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Some of you have been participating in my festive parlour game of virtual steam shed bashing, using Google Street View and a 1965 Locoshed Directory, here:

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/79956-a-cinder-path-leads-to-chards-shed-directory-65/

 

 

Yesterday's wanderings took me the ten minute walk from Banbury's futuristic station to the atmospheric remnants of the steam shed.

 

This sparked plenty of off-forum reminiscences and the unearthing of a story that I was hitherto unaware of.  Banbury had a short term allocation of heavyweight Britannias (from the 70045-54 batch) that briefly worked the Great Central after closure of its own steam facilities.  They moved on to 12A, a depot of which I'm extremely fond, and put in work before Kingmoor too closed on New Year's Eve 1967.

 

This inaugural topic (under this new Special Interest area - Cheers Andy!) is dedicated to when Brits roosted at Banbury.

 

I'm off out for a Christmas stroll, to send my mind back in time to my birth year, and what steam was up to....  Looking forward to digging deep into this subject matter.

 

 

If pH will indulge me, as I quote from a PM of yesterday:

 

Seeing the photos on that site, and remembering another Brit that had been shedded there, reminded me of something I thought I had read about the Banbury Brits. So I checked, and I had remembered correctly.

The Brits had been sent there for GC line services, after sheds at the southern end of the line had been closed to steam. They were all "heavyweight" Brits i.e. from the 70045-54 batch, with the larger BR1D tenders, to make sure they could carry enough coal for a round trip. In October 1965, Banbury had 70045/6/7/50/1/2/3/4. I believe they moved to Kingmoor in January 1966.

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70045 (LORD ROWALLAN) at 2D, 14th November 1965.  She looks well and truly parked-up here, although she's fully coaled.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/railwaydave/2296364815/

 

She's a 12A machine, by the time of this lovely colour shot from Barking Bill, 30th October '66:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/barkingbill/2149288610/

 

70052 (FIRTH OF TAY) on the same day.  The caption to this photo in flickr includes an impressive list of what was on shed, including a total of 5/8ths of the local Brits.  This was the ultimate photographic encapsulation of the 'Cinder path' atmosphere, in my mind at least.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/railwaydave/2296364617/

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A few of the Banbury Brits spent the summer of '65 at Oxley, before moving on to Banbury at the end of the summer timetable, usually working the inter-regional trains to the SR, I took a pic of 70045 on shed at Basingstoke, but because my scanner is playing up I can't add it here. GC work was transferred to Banbury just before the closure of my favourite shed - Willesden, where I'd seen most of the Brits.

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No wonder I feel such an affinity with the class; I knew I felt the presence of kindly spirits when I used to crawl all over Oxley's steam remnants a few years back - all in the name of gainful employment, I hasten to add!

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  • 4 weeks later...

I was barely a week old when the Christmas Eve shots were captured, and I am extremely grateful for the ability to share that atmosphere.

 

Banbury was some place in those days.  Seems inevitable that local working men (and women) paid the price of their jobs for Steam's contraction....

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