The Bristol Railway Archive

I saw Brits on a fairly regular basis in about 1965 when they used to work on a Wolverhampton to Ilfracombe Summer Saturday working as far as BTM. Some of the olf Scottish based locos did the turns - I have photos of 70045 and possibly 70053 somewhere amongst my old albums.

The only other time I saw Brits away from the South Wales mainline were those that worked from Cardiff to Salisbury. I saw them at Bath Spa and other places around there.

In 1960 Evening Star became a regular working from Cardiff and I saw her most lunchtimes in Bath en route to Salisbury. The working brought her back through Bath just before 6.

From what I remember Brits became more common in this part of the world after the withdrawal of the Jubilees etc etc.
The Barrow road three as we used to call them were Leander, Barfleur and Trafalgar and I remember them running lots of services to and from Bristol from Sheffield/Derby Brum etc. I remember them being withdrawn in 1964 and languishing at the side of Barrow road shed for a while before being taken to the scrapyard. As we now know Leander is now preserved after being rescued from Woodhams at Barry. I believe the other two went either to Newport or Swansea/Neath and were scrapped straight away.
I remember seeing Evening Star at SPM on a couple of occasions in a very dirty condition.
My enduring memory of SPM shed was to walk round the two roundhouse's and find virtually all the roads occupied with loads of Castles, Halls, Granges and Counties, not forgetting all manner of 2-8-0's and tanks of all classes, not forgetting the resident saddle tank 1365!

Dave

I mentioned in my previous post about 1365 SPM resident saddle tank, can anybody on here remember Barrow roads saddle tank 51218?

Dave

51218 a little pug, remember it well, along with the scots the jubilees, the odd patriot or two. i also remember as i wrote in another thread doing the magic 100mph behind a scot coming back from Edingburgh in 1963. Eastern engines were talked about, i can rmeber them as well. my regular spotting place was mangotsfield, this was a walk from my home. you got the western engines working through trains from snow hill etc. and midland engines working from the north, and yes the occasional eastern loco as well. I also remember the pigeon train that turned up every year and was shunted into a siding for the release of all the racing pigeons. where i lived you could hear the engines coming out of staple hill tunnel at the end of thier climb out of Bristol. wonderful noises, wonderful sights. for those of you not aware there is some pictures i took at mangotsfield here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mao_zhou/s ... 369146983/
i think most of these are on this site as well, but there are others that are not.

D0280 Falcon (D1200 post prototype number) was a Bath Road machine for many years, being eventually confined to the WR because of its Maybach engines. It was a superb performer and well liked by crews. The Maybach MD655's driving Brush electrical equipment seemed to be a very successful combination and Falcon could certainly give any Sulzer engined 47 a run for its money.

I can only think the politics of the time went against a whole class of 47's being powered by Maybachs. There was enough fuss about this with the Warships & Westerns after all and that's why North British built a lot of the hydraulics (not very successfully) under licence.

Falcon was still going strong during the final days of the Westerns, but when they went, the fact that Falcon had no ETH and was a uinique machine with its by then unique Maybach engines, sealed her fate.

Many people wanted to keep Falcon, but when Brush sold the prototype loco to BR in 1971 (previously BR has leased the loco), they put in the clause that when it had finished active service, BR could only sell it for scrap and not for further active service. Hence it was lost to preservation.

Trivia about Falcon:
The "Falcon" plaques on each side of the loco are the symbol of Brush's Falcon Works in Loughborough. You can still seem the same logo at the works entrance today.
One of the plaques appeared on eBay a few years ago, described by the seller as being from a WWII German tank!
Prior to ordering more Brush Type 4's, BR had considered building a batch of diesel electric powered Western's, based on the internal configuration of Falcon and to be numbered D1201-D1258.
When first built, Falcon was based at Finsbury Park and was officially considered as part of the Deltic fleet!