Peterborough North

[jwealleans]

Maybe by 1958... I'm pretty sure B16s and the North Eastern Atlantics were fairly common on excursion trains at the Cross before the war.

[Guest Tom F]

That's interesting Gordon S

 

I have a photo of a B16/1 on shed at Haymarket. I was scratching my head why one would be up there. Then checking my books found four of class were allocated to Heaton in the late 50s. Only for a year or so mind.

Edited March 23, 2012 by Tom F

[great northern]

There is plenty of evidence of B16's getting down to London during the 1950's, though for some reason it tended to happen in short bursts when several would turn up in a short space of time, followed by a long absence. I read only recently, though I can't remember where, that Top Shed being as usual on its uppers on a summer Saturday sent one on a parly to Grantham, who promptly turned it round and returned it on the rostered express! I think it had arrived on goods or certainly on non passenger stock, and that seems to have been the case with almost all sightings, which were usually York engines. Why York felt the need to use them when they had 30+ V2's to choose from, goodness only knows.

 

So, yes I know I could justify one, but it is very low priority for two reasons. The first is that I have in the past had more than one professionally built by reputable builders, but found them impossible to get round three foot radius curves. The second is more fundamental. I am determined that this layout will give a snapshot of a typical day on the ECML in the late '50's. My memory tells me that on any given day there was very little to be seen that was out of the ordinary. I never saw more than two Scottish pacifics on one day for example, and one of those would be on the Elizabethan. Most times, there was only that one. I have a long list of locos that were seen at Peterborough during my time period, but if I add even some of them I will dilute what I want to achieve.

 

I won't say " never", as it's possible that as the years go by, if I am granted enough of them, I may add to my collection. Even if I do though, most will rarely be seen, and if they are will not be rubbing shoulders with other exotica.

[Guest Tom F]

Well, as you know Gilbert, I'm going to need a few. I can always bring one along to PN.....and stop it before it gets to a curve!

 

Edited March 23, 2012 by Tom F

[great northern]

Well, as you know Gilbert, I'm going to need a few. I can always bring one along to PN.....and stop it before it gets to a curve!

 

Well, Tom, I'm going to make you backdate your layout a bit to 1949........at which time the whole class was allocated to York. That should keep you quiet for a while.

[Mallard60022]

Good morning. Only cold fruit pies being purchased here so savings being made already; perhaps enough for more treatment/therapy for over excitement on seeing ER loco's progressing through P. N. anyway.

OK I apologise for opening the worm can slightly re a B16. That was just my ignorance of ER type machines, nothing more.

Having been given the opportunity to understand GNs philosophy of representing a day in '58 that he remembers, I hereby withdraw any comments made previously or that may just slip through in the future, that may possibly represent a hint at why a particular type of loco 'might' be seen at P.N.

That little fantasy will be restricted to my own layout and having just purchased the 'correct' Model Rail (Spring Edition) and seen the article re. the BI Departmental Boiler(s), I can now justify one of those on my Diesel layout (well up till late 60s anyway). (I wont even bother converting it to EM either!!!)

I really like GN's thinking re the planning of his railway in his MR article too. I had gained a lot of insight into that thinking from his posts on here.

It has also really given me an opportunity to focus and plan for dealing with the mishmash of stuff in my loft that has been acquired over the years. Life is too short so I shall get my 'stinkbox' trainset extended and working in the very near future. I shall also rationalise the loft stores thus providing frothing opportunities on Ebay or the RMweb shop. Maybe I'll donate some ancient but working stuff to the charity often advertised in RM/BRM etc. There's also a young offenders scheme in Avon that I've been told about that is building a layout; maybe they will get a donation?

Hope I don't miss too many 'cops' over the weekend as I'm off to SR EMU country for a few days.

ATB, P @ 36E

Edited March 23, 2012 by Mallard60022

[great northern]

OK, while waiting for someone to turn up to do a small job for me - he swore he'd be here by 0930 - I've consulted one or two books. Railway Observer says that on 16th August 1958 61460 passed Newark hauling 13 bogies on the 1028am from Kings Cross and on that same day 60894 of 64A was on the 1.10pm Edinburgh - KX and 60825 of the same shed on the 1130 Peterborough- Edinburgh. I reckon that observation of the V2's must be absolutely unique. The observer says they were the first Scottish V2's he had seen at Newark post war.

