Steam World

Steam World is Britain's best selling historical railway magazine. Covering the magical times when steam railways were the lifeblood of the country. It features first-hand accounts from drivers, firemen, BR managers and enthusiasts alike. Featuring magnificent photography from the fifties and sixties, it will bring back wonderful memories coupled with inside information of what it was really like to work, travel and play on the world's best railway.

Steam World

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EASTLEIGH: WHERE IT ALL STARTED • Scion of a railway family in Eastleigh, there was little doubt where L.J. White would end up working. Here he describes his prodigious spotting activities before and during his early employment at the works.

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED • In reviving the column started by Andrew Dow, Bob Gwynne reminds us there’s nothing quite like hearing first-hand accounts from the great names in railway history.

THE FESTIVAL OF BRITAIN • A post-war boost to morale and international prestige? Richard Foster conducts a tour of the 1951 Festival of Britain.

PLATFORM

MY EARLY DAYS WITH BRITISH RAILWAYS • As a young BR employee, Bob Poynter made the most of his privilege travel, as he recounts in the second part of his series on his early career on our railway. Part 2: Finding a home

GREAT SHOT • Six-year-old ‘Castle’ 4-6-0 No. 7018 Drysllwyn Castle accelerates through Stoke Gifford marshalling yard with the 11.45am Bristol-Paddington non-stop express in 1955. George Heiron’s photograph provides an interesting glimpse of the freight traffic, including coal (of course) and American military Willys ‘Jeeps’. The name was originally applied to No. 5051 but that was changed to Earl Bathurst. The preserved No. 5051 has carried Drysllwyn Castle nameplates in preservation.

PURE FILTH! • Main line engines were only rarely clean as the last decade of working steam advanced inexorably towards its run-down and neglected end in August 1968. Gavin Morrison presents a second selection from his photo-archive, showing 4-6-2s from this era, in utterly deplorable condition.

NEVER AGAIN – ENCORE! • Regular readers may recall the lavish four-volume slip-case ‘Never Again’ album anthology published in 2018. These superb, limited-run, very high Quality photographic albums sold out rapidly - and so a follow up set of three-volumes - ‘Never Again – Encore’ - is now available. Nigel Harris presents a flavour of this new publication, featuring top Quality photographs from John Hunt, Paul Riley, Tim Stephens and Dave Lacey

THROUGH NOEL’S LENS: ‘STREAKING’ THE ECML • No one else photographed the Grantham-Peterborough section of the East Coast Main Line Quite as thoroughly as the late Noel Ingram. Gresley ‘Pacifies’, 9Fs’, ‘Bls’, ‘Delties’ and Class 40s... Noel Ingram ‘shot’ them all – and in all weather. Here are some of his best photographs of Gresley’s ‘A4’ 4-6-2s, known often as ‘Streaks’.

PLATFORM 2: “I KNOW WHERE I CAN GET AN ENGINE ANY TIME I WANT.” • Former Western Region fireman Denis A. Lewis tells the bizarre tale of the time a bold and ingenious ‘joy rider’ actually stole a locomotive...!

SEEING SOUTHERN STEAM’S SWANSONG • Part Two: The end of the beginning. If you had your wits about you, where could you have glimpsed Southern steam in the 1960s – and what would you have seen? Stephen Roberts provides some of the answers.

MANCHESTER UNITED ON TOUR! • Like the famous football club whose name it carried, ‘Bl7’ 4-6-0 Manchester United was much travelled. But was its two-day clean-up at Colchester in February 1958 connected with the fatal Munich air crash disaster that befell the team? asks Peter Wright.

PICK ‘N’ MIX • There’s a theme to this month’s choice of colour images. Chris Leigh and Sir John Betjeman might not have agreed about...