Archive: “The Leicesters” – From The Railway Magazine, March 1959

The following article is reproduced verbatim from the March 1959 issue of The Railway Magazine. It details the working of the “Leicesters” services over the former Midland & Great Northern Joint line, including locomotive allocations, operations and a notable 1958 run.

THE almost complete closure as from midnight on February 28 of the Midland & Great Northern Joint line disrupts what has been aptly called “the North-West Passage out of East Anglia.” This was the cross-country route from Great Yarmouth, Cromer and Norwich to Birmingham and the Midlands. How passengers will react to the nebulous and complicated alternatives suggested remains to be seen; already the Press in some areas is both indignant and sorrowful, and it is highly significant that upward “adjustments” in bus and coach fares have already been announced.

With the severance of the M.G.N. line, there comes to an end one daily through service which was as near express standard as any train could be on a route with long sections of single track and many awkward gradients and permanent service slacks over bridges. This was the useful and comparatively well-patronised through service, with buffet car, in each direction linking Birmingham with Norwich. The pride of the system in M.G.N. days, the daily expresses were known as the “Leicesters” (irrespective of direction) probably because it was at Leicester London Road that the joint line locomotive took over.

In the years before 1914, there were two regular daily trains between Birmingham and Norwich, Cromer, Yarmouth and Lowestoft, one of which included through coaches to and from Manchester Central. The joint line’s direct access to Lowestoft was lost with the closing, in 1953, of the Breydon Swing Bridge, at Yarmouth, but the other service (directly or by connection) by one daily express kept up to the closure.

Except for short lapses during industrial disputes, the “Leicesters” had run daily, except Sundays, without a break since the early 1890s. On summer Saturdays, and at holiday times, they took their place in a procession of heavy and well-filled trains working to a schedule which had complications little short of marvellous: one engine failure, or a defective set of points, early in the day could lead to chaos and mounting delays over a hundred miles. The peak of this cross-country traffic probably was attained in the years between the world wars, and it is not surprising that the L.M.S.R., which was responsible for the working up to 1936, aimed at having a pair of the reliable class “4” 0-6-0s on every through train at weekends.

Latterly the up “Leicester” consisted of two separate portions leaving Yarmouth (9.2 a.m.), and Cromer Beach (9.40 a.m.), which joined up at Melton Constable. There was a connection leaving Norwich at 9.34. Leicester (144¾ miles from Yarmouth) was reached at 1.42 p.m. Onwards to Birmingham New Street, where it was due at 3.38 p.m., the train deteriorated into a typical semi-fast. The coaches probed still further westwards as they then formed a stopping train to Gloucester, from which station the train returned to East Anglia on the following day. A secondary Midland goods train engine owned by Birmingham, although on some occasions a compound 4-4-0, a class “2” 4-4-0, or (latterly) a standard class “5” ran from Leicester to Gloucester throughout. The down service departed from New Street at 1.45 p.m., and Leicester 3.15 p.m., and the Yarmouth portion was home at 7.35 p.m. An Eastern Region buffet car, attached to the morning service as far as Leicester, worked back on the down train, thus completing a long day of 289 miles. Three rather old cars—one Great Northern and two Great Eastern—shared the buffet in turn, and the regular steward avowed that this was the roughest riding job on British Railways, especially west of Spalding going to Leicester, when the car banged up the rear of the train and vigorously “wagged its tail.”

The standard make-up of the “Leicesters” on post-war weekdays had been either seven or eight former L.M.S.R. vehicles, strengthened to as many as twelve with necessary. Alas, their distinctive “Birmingham-Cromer” and “Birmingham-Yarmouth” headboards will now be things of the past.

In the Midland & Great Northern area, the trains were made up of the incomparable smooth-running Bain clerestory stock of the Midland Railway, and when at one time they halted at Sutton Bridge to attach or detach some teak-panelled Great Northern through coaches from Kings Cross via Peterborough and Wisbech, the amalgam was a correctly Midland red. Great Northern joint effort.

As regards motive power, the story of the “Leicesters” is indeed a record of assortment, except for a lengthy middle period, when the task was a monopoly of the Midland-type 4-4-0s, designed by S. W. Johnson, initially in small-boilered form, and than as rebuilt between 1909 and 1915 with the much larger Derby “G7” Belpaire boilers. Away back in the early 1890s the joint Committee borrowed several Midland 2-4-0 passenger engines, some of which were stationed at Yarmouth for working the through trains. At first the Yarmouth engines were changed for Midland locomotives at Bourne. Later, in the present century, M.G.N.R. engines went right through to Leicester from the East Coast, although at another period South Lynn was used as a change-over point.

