Railways around Coventry

Hello, One of the biggest summertime freight apart from fruit & veg, right up to the date of these pictures which was recorded in May, was the van to collect your holiday luggage on a Wednesday, to deliver to your hotel or guest house. What a pip!

Hello. Worcester Foregate St, is an amazing venue for semaphore signals. I've copied this picture from a recent video, showing an off ground ground signal. A conventional ground signal is in view for comparison with the ground signal that's halfway up a pole. That's the quirky kind of oddity that I try to incorporate on our model. You will see an odd one mounted under the platform canopy. I've heard railway staff call them ground dollys. Please rewind the video to the start. Full Video.

Elf & Safety.

And the world still turned, back in those days. The world still turns today, but noticeably more slowly!

A chap local to us, named Derek Huntriss, is very much a rail enthusiast, and has travelled the world and written many books on the subject. He recently lent me a handful of photos to share with you all, hoping that they might elicit a response or three. This first one was taken at Canley Station, probably late 1950s.... These next two were also taken in the late 1950s, at the Goods Yard near the current Central Six... And finally a shot we can date to the 9th April 1960, with a connection to another topic of ours....

It looks like the BR Class 5MT 'Black 5' 45156 'Ayrshire Yeomanry', was spared. I've found a photo of it as recent as 2012 at Sheringham Station, on the Poppy Line, Norfolk. https://www.flickr.com/photos/stuart166axe/7934472656 There are no further listings of activity, so I can only guess it was finally scrapped.

That's super news, thank you! At least that engine had a decent prolonged life.

I grew up in Canley Road and Canley "Station" was always, since the year dot, called Canley Halt; quite rightly when all's said and done. A station is much bigger. Our teacher Willie Rose told us that in French, the word "station" meant a halt, a small affair with platforms and maybe a ticket office, where trains briefly pulled up to let passengers on and off, whereas the French for station was "gare". I wonder what the thinking was for changing the name to station after all those years, with, as far as I am aware, not a single complaint from the public. I daresay the older generation understood the word halt completely. Language, another teacher, Bert Parkinson, told us, is a living thing. Like everything else, it has a life cycle, which is why Latin, Manx, and Cornish, to name but three, are dead languages. A station is where things stop. Or stop moving, hence the word stationary. It was once pointed out that: A bus station is where buses stop. A train station is where trains stop. So what goes on at a work station?

Looking on the net, it seems that the original 45156 'Ayrshire Yeomanry' did survive until the end of steam in 1968 but was subsequently scrapped. Only four of this class of locomotive were named but there are many survivors among the unnamed locomotives. At some stage in the more recent past, one of them has been temporarily renumbered and renamed to appear as 'Ayrshire Yeomanry'. Engines with names are more attractive to the preserved steam railways and there are several with entirely fictitious names. Steam locomotives have boiler certificates which last for ten years, they then need extensive rebuilding before another certificate can be granted. This is expensive and so preserved steam locomotives often disappear from public view for many years while their owners raise the funds for repairs. The other alternative is that the preserved engine has reverted to its original number so has lost the name plates.

The locomotive masquerading as 'Ayrshire Yeomanry' is in fact 45337. It has been out of use since 2017 and in 2020 it was estimated that repairs would cost £300,000. It was eventually moved from its base on the Llangollen Railway and in 2024 was under restoration at the East Lancashire Railway in Bury. It will return to the tracks at some future date, this is the third major overhaul since it was withdrawn by British Railways back in the 60's.

The third picture in post 1190 shows an often overlooked class of locomotive. It is a Class WD 'Austerity' 2-8-0 built by the War Department during World War Two for use on the continent after D-Day. These locomotives were a modification of an existing LMS goods engine design which was modified so that they could be built quickly, simply, and economically. Nearly 1,000 were built and after the war they could be found all across Europe and beyond. A large number were subsequently purchased by what became British Railways and they were used to haul slow moving goods trains all over the country. In this area they would be seen pulling the coal trains from the local collieries. They were slow, uncomfortable, and generally unloved. As a consequence they were always seen in the filthy state this one appears to be in. I expect that most schoolboy train spotters barely gave them a glance as they clanked by. I believe that just one of them made it into preservation and that is one that was returned to this country from abroad long after its sisters here had been consigned to the cutting torch.

Hello, This will make you laugh. Yes it will!

Now here's a funny thing. I had to be in central Brum by 0745 today (on business, like), so I got the 0647 from KNW, then had to wait at COV. There are loads of early morning trains to the Smoke (EUS), but very few to BHM at that time. I do wonder if it's because the powers that be are all in the south-east...? The north/sarf divide, them and us? Lets' face it, the MPs are all word-manipulators and their mantra is "look after your own". Isn't it? I put my hands up to being cynical. On the other hand, it might be a simple practical reason, like dictated by passenger numbers. What does the team think?

Hello & thank you for that Slim. I don't know! Not helped as my volunteer travel assist came to an end last March, so not in regular yatterance with staff. Traffic flow charts are quite comprehensive, which helps with the load indicators that tell you accommodation levels throughout the trains helping passengers who are waiting on platforms. Stats years ago were by ticket issue & surrender along with a lot of guess work. Can anyone help please, please. It's nearly cocoa time.

Cynical or not, it could be another means to justify HS2! Digressing, I see that HS2 has been told it can't run trains at 250mph, for the short-term! I shall be looking into the published reasons why later, even though budget costs were mentioned along with reducing delays..... So perhaps not cynical....