A steamy affair
It has been 40 years since the end of steam locomotives in the
North-East. Kester Eddy reports on the efforts made to capture
the magnificent engines on film before they went out of service
FOR many who were teenagers at the time,
1967 was the year of Sergeant Pepper and
the beginnings of the flower power era.
But for Peter Proud, who began the year
as an A-level student in Sunderland, 40
years ago was the end of an era - the end of steam
locomotives on the then British Rail network in the
North-East.
Like many in the region, Peter was born with railways
in his blood.
"I was brought up in a house overlooking the Hetton
Colliery main line," he says. "It doesn't sound
very much, but it was very busy in the early 1950s
with loaded trains going to Sunderland and
Staithes and empties going back up to the
collieries."
Equally importantly, from the age of six weeks
he was on the train every week from Sunderland to
West Hartlepool to visit his grandmother. The
sights and sounds of the railway made a big impression
on him. As a child, he recalls seeing gaslit
carriages in LNER livery on local services.
With such a heritage, it is little wonder that by
the end of the 1950s, Peter would be found by the
tracks, trainspotting with hordes of other kids.
"There was none of this stuff, like today, decrying
trainspotters," he says. "It was rather the other way
round. If you had a class of 30 lads, in those days 25
would be spotters. The five who didn't were the odd
ones."
By 1960, Peter and friends would move further
afield to see new locomotives, first to Carlisle and
York, and later, as funds and parents would permit,
to Manchester, Birmingham and even Bournmouth
and Exeter - very long hauls for a young
teenager in those days.
And with steam in fast decline, Peter, like many
others, was beginning to realise the need to document
the changes.
"I began using a Brownie, which took square
prints. With a shutter speed of 1/30 I got some wonderfully
blurred prints of trains at speed. Then I got
my first proper camera, a second-hand Halina 35X.
Later it was the subject of many jokes, but among
my peers it was OK and much better than the
Brownie."
After all his travels, Peter finds it ironic that by
1967, the North-East would become one of the last
bastions of steam in the country. "The North-East
was a paradox. Local passenger trains had gone
diesel in 1957, but freight soldiered
on to the bitter end," he says.
Furthermore, the last sheds with
steam, Blyth, Sunderland, Tyne
Dock and West Hartlepool, by now
hosted the oldest working locomotives
in the country, built in the
days of the North Eastern Railway.
The J27 and Q6 classes had been
hauling coal from pit to port before
even the Jarrow March. All had
survived Hitler's Luftwaffe, some
had even felt the cold shadow of
the Zeppelin above.
To see these stout, reliable engines,
still soldiering on in 1967 was
to see history. They had had attitude
before their time. So it was
that many of the friends who had
first met in stations and depots
across the country became regular
visitors to some otherwise unlikely
tourist spots - and mums from
Bristol and Birmingham would
hear their sons were off to the likes
of Vane Tempest, Ashington and
Thornley for the weekend.
One such enthusiast was Ian
Krause, then a 19-year-old student
who lived in north London -
though having been born in Corbridge, Northumberland,
he was far from a total stranger to the
region. Ian had been travelling up at weekends from
the mid-1960s, first hitching, then in his Ford
Anglia.
"When I first met Peter Proud he was standing on
a gate taking a photo of a train. I watched it collapse
under his weight," says Ian, laughing at the
memory.
As the summer of 1967 wore on, the focus of enthusiast
activity centered on Sunderland, which
housed the most active of the last half dozen J27s
and Q6s, all working mineral lines in east Durham,
most particularly to Silksworth Colliery.
"We would spend all night cleaning the engines,
ready to photograph the next day. They were immaculate,"
says Peter, fully aware of yet another
irony - that for most of their lives these engines had
run in unglamorous dull, soot-covered black.
Although there were hiccups, relations with the
engine crews and maintenance staff were unusually
close in the last months.
"I would turn up at Sunderland shed at six in the
morning and be greeted like an old friend," says Ian.
Drivers, aware of the efforts being made to catch
the historic moments on film, would work their
locos to the limits, sending columns of smoke to
new atmospheric heights and would see the photographic
results a week or two
later, often over a pint in the
local pub.
Ian recalls standing on the top
of Ryhope tip, watching the locos
slogging up the bank with empties.
"It's an abiding memory, at
sunset, watching the trail of
smoke coming up from the North
Sea and past the tip to
Silksworth for ten minutes or
more," he says.
"It's all gone now. I've been
back. It's a golf course."
He also recalls that people
thought the steam era would
never end. "There was even talk
of using the Lambton tanks,
owned by the National Coal
Board, if the diesels were not up
to working the Silksworth
branch," he says.
It did end, of course, and the
Lambton tanks were not needed.
Sunderland-based class J27 65894
worked the last regular British
Rail goods train in the North-
East on the evening of September
8, 1967, adorned with a Blue
Star - the symbol of the brewery
which produced the enthusiasts' favourite ale.
While steam lingered on in Lancashire for another
11 months, for Peter, as for many others, the
end of steam in the North-East left a hole in his
life.
"We knew it was going to happen, we could see
the writing was on the wall," he says. "I had dedicated
my life to this for five or more years. I suppose
so many years on, it is quite difficult to recall the
sense of impending loss, when the end was nigh."
But, it did not quite all end in 1967. North Eastern
Locomotive Preservation Group (NELPG)
which was formed 40 years ago, managed to save
65894, the last loco in normal service, along with Q6
number 63395 - also of Sunderland and also the last
of its kind.
Fittingly, 63395, after many years of repair, is now
set to come back into service on the North Yorks
Moors Railway in the near future.
* For more information on the work of NELPG
log onto www.nelpg.org.uk
11:43am Wednesday 12th December 2007
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CommentPosted by: Frank Hryniewicz, Hemel Hempstead on 8:12pm Thu 13 Dec 07
Thank you for a thoughly enjoyable read. How such obvious pleasure can be sensed, the sights and sounds which can be glimpsed by a visit to the NYMR to see working steam.
Thank you for a thoughly enjoyable read. How such obvious pleasure can be sensed, the sights and sounds which can be glimpsed by a visit to the NYMR to see working steam.
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