Pre nationalisation preferences....

It used to be a hive of activity.The imposing station and platforms (the longest covered platform in Australia) are heritage-listed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albury_railway_station) but it is certainly a quieter place than it once used to be now that there's a standard gauge line running through to Melbourne. That being said, having to change trains due to the change of gauge, hauling luggage and family in tow was never popular.

Incidentally, Albury Station was designed by John Whitton, who was the engineer for the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire mainline in 1847 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Whitton He was repsonsible for a great deal of public works in the colonies of NSW and Victoria.

Anyway enough digressions from me.

 

With the likes of James Ellis and James Allport at the helm, the Midland was certainly well-served in those formative years.

 

A point I believe caused a certain hoo-har at one or two stations in England about 170 years ago!

Tom

 

The 'gauge wars' with 'narrow-gauge' allied to thwart the encroachment of the broad gauge into their territories and the competition to achieve high-speed running (resulting in wonderful beasts such at the Crompton 6-2-0 'Liverpool on the LNWR) make for fascinating reading. It was and to some extent remains problematic enough in Australia but it must have been bedlam in the UK where the gauges met (Gloucester for example), which is far more compact than Australia.

In many respects, the 5'3" Broad Gauge employed in Ireland and a few states of Australia is preferable to Standard gauge and it's a close run thing that Australia would have universally adopted broad-gauge in every state (States such as Queensland adopted 3'6"). Few in decision-making circles saw the problems that would arise when the colonies would become states of a nation and that interstate trade and the movement of peoples would grow markedly following federation. Whilst the standard gauge has been extended in the post-war period, the differences in gauges between states and now within states remains a costly problem to this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_gauge_in_Australia

Anyway I won't derail (no pun intended) this discussion with commentary on the rail-gauges in Australia any further.

 

I've never really understood why changing trains from a broad gauge train to a standard gauge train should create any more problems than changing trains from one standard gauge train to another one.

 

Well, firstly people in the 19th century travelled with much more luggage, so changing trains in general (whether one gauge to another, or just from standard to standard) was much more problematic than it would be today.

But what the break of gauge really forced was having to change trains at all: Had the system been all one gauge, you could have done long journeys without changing, particularly with the system that was common in steam days of through carriages that could be shunted from train to train, even across company boundaries, with the passengers still on board. So if you wanted to travel from York to Brighton (via GN and LBSC), you could board your carriage in York and get out at Brighton and not have to worry in between about yourself or your luggage. But if Mr Wealthy Yorkshireman and his family decided to take his holiday in south Devon instead, and somewhere - most notoriously Gloucester - you'd have to get out and move to another carriage, and hope your children, servants and luggage all made it onto the same train...

And what went for passengers also went for freight: everything had first to be loaded onto a wagon, then taken to the station where the break of gauge occurred, be unloaded, and then reloaded on a different wagon before moving on to its destination. Not efficient, and a recipe for freight getting lost or damaged in transit. Whereas with one gauge, the wagon just gets loaded at one end and unloaded at the other with no intermediate handling.

Tom

 

Could'nt have put it better myself, just what my thoughts are! I have always from an early age found the pre grouping scene endlessly fascinating.
Post grouping , the LNER ,as I grew up on it, & second the Southern for the wonderful Bullieds , original & converted.

 

