On Shed November 2014

On Shed November 2014

 "Preserving the steam locomotive legacy...and more....on film"



Front Page

Italian Engine 741.120 on Piteccio viaduct 5th October 2014.(C) Valerio Varriale.
Special steam train celebrating 150 years of the "Porrettana" line, the first one to cross the Appennini mountains.

Welcome, and site news.

“The Golden Age of Rail”
Steam Tube Photographic Highlights
Steam Tube Video Highlights
Steam Tube Blogs>National Traction Engine Trust’s 60^th Anniversary Road Run
100 trains... so far .....
Tornado- The Story So Far
New & ReBuild News.(Hengist, Unknown Warrior.. Miller Project)
B & O Railroad Museum TV:

A-Z Great Railway Engineers (K)
Mainline Steam Schedule
On This Day in History.
Melbournes Forgotten Railway
Radstock to Frome Railway Project
Christian Wolmar
Around the World in 80 Railways. (52: India - Gwalior)
WATTRAIN , APHTRO
30742 Charters
Stafford Railwayana Auctions News
Editors Video Selection 

Welcome, and site news.
A warm welcome  to you all this month....and especially to new members of Steam Tube...and others who regularly visit this site, and its sister site "The Railway Chronicle"..  a daily railway international news digest.
An especial note of thanks to all you who regularly provide us with such an array of film and photograph of heritage line events, and mainline steam action.
There have been some spectacular films..and photographs..uploaded this month.
The "Front Page " shot from Valerio Varriale is certainly  "spectacular"....and Rob Hodgkins visit to the Mount Washington Cog Railway, and the two films from Trains
featuring The Puy de Dôme : a dormant volcano in the center of France..and the Salzburg funicular (Austria)..all are worth a second look!
Included in the "Around the World in 80 Railways" feature is an excellent film from Roni..."Gwalior - On Narrow Gauge"

Congratulations are due to the Llangollen Railway on the opening of its Corwen Extension (22nd October 2014), and on Thursday 30th October 2014, the first test train reached Wensleydale Railways new Northallerton West station. Well done to all concerned.

It is amazing to see how many people volunteer at heritage sites to help recreate the "golden age of railways", whenever that may have been.

This was the subject of an event at the recent Cheltenham Literature Festival ......

 

Cheltenham Book Festival

Town Hall, Cheltenham
6.30pm Monday 6^th October 2014


“The Golden Age of Rail”

Cheltenham… at the very heart of the country.. Well, for  a decade or so from the mid 1930s onwards, Cheltenham was at the centre of  bus and coach express services for  the whole country.. and was given legendary status by having a train service named after it..”The Cheltenham Flyer”

(On June 6, 1932, 5006 Tregenna Castle , hauled  the up Cheltenham Flyer, from Swindon to Paddington in 56 minutes 47 seconds for the 77.3 miles, saving 8 minutes on the scheduled timings.)

These days Cheltenham is probably best known for its race course.. and the government listening post known as GCHQ… So, then, still at the heart of things!

And the Cheltenham Book Festival  clearly demonstrates a desire to be at the heart of literary innovation and discussion..

Which brings us to the event scheduled for Monday 6^thOctober 2014 at the 111 year old Town Hall.

Under Paul Atterbury’s(Antiques Roadshow, “Lost Railway Journeys”) careful guidance , Andrew Roden(”Flying Scotsman”), Sean O’Brien (“Train Songs”), Andrew Martin(“Belles and Whistles”) and Christian Wolmar (“To The Edge of the World”) discussed “The Golden Age of Rail”…or the heyday of the railway ..before a large audience in the main hall.

Andrew Martin ..and quite possibly his creation Jim Springer, railway detective(9 books, a stage play..and counting..) ..would have preferred the speed of service for which the “Cheltenham Flyer” was renowned..…but on coming down to Cheltenham  he abandoned the train in favour of car because of severe delays en route! He would have enjoyed being in a compartment on his own, with his feet up, enjoying the travel experience , as he had done in his youth when travel from York to London….courtesy a BR pass (his father worked for the railway in York)was a fairly regular event. Travel by rail today,(6^th October 2014) for him, is fast losing its appeal….. 

