Steam nostalgia and railway history at its best, Steam Days is the monthly magazine dedicated to all steam railway enthusiasts.
Here’s what to expect this month…
1955 and all that: BR steam’s life expectancy – new plans for the new decade
Five years on from the Modernisation Plan of 1955, Philip Atkins reveals how 1960 saw established long-term steam plans reviewed and the demise of steam on British Railways foreshortened by perhaps as much as 22 years.
Huddersfield-Penistone line operations
Open in July 1850 to link Huddersfield with the MS&LR’s Woodhead route at Penistone and concurrently giving rise to the Holmfirth branch, within 20 years this Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway route also gained branches to Meltham and Clayton West. Swedebasher offers a BR steam era overview.
Rail tours on the Midland & South Western Junction line
Running from Andoversford Junction to Andover Junction, and thus linking Cheltenham with Southampton, as well as Swindon from Rushey Platt Junction and also the Berks & Hants around Savernake, such connections led to a flurry of visits by enthusiasts’ tours between 1953 and the line’s truncation in 1961, and even beyond.
LNER racehorses: the chosen and the dark horses
The choice of racehorse names for some of the fastest locomotives of the East Coast main line is more than appropriate – Gresley A1s and A3s, and Thompson A2/3s – but with names plucked from across 1857 to 1947 period and with the theme ongoing with the BR built Peppercorn A2s and A1s, there is much to know about the selection, as Jim Lindsay reveals.
