Rhapsody in green

The 69023 was a class J72 steam tank engine, one of those shuntering, chuntering workhorses at which Gordon the Big Engine would have looked condescendingly down his funnel (or would have done, at least, until Thomas taught him some manners.) It was made in Darlington in 1951, one of a class of 113 built – remarkably – over a period of 54 years by three different railway companies.

Mostly it moved carriages around the sidings in York or Newcastle, sometimes acted as what railwaymen call station pilot, though a pilot with severely clipped wings.

“On a good day it might get out from York to Rowntree’s factory, maybe a couple of miles,” supposes Fred Ramshaw, its driver on the Great Occasion.

Inevitably, inexorably, the J72s ran out of steam, just another entry in British Rail’s overflowing scrap book.

By 1966 only 69023 remained, bought by a gentleman called Ainsworth for the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway in West Yorkshire and named Joem, after Joseph and Emmeline, his parents. In turn, bought by the North Eastern Locomotive Preservation Group in 1983, Joem – no ordinary Joem – had spells on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, but then spent almost ten years in what the NYMR calls the Deviation Shed, deviating nowhere whatsoever.

In 2004, it was brought on the back of a lorry to North Eastern Locomotive Preservation Group (NELPG) headquarters in Darlington to undergo a major overhaul.

After around 10,000 volunteer hours it is wonderfully and immaculately restored – the ugly duckling a very fine swan indeed – and though Joem may not be said to rhyme with poem, what happened next was rich and rhapsodic, nonetheless.

THIS summer Joem is working the Wensleydale Railway, 16 marvellous miles – the end of the world might not have seemed so far to 69023 – from Leeming Bar to Redmire. Two Saturdays ago, the line’s wartime weekend, I’m on the footplate of the 11.30am, and truly a footplate in history.

It – she, for heaven’s sake – is apple green now, all bright brass and bonhomie, the only slight incongruity that the train behind her is a 1960s diesel multiple unit, one of the intended carriages having been found to have a busted spring.

On the smoke box door there’s a wreath in memory of Kevin Hudspith, one of NELPG’s founder members back at a meeting at the Bridge Inn, in Newcastle, in 1966, when it was decided that something really should be done to save the region’s steam heritage.

Kevin had died a few days earlier.

Now they’ve a class K1 working the incomparable West Highland line from Fort William, a Q6 bustling about the NYMR and a J27 – on no account to be confused with a J72 – undergoing restoration in Darlington, but still three years from a return.

Fred Ramshaw, who’d always wanted to be an engine driver, but ended up a teacher in Stockton, is one of the grafters. Ten thousand hours? “Aye, and then some,” he supposes.

His fireman is Peter Shields, a retired computer science lecturer from Sunderland. The third man – the conductor – is Rob Williamson from the Wensleydale Railway.

The appeal? “It’s hard to define, just something wonderful,” says Fred. “I’d tell you that driving this thing was better than having sex, but you’d only put it in the paper.”

WE leave on time, up through Bedale and Finghall to Leyburn, where the station’s thronged with period people and women in those long-forgotten Monday morning turbans and a carriage is reserved for “evacuees” bearing little battered suitcases and suitably wistful expressions. Only the lad in the Man United shirt appears – what shall we say? – a little out of sync.

On the platform the Blitz Sisters sing Vera Lynn, the valley – as Dame Vera observed – blooming again. If the sight of steam in Wensleydale is sufficient to stir the senses, however, the view of the dale from Joem’s footplate is more coruscating yet.

The sound track’s like something from The Railway Children, the backdrop better still. The only slight disappointment is that there’s no one I know, no one at whom grandly to wave from the cab window like the Duchess of Cambridge spotting a former first form friend flogging popcorn to the peasants on The Mall.

The cab’s little different from the way it had been back in 1951. Now there’s a two-way radio, a mobile phone and Fred’s smart new gloves.

He works bare-handed for all that. “I don’t want to get them dirty,” he says.

There appear to be three main dials, purpose unknown, though one seems permanently to be set at ten to two, like an advert for a Swiss wristwatch.

Mind, it’s a bit crowded up there, the four of us occasionally required to perform a sort of ill-choreographed quadrille, the emphasis always on safety. Approaching Redmire, we also slow for a couple of particularly ovine sheep intent on playing ducks and drakes (if sheep may be said so to do.) Joem whistles a happy tune and is by no means alone. Though the line has a 25mph speed limit, to Joem it could be the Nurburgring.

Peter, on only his second shift on the Wensleydale – “a bit different from teaching computers, no daft questions here” – is finding that Joem eats like an iron horse. Fred insists that it’s the fireman who does all the work – “I just pull a few levers” – though at times pulling a few levers appears akin to arm wrestling with a particularly recalcitrant bear.

“They’re a bit stiff,” says Fred.

At Redmire station, Bolton Castle foursquare across the fields, they’re playing In The Mood. Too true. A vintage Lincolnshire bus waits to take travellers on to Aysgarth and to Garsdale station, integrated transport from another age.

Joem runs round her train, heads tender first back to Leeming, a journey slightly sootier but no less exhilarating.

The little engine that could, she accomplishes it with ease.

Fred and friends still have another round trip, the Sunday shift, too. For 69023, the little green giant, it’s once more an awfully long way until the end of the line.

• Details of the Wensleydale Railway at wensleydalerailway.com and of the preservation group at nelpg.org.uk

EARTHBOUND from paradise, a beer with Wensleydale Railway board member Carl Les, whose Polish father opened what became Leeming Bar services after the war.

Still at Leeming, Carl’s also deputy leader of North Yorkshire County Council and should on no account be confused with Craven councillor Carl Lis, also of Polish extraction, who chairs the Yorkshire Dales National Park committee. He is, of course, all the time. More is Lis, the Park’s keeper plans to stand for North Yorkshire council next May. “It’s going to be pretty interesting,” says Carl – one or other of them, anyway.

HAPPY coincidence, we also travelled on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway dining train last Friday evening – a glorious, steam-hauled delight that was a birthday/ retirement present from colleagues on the Northern League.

Everything possible’s authentic, from the trucks that carried molasses to the notices about gentlemen must please refrain. On Grosmont station, another notice warns that steam engines can be smutty, sooty and even, whisper it, noisy. We’re in 2012 now.

...and finally, the railway theme should have continued with last Thursday’s departure on the back of a very big lorry of Hazel, the celebrated Pullman car from the Black Bull at Moulton, near Scotch Corner. Since it proves to be an interesting little story, and since today’s column is abnormally loaded already, there must be more of this ere long.