A youthful Andrew Roden (compared with the 4 seniors present!), who had been born with steam and soot in his blood…and had ,in 2005, energetically  led the campaign to save the London-Penzance Night Riviera sleeper train, was asked about his thoughts on Flying Scotsman, and its current major (and very pricey) refurbishment……It would probably have been better to stuff it and put it on a plinth  … but to see this engine in superb running condition…what a triumph of….and for…..British engineering! And he hopes to see HS2 in all its glory too!

Sean O’Brien is known for his prize winning poetry… so to hear him read the celebrated Flanders and Swan song  “The Slow Train”.. probably summed it all up…. What has been lost ….and cannot be recovered …

This excerpt is from his poem "Special Train".. and it is almost as if you were there..now...


"No trouble was spared. Already delayed
We would ride in authentic discomfort.
The carriages smelled of when everyone smoked.
In the corridors nurses and servicemen flirted,
Incurring the mass disapproval of character-actors
Distracted from Penguin New Writing.."  


"Authentic discomfort".... it sounds almost desirable!..and missed!

 

Christian Wolmar- Britain’s leading transport commentator – and the author of many books on privatization, the Tube, US railroads, railways in wartime..and more.. enthused on the sheer scale and engineering magnificence- in the face of  the most hostile of terrain and topography- of the Trans Siberian Railway!  Given its length (Moscow to Vladivostock = 5,772 miles), and the infrastructure needed…. Cuttings, bridges etc… and the difficulty of getting local (what local??) labour, then its construction in around 10 years would put modern railway builders to shame.

Now, given the above, perhaps you think you could work out which of the following times in railway history each of the four authors would wish to be transported to……

Who would want to experience being in the armoured train used by Trotsky on the Trans Siberian?

Who would want to revisit rural France in the 1860s on a 2 coach train pulled by a small engine? 
Who would want to revisit Edwardian England when the British network was at its peak…using a 1910 “Bradshaw’s”,with its “teeming plenitude” (the author’s phrase!)of information, and” its footnotes.. Except Mondays, Market Days only, change here for Loch Lomond Steamer. Punch parodied these footnotes when it mocked up its own Bradshaw page, with footnotes reading, This is only here to confuse you. “?
And who would like to go forward…25, or 50 years into the future to see what’s happening then? Given the projects on the drawing board at the present (HS2 etc....and heritage) he’d like to be around long enough to see it himself!

Answers on a postcard!!

You may have your own thoughts on “The Golden Age of Rail”

Still, to hear these views from four gentlemen sharing the same platform, should cause us to reflect..be glad for what we have…and make every effort  to use it….or lose it.

===============================================================


Notes:

Andrew Martin

The Jim Stringer novels are a series of historical detective novels set in the early Twentieth century, and featuring a railwayman turned railway policeman called Jim Stringer. The novels progress chronologically, but can be read in any order. They are:

1. The Necropolis Railway

2. The Blackpool Highflyer
3. The Lost Luggage Porter
4. Murder at Deviation Junction
5. Death on a Branch Line
6. The Last Train to Scarborough
7. The Somme Stations
8. The Baghdad Railway Club
9. Night Train to Jamalpur

 The books have been shortlisted for a number of Crime Writers Association Awards, and The Somme Stations won the Ellis Peters Award for Historical Crime. The Last Train to Scarborough has being adapted for the stage by Chris Monks of the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, and performed during June 2014

Andrew Martin website.

Andrew Roden
Andrew Roden website
Some of Andrew Rodens earliest and most treasured memories are of railways - the preserved steam trains of his native Shropshire and the West Coast electrics - and he began his writing career at RAIL Magazine in 2000. After a brief stint writing on the coach industry, he returned to railway writing in 2005, joining International Railway Journal first as News Editor and then Associate Editor. He also edited the quarterly magazine European Rail Outlook.

His latest book, Trains to the Trenches is a groundbreaking new volume revealing for the first time the story of how railways shaped the course of the Great War on battlefronts in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and is set to prove popular with general history readers as well as railway and military enthusiasts.

Roden gained a reputation for his flamboyant and colourful features, which included a unique tour of the Royal Train for RAIL Magazine which many years on he rates as some of his finest work of all. After Editing Mallard by Don Hale, Andrew bumped into his publisher in the bar car of the London to Penzance Night Riviera sleeper train (which he was leading the campaign to save at the time), and over a whisky or two persuaded Aurum Press that a new book on Fly


On Shed November 2014