A fourth, and as it turned out final, alteration became necessary in 1956 when, after years of agitation, the “Leicesters” were given a stop at Spalding, which they had always passed over the avoiding spur, except for some emergency workings. This additional stop entailed reversal of the train, so the Yarmouth engine was replaced by one shedded at Spalding.

The M.G.N. engines, elderly and unsuperheated, although excellently maintained, became strained in efforts to keep time, and in the last days of the line’s independent existence, the L.M.S.R. was approached, and a couple of the class “3” 4-4-0s (also designed by S. W. Johnson) took over the Leicester run; one was shedded at South Lynn and the other at Yarmouth. They were regarded as very successful, but when in 1936 the joint line came under the aegis of the London & North Eastern Railway, they were returned to the L.M.S.R., and replaced by Gresley class “K2” 2-6-0s and several Robinson Great Central class “D9” 4-4-0s.

The 4-4-0s enjoyed the longer reign, and it was during that period 1936-7 that a “Leicester” had the distinction of being in the hands of a named engine, when No. 6021, Queen Mary, took the train for some weeks. The joint line drivers considered the elegant “Ds” “a trifle inferior to the L.M.S.R. class “3s,” but better than the Moguls, and the rebuilt Great Eastern “Claud Hamiltons” which they were next to try. It should be mentioned that the limitations imposed by the bridge over the South Ouse near Kings Lynn precluded the use of more modern and capable engine-power on this service. The increasing weakness of the same structure has, in fact, been given as one of the reasons for the ultimate closing of the line.

It was a natural transition from the “Clauds” to the Holden 4-6-0s, as rebuilt by Sir Nigel Gresley, and these imposing engines had the job well in hand for some years, in fact right up to the insertion in the timetable of the Spalding stop. By then, a fair number of L.M.S.R. class “4” 2-6-0s had replaced Great Central and Great Northern engines nearly everywhere on the joint line, and it became the practice for the Yarmouth 4-6-0 to be replaced by a local Mogul for the run from Spalding to Leicester. As the G.E.R. 4-6-0s came to be withdrawn in increasing numbers, a small link of specially cleaned and “tuned up” class “4s” took over the eastern workings as well, so that in its final year the “Leicester” was in Ivatt 2-6-0 hands throughout, except for the Leicester to Birmingham leg.

One interesting and significant exception was the through Christmas Week, 1958, when the train had to be made up to eleven or twelve coaches: Spalding borrowed an Immingham class “B1,” No. 61159, and some excellent timekeeping resulted, apart from delays caused by fog on one or two of the runs. For the first time ever, the “Leicester” was hauled over part of its route by a comparatively modern large engine, although because of the bridge at Kings Lynn, the moderately-dimensioned Moguls had to struggle on eastwards from Spalding. One extra-heavy Christmas train last year was awarded a pilot engine in the shape of a G.E.R. class “J17” 0-6-0.

Although on paper, and perhaps from the comfort of a corner seat in a Midland or L.M.S.R. coach, the “Leicesters” used to work, that was far from being the case in view of the moderate power available. It is a tribute to the expert footplatemen for whom it represented the top link in their area, that both up and down trains were excellent timekeepers. Workers on the land and in the many glasshouses to be made, though with a scratch engine and the train so far out of its normal path the mere contemplation of a punctual arrival might have seemed the most wishful of wishful thinking. But from the moment the run was away it was evident that an all-out effort was to be made, and with 6 min. regained in the first 32 miles (!) my friend settled down to clock one of the most thrilling runs one could wish for.

The log is tabulated, and despite a fair sprinkling of checks the lateness was reduced to 20¼ min. at Doncaster, 14¼ at Grantham, 11 min. at Peterborough, 7¼ min. at Hatfield, and 2 min. at Finsbury Park. With a handsome concluding allowance of 7 min. for the last 2.6 miles into Kings Cross a punctual arrival seemed almost certain; but the train was stopped by signal for a full minute at Belle Isle, and so came in 2½ min. late. From the locomotive point of view, it was indeed a grand effort, and while the highlight of the trip was the maximum speed of 100½ m.p.h. near Essendine the standard of performance was sustained without a break, including some notable uphill speeds. The Essendine maximum is, so far as I know, the first occasion on which a speed of 100 m.p.h. has been authentically recorded with an “A1.”

It is significant of the greatly improved riding of these engines, following some intensive tests and adjustments to the springing. As originally built, they were prone to rolling and hunting, and personally have had some palpitating moments on their footplates. They have always been very fast and free-running engines, but the places where they could really be given their heads have hitherto been relatively few. The run of No. 60140, Balmoral, very near to the old “Coronation” standards of performance, was a veritable epitome of all that is best in railway operating practice: an engine crew doing its very best to retrieve a difficult situation; the locomotive itself responding to the utmost; and the operating department giving the train the clear road needed for time-recovery on a substantial scale.