Tracking down a Beames (LNWR) LMS 380 Class 0-8-4T

Thanks, no firm dates yet but my brother has confirmed that they were Joseph Lowther Holmes, who apparently "was around in the 1890s", and Alfred James Edwards, who I believe started work in the late days of the LNWR (my Grandmother, his daughter, was born in 1921 and Alfred died in the late 1970s, so at a guess born 1895 give or take a few years)

Apologies for ongoing vagueness, my brother has all the family tree details but I think his email was from memory without having checked yet.

 

I find this sll fascinating. My great grandfather worked as a guard out of Kirkby Stephen for the NER.

 

Just as a suggestion - given their ages it is highly likely that they would be called up during WW1. If you could find their service records it might shine a light (lack of records may indicate that they were not called up due to their profession). It may include next of kin information, I seem to recall that some list physical features like tattoos etc.

Apologies if I am suggesting things you've already done.

Something else I wonder is what happened to their company staff records. For example if you read Railways Archive the accident reports will say 'Driver X has a clean record bar...' so progression, disciplinary issues etc will have been recorded. Would it be worth having a look at the PRO?

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/railway-workers/

 

Hi, yes it would, I haven’t really got around to this and haven’t time presently, I merely wondered if your LNWR research had thrown up any interesting records. I’m not aware of either of them serving in WW1 (and suspect JL Holmes would have been too old) but could be wrong. There was another uncle on my Dad’s side who did serve in WW1, we have his portrait in uniform somewhere. These were the only two railwaymen I know of though.

 

I remember being informed (during one or other of the Cold War scares) that the upper limit on 'call up' age at that time was 40. I've no notion of such limits on service during WWI but coincidentally, while this thread has been active, I happened across my maternal grandfather's "Certificate of Transfer to Reserve on Demobilization" (Army Form Z.21), issued 9 Feb 1919. In pre-computer days, three months from cessation of hostilities to demob was pretty good going, considering how many were in uniform by the end of the "war to end all wars". Born in 1881, he enlisted up on Aug 29th 1914, making him 33 on volunteering and 37 on demobilization.

I was, of course, utterly failing to locate something completely different at the time!

 

Although it is quite old J.A.B.Hamilton is quite good on the different experiences of railwaymen called up. A lot depended on when you joined up, if you joined early then you tended to be stuck in the infantry, (skills not being appreciated by the military) later on they came to realise that there was a shortage of skilled railwaymen at the front so if you called up later with critical skills you would perhaps get a safer railway posting. (I don't know how true this is).

I'm afraid that while I do a fair amount of archive work this isn't my area of specialisation and haven't looked at the material but the PRO is very user friendly as archives go. As the NUR archives are at Warwick they should also be accessible as well. York might also be worth checking out if you are so inclined.

 

Interesting to see one of these locos at Tebay. I wonder how they performed on Shap banking duties.
In the winter of 1929/30, no. 7953 was tried on Lickey Incline banking duties, substituting for the 0-10-0 banker away at Derby works, but there appears to be no record of how it performed. Perhaps it was unsuitable for the continuous hard steaming required for this duty or else the Bromsgrove men rejected the “foreign” loco out of hand. Alternatively they made sure it was not up to the job as it could have replaced two 0-6-0 tanks, making a set of men redundant.

 

I doubt that continuous steaming would be an issue: these engines were based on the G2 0-8-0s which ran long distances on heavy trains. Steaming would more likely be an issue with Big Bertha, which was designed to push trains up the two-and-a-half miles of the Incline, then roll back down to the bottom! But even compared with a Super D the 0-8-4Ts were very cramped and uncomfortable, and Midland men did not take kindly to the Ds, so the tankies would almost certainly receive a poor report from Bromsgrove men.

 

Presumably the answer is not well, since they didn't stay long. In which case we might wish to acquit the Bromsgrove crews of false reporting.

 

Years later a GWR 2-8-0 tank was tried on the Lickey and was quite successful, even being allocated to Bromsgrove for a short time. A railwayman I knew in Worcester suggested a reason for its short stay - the big tank would do the work of two 0-6-0 tanks. So job protection at play here, I suspect.

What locos were used as Shap bankers in the 1920s?