 

The RCTS green book says that B16's became much more common down South post war. Nine different B16's were seen in the Kings Cross district between 25/7/53 and 19/8/53, including five in one day on Monday 10th August! Three were on Down goods trains, one on Down ECS and the other running Down light. I think it would be hard to beat this one though - 61476 on the 2.21 pm KX - Cambridge slow on 25/7/53. If I ever decided to have an exhibition layout I reckon I would certainly include that, and just wait for the pedant to turn up. I'm as certain as I can be that all of this happened because it was the height of the holiday season. York's V2's, which would normally have handled the overnight Up goods trains will have been drafted in to haul extra and relief passenger services, so the goods will have cascaded to B16's, which Top Shed needed to get rid of on the following Monday. That does not of course account for the Cambridge working. Failure of a Cambridge B1 or B17 on arrival on an Up service most likely? Fascinating stuff, and of course it could never happen now. Trains would just be cancelled.

 

How about this one then? On 7/7/58 70040 of 30A Stratford was observed ex works with " a rake of 27 ancient and decrepit brake vans,carrying class F lamps". Just imagine running that one on Stoke Summit and the reaction it would get!

 

I'm sure I could find more sightings like this without too much effort, but it is vital to remember that it was that sort of extremely unusual happening that would have been sent in to RO, and would certainly have been reported, whereas " on 15th August 1958 absolutely nothing out of the ordinary occurred" would hardly be likely to have been published, even if someone had bothered to submit it. The same applies to photographs. People were more inclined to point the camera at something unusual, given the price of film, colour film in particular.

Edited March 23, 2012 by great northern

[great northern]

I remember reading somewhere that, on occasions, a B16 from York worked all the way through to King's Cross - so there would be an excuse to have one running through Peterborough North. Oops, sorry Gilbert, have I just given you a reason to acquire yet another loco?

 

You know me well enough by now - temptation has never been easy to resist- but you will gather from subsequent posts that I am a reformed character, with a steely resolve to ignore all such blandishments, deliberate or otherwise. The forthcoming Beyer Garrett doesn't count, as I ordered that before I saw the light. Will I have the pleasure of your company on Monday?

[JeffP]

Gilbert, here's a question: are you ever likely to have an "open day" with proceeds to a loco fund or your fave charity?

 

I seem to remember DMNS having open days?

[jwealleans]

The RCTS green book says that B16's became much more common down South post war.

 

That would make sense if all the NE Atlantics used prewar had gone to the scrapper. I'm sure it's 'Top Shed' which mentions them and has a shot of one with an excursion headboard, but I can't put my hands on a copy just now.

 

What radius curves are you working to, Gilbert? Ours at Ormesby goes round 36".

[ianwales]

Hi Gilbert

 

More great photos and I enjoyed the Model Rail article, My wife's comment was it was very realistic, but, the signals and ballast were too clean!

 

On a different note, you've mentiond in connection with various phoos that for example, a gateshead looc would work the up tlisman and I am aware that there were certain KX and Haymarket corr tender A4's dedicated to the Elizabethan, but, is this info written down anywhere as to which shed was responsible for working which trains or is this from your own memories and notes that were made at the time?

 

Ian

[workev2000]

You know me well enough by now - temptation has never been easy to resist- but you will gather from subsequent posts that I am a reformed character, with a steely resolve to ignore all such blandishments, deliberate or otherwise. The forthcoming Beyer Garrett doesn't count, as I ordered that before I saw the light. Will I have the pleasure of your company on Monday?

 

So a reformed Locoholic....... Like all "reformed" folks, I bet you slip back into your old ways, J11s, B17s, new B1s, a Colwick O1.....

 

I am building up my collection of Trains illustrated and loads of B16's made it through Grantham and Peterborough on York-London freights; so maybe you need a couple to represent a typical day in 1958.

 

have you checked the 1958 (I think) RO that describes the 20 (yes twenty) football specials that took supporters to Leeds for an FA Cup game. 10 went from Peterborugh East up through Nottingham, and the other 10 went up the ECML. Mostly B1s I think, will try and find the details.....

 

Ian

[Mallard60022]

Aarrrggghhh. I drop the B16 grenade into the conversation by mistake and look what happens.............

P @ 36E

[Timara]

Aarrrggghhh. I drop the B16 grenade into the conversation by mistake and look what happens.............

P @ 36E

 

As the old saying goes, you started it!

 

Well, Tom, I'm going to make you backdate your layout a bit to 1949........at which time the whole class was allocated to York. That should keep you quiet for a while.

 

How much of a betting man are you Gilbert? I certainly wouldn't like to bet on that one!

[Guest Tom F]

Gilbert and Tim. Do you want me to be bankrupt?!!!

Give me some credit please!!

