North Eastern Steam From Lineside P. J. Lynch 1974 Hardback D Bradford Barton

North Eastern Steam From Lineside P. J. Lynch 1974 Hardback D Bradford Barton.

Looking back fifty years to the Grouping in 1923, it seems incredible that the 7400 steam locomotives absorbed by the London & North Eastern Railway comprised almost two hundred and fifty classes, a figure later increased by new building to little short of three hundred. The Great Central alone mustered nine different varieties of 4-6-0, the North British and Great North of Scotland no less than twenty three types of 4-4-0, some lasting only a few months, others soldiering on far into British Railways ownership.

For all its great assemblage of locomotives, Scotland was woefully short of dependable motive power and almost immediately after the Grouping the LNER started a mass migration of locomotives out of England. Great Northern Moguls were sent to the West Highland Line, and the same company's entire class of D14-4-0s also went north of the Border.

The Great Central contributed six- and eight-coupled freight power and a completely new batch of their 'Improved Director' 4-4-0s was commissioned for Scotland, receiving names no whit less splendid than the North British 'Scotts Numerous tank locomotives also joined the northward trek but the grandest migrants of all were the Holden 4-6-0s which made the long journey from their East Anglian haunts to join the Great North's sprightly little four-coupled beauties.

There was no comparable counter-movement of pre-Grouping Scottish power southwards. Indeed it was almost unknown for a North British locomotive to venture beyond Newcastle, although the massive Reid 4-4-2s were seen at York and Marylebone on livery trials and a solitary N.B. 0-6-0 was-somewhat bizarrely, it seems in retrospect allocated to Cambridge.

My home before the War was at Letchworth, on the line (always known as 'The Branch') from Hitchin to the Light Blue university town. Ivatt's 'Large Atlantics' dominated services to King's Cross but we wearied of their anonymity and listened always in the hope of hearing the syncopated beat of a Gresley three-cylinder 'namer'. Royal trains conveying their Majesties to or from Sandringham, Newmarket Race specials-especially the Pullman and the very rare 'Northern Belle' were high on the list for interest but it was a normally hum-drum evening local to Baldock which produced the least-likely motive power. Edwin A. Beazley, The Braes of Derwent, City of Lincoln and an antiquated North Eastern Atlantic come to mind as one-off representatives of their elusive classes, although it was a Saturday morning which was to bring the greatest surprise of all. This was in September 1935 when Kings Cross depot used Silver Link on the first through train of the day to Cambridge. Brand new and totally unheralded from Doncaster