Athelstone

They’re favourites of mine. And they were exceedingly good engines too. A design that stays in front-line express service for forty years is not to be sneezed at.

I own the current iteration of the Hornby Castle. A lovely model to look at, but my example is an erratic runner, so it sits on my desk as an ornament.

I told you I was a nerd…

Castle class are lovely. My first Hornby train was a Castle class. Wish I could remember which one.

When they put the Great Western locomotive Caerphilly Castle in the Science Museum my father said, ‘The father of one of classmates at school used to drive that engine.’

…In fact one of my few relatively clear memories of my grandfather are holding his hand while we stood on the (very crowded) footplate of the Oliver Cromwell, a BR Standard 7 Class locomotive, for a short run up and down the rails at Bressingham in the early 1980s. All I remember is a glimpse of the fire in the furnace, being closed in on all…[Read more]

This is fascinating.

My grandfather, on my mother’s side, worked on the railways but I know virtually nothing of what he did, to my embarrassment. I gather he was responsible for maintenance of a section of track, and when he started, had something to do with using horses to shunt rolling stock into and out of sidings, this being before that…[Read more]

Newbury is my adopted home town, Ath. Needless to say it’s less romantic now though steam trains do pass through as I’m sure you know.

In a word, Athers, no. Just a life-long interest in railways, which is a spin-off from a passion for steam engines that started before I can even remember. I’m a nerd, basically. Though not an anorak: I was never a trainspotter, and collecting numbers seems a pointless exercise to me. Though if you were to ask me about the technical workings of a…[Read more]

No, I hadn’t heard of this one, but with two (as it turns out) of the four fatalities being railwaymen it probably wouldn’t have made a big splash except in the local press. Your father’s reaction, though: kids, eh?

Richard,
My late father would tell of a train crash in Diggle, then in Yorkshire, in 1923 or 1924. He was four and witnessed the accident whilst out walking with his granddad. He was interviewed by the local newspaper and is reported to have said “It were a grand smash” or similar. I see from google that four people died, so it probably wasn’t so…[Read more]

Really enjoy these tales of the rails, thank you.

Just nipped into the Den in the middle of a busy week to discover another of your interesting blogs, Richard, so had to stop and read. Thank you!

Yes, I’m sure that the signalmen must have thought their systems were foolproof. As for their motivation, it seems to have been professional pride more than anything else. It was a matter of pride not to fall down on the job, to keep the traffic moving if at all possible. And though no one would have blamed them if that arriving train had been…[Read more]

Another fascinating blog Richard. And unlike so many of them, where there were obvious risks being taken or safety features omitted, with this one it’s so unlikely as to surely have been unforseeable. Do you think the signalmen were reassured by all the built-in the safety features that nothing like that could have happened, freeing them to run t…[Read more]