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 23, 2012 by Tom F

[gresley]

Ian,

 

I have been trying to obtain information on this subject for ages. Apparently, there is no paperwork available to build on, and I expect that it was one of those items which "like Topsy, it just grew and grew " from the early beginnings. Obviuously at some point it must have been laid down in some form because the allocation of motive power to the various depots would have been based on the requirements of those depots to fullfill their respective duties. I did at one time write to Peter Townsend, asking about this subject, and his reply was to the effect that "nothing appears to have been saved", and that he personally had no official information other than that which he had included in the revised edition of his book "Top Shed". In the revised edition, there is a chapter devoted to the Diagramming of Locos to duties, purely as it affected the running of Top Shed, but nothing about the allocation which I think was done by the District Control who must also have decided on which depots were responsible for which workings, thereby allocating the necessary motive power.

 

I hope that I am wrong, and that someone will pop up with some information on the subject.

 

Stuart

[jwealleans]

Ian and Stuart,

 

Can I suggest the BR Yahoo group run by the people behind the Xpressbooks volumes? They have access to what must be a large amount of information and are usually happy to oblige.

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BritishRailways/

[The Stationmaster]

In the revised edition, there is a chapter devoted to the Diagramming of Locos to duties, purely as it affected the running of Top Shed, but nothing about the allocation which I think was done by the District Control who must also have decided on which depots were responsible for which workings, thereby allocating the necessary motive power.

 

I hope that I am wrong, and that someone will pop up with some information on the subject.

Stuart

 

I don't know how the Eastern did it but I do know a bit about the way it was done on the Western (and i wouldn't be surprised if they did it a different way from the Eastern but certain principles are the same.

 

To produce loco diagrams you first of all need a timetable and a good idea of what special traffic requirements there are. From that basic information someone has to work out the most economic way of covering the work plus taking into account the situation of depots, their capabilities for servicing and maintenance plus manpower. A lot of this gradually developed over the years and in many respects in the steam age it was often a question of carrying on with the broad past pattern as the timetable was fairly static and special traffic needs, although varying seasonally could be reasonably forecast.

 

On the Western loco diagrams in the steam age were traditionally produced within the CME's dept but, as far as I'm aware, a lot of the work was done in the District Motive Power Superintendents offices - loco diagrams first then Drivers' & Firemens' diagrams. Once a depot's workload had been calculated in terms of the number of diagrams it had to cover for each class of work, loadings etc then its allocation could be decided with an allowance on top of the diagrammed fleet to provide for maintenance - usually worked out by experience. Similarly on top of their diagrammed workload allowance would be made in each depot's crew establishment for spares and cover men of various sorts (the ratios used were definitely different between the ER and WR as Gerry Fiennes recounted.

 

Both the loco allocation and the crew establishment would also get a further allowance which depended entirely on anticipated special traffic needs and this was usually adjusted at regular intervals through the year as traffic patterns changed. To provide flexibility (and save money) most of this sort of crew work would be covered by upgrading on a temporary basis and the only net cost on the establishment would be Cleaners.

 

Gradually on the Western a lot of this work moved to traffic depts and into what became a Regional based train-planning organisation and that change was helped along by imminent and emerging dieselisation.

 

I hope that helps a bit as it is a pretty basic explanation of how it was done but , back then, the basic principle was the same, viz, timetable, create loco and crew diagrams to cover that timetable, provide some spare capacity, make an allowance for special traffic needs produces a depot's loco allocation and crew establishment. (There is another way of doing it called 'resource led' but I don't think there was much, if any, of that in the steam age, sorry to rabbit on but I'm probably reliving the days of devising training for folk learning about some of these jobs.)

[Mallard60022]

Now GN knows how to sort out the crews for his loco's . Hours of fun and entertainment.

and..... "have you checked the 1958 (I think) RO that describes the 20 (yes twenty) football specials that took supporters to Leeds for an FA Cup game. 10 went from Peterborough East up through Nottingham, and the other 10 went up the ECML. Mostly B1s I think, will try and find the details".....

Now, these trains could be fun to organise and just think about the 'stuffing' of the coaches with the fans

(20 trains - for Peterborough United? Grief, those were the days).

P @ 36E (Retford United - average crowd 180 + 2 lame dogs and a one legged parrot!!!!!!!! Cold pies only.)

[great northern]

Gilbert and Tim. Do you want me to be bankrupt?!!!

Give me some credit please!!

 

 

 

 

Credit! credit? I'm not lending you the money to buy 68 B16's! One very good reason would be that I haven't got it.

[great northern]

Hi Gilbert

 

More great photos and I enjoyed the Model Rail article, My wife's comment was it was very realistic, but, the signals and ballast were too clean!

 

On a different note, you've mentiond in connection with various phoos that for example, a gateshead looc would work the up tlisman and I am aware that there were certain KX and Haymarket corr tender A4's dedicated to the Elizabethan, but, is this info written down anywhere as to which shed was responsible for working which trains or is this from your own memories and notes that were made at the time?

