SECR L class 31778 but where

[Guest Jack Benson]

This image of exSECR L class 31778 appeared on our FB group page labelled ‘Okehampton?’ my best guess is the South West signal may be the influence.

 

It is a handsome loco

Any ideas

 

StaySafe

[bécasse]

Redhill coming off the Tonbridge line and about to pass the shed on the right (the path that leads out of the back of which can be seen in the right foreground), the train will work on from Redhill to the London Bridge area.

[Wickham Green too]

The closest that headcode would have got to Okehampton ( on a Southern service ) would have been Weymouth .... and I doubt an L ever got that close !!?!

[Oldddudders]

2 hours ago, bécasse said:

Redhill coming off the Tonbridge line and about to pass the shed on the right (the path that leads out of the back of which can be seen in the right foreground), the train will work on from Redhill to the London Bridge area.

I think it is also coming over the top of the "Sand Tunnel" on the Quarry Line?

[bécasse]

Looking at the train, both loco and stock (including the U-van for the proverbial kitchen sink), I suspect that it is a return hop-pickers (not hop-pickers' friends) special, quite possibly Hawkhurst to London Bridge via Tonbridge, Redhill and East Croydon, so would be on a Sunday afternoon in September. They sometimes ran via the Crowhurst Spur and sometimes via Redhill and it wasn't unknown for them to run into Bricklayers' Arms rather than London Bridge LL (although that was more common pre-war). 

 

When I started school in 1950, there was a girl in my class who was taken out of school for a fortnight each September so that she could accompany her family on their annual hop-picking "holiday", and I remember seeing the odd special train even quite late in the 1950s.

Edited March 17, 2022 by bécasse
Crowborough corrected to Crowhurst! - thanks to WGt

[Wickham Green too]

er ... Crowhurst Spur ! ( nowhere near the station of that name !! )