns full stop. It's another case where it isn't pretty (it also certainly isn't quiet - it's also easily the KLR's loudest locomotive!) and still has a couple reliability hiccups every now and again but it gets the job done. And it gets the job done very well indeed.

 

NORFOLK REBEL in its D5706 days, doing what it does best

Edited November 6, 2018 by RedGemAlchemist

[sem34090]

     I'm loving all of these lore overlaps/intermingling, it's marvelous! And that Type Two sounds fantastic (well, it would with a Warship engine, wouldn't it?)

Blimey! Fitting the engine from a warship (Dreadnought?) into a railway engine! Bet that loco needs a good few firemen... strange shaped body though, and where's the boiler? It must be steam-powered judging by the exhaust coming out of it!

[sem34090]

   

   

   

And this is from someone who finds Bulleid Pacifics vaguely good-looking...