 

Ian

 

Yes Ian, your wife is right, the signals do need toning down, and that is on my list of stuff to do. Number 623 I think. The ballast is actually very subtly weathered. Norman Saunders has gone to a lot of trouble over that. The problem I think is that the lighting conditions mean that to get a good exposure on the trains the ballast tends to get under exposed and rather bleached out. Having said that, there are a few places I shall work on more, where locos would have stood for any length of time for a start.

 

As to loco rosters, my information comes mainly from Railway Observer, Trains Illustrated and Peter Coster's superb Books of..... the Pacifics. The captions to the photos in those gives some good details. Other magazines occasionally throw up nuggets of information, a recent edition of British Railways Illustrated for example gives details of the A4's used by 34A and 64B for each year the Elizabethan ran. Having gleaned what information I can, the rest is informed guesswork. I look at how long it would have taken for a loco to reach its destination and be turned coaled and serviced. I then tend to allocate it to the next train from that destination shown on the WTT, unless I have concrete information to the contrary. We shall never have access to the full information all these years later, so that's the best that can be done.

 

Having said that, of course things sometimes didn't work out as planned. When I asked Peter Coster if he could help further he told me that by summer 1958 things were pretty chaotic anyway, so almost anything could turn up on any train. That is confirmed by comments in the RO for October 1958 which says that at the end of August 40 main line locos were laid off at one time. The end of regular manning was blamed by the writer. I'm not going to take that to extremes. There are recorded instances of V2's heading the Elizabethan, but it didn't happen very often, so it won't on my train set.

Edited March 23, 2012 by great northern

[great northern]

Now GN knows how to sort out the crews for his loco's . Hours of fun and entertainment.

and..... "have you checked the 1958 (I think) RO that describes the 20 (yes twenty) football specials that took supporters to Leeds for an FA Cup game. 10 went from Peterborough East up through Nottingham, and the other 10 went up the ECML. Mostly B1s I think, will try and find the details".....

Now, these trains could be fun to organise and just think about the 'stuffing' of the coaches with the fans

(20 trains - for Peterborough United? Grief, those were the days).

P @ 36E (Retford United - average crowd 180 + 2 lame dogs and a one legged parrot!!!!!!!! Cold pies only.)

 

While driving over to Tetley's Towers this morning to view the new railway room with attached house, it occurred to me that one of the strange workings I had referred to sums up the reason why I am so against the inclusion of such happenings. I think it is safe to assume that 70040 only ever once worked up to London hauling a train of 27 brake vans. That train therefore would have been on view at Peterborough for no more than half an hour at most, even if it got held for a long time at signals. I just can't bring myself to include something which took such a very short time in the long history of the ECML, and unless I intend to create the UK equivalent of Groundhog Day I couldn't do it more than once anyway. And I don't own 27 brake vans.

[great northern]

That would make sense if all the NE Atlantics used prewar had gone to the scrapper. I'm sure it's 'Top Shed' which mentions them and has a shot of one with an excursion headboard, but I can't put my hands on a copy just now.

 

What radius curves are you working to, Gilbert? Ours at Ormesby goes round 36".

 

The loft layout was 36ins on the outer Jonathan, so about 34 on the inner line. I tried two different builders on that one, but neither could get enough slack to negotiate them. Mind you, when I spoke to one of them on the phone he confessed to only having a straight yard of track to test things, so perhaps its not too much of a surprise. I'd had the same result on a previous layout which also had 36 inch curves, so I then gave up. As I've said, a B16 would be low priority on this layout, so I haven't tried one.

[great northern]

So a reformed Locoholic....... Like all "reformed" folks, I bet you slip back into your old ways, J11s, B17s, new B1s, a Colwick O1.....

 

I am building up my collection of Trains illustrated and loads of B16's made it through Grantham and Peterborough on York-London freights; so maybe you need a couple to represent a typical day in 1958.

 

have you checked the 1958 (I think) RO that describes the 20 (yes twenty) football specials that took supporters to Leeds for an FA Cup game. 10 went from Peterborugh East up through Nottingham, and the other 10 went up the ECML. Mostly B1s I think, will try and find the details.....

 

Ian

 

Oh no, Ian, I'm not saying no more locos at all. It would be rude not to support the efforts of the manufacturers to supply me with those which were actually seen regularly at Peterborough. It is those which turned up once in a blue moon, or even slightly more than that which I intend to resist.

[Guest Tom F]

Credit! credit? I'm not lending you the money to buy 68 B16's! One very good reason would be that I haven't got it.

 

No no Gilbert....you misunderstood me...I didn't mean that sort of credit...I meant would you think me that foolish and er....er

 

Oh it was worth a ruddy try....I'll put the begging cap away.

Edited March 23, 2012 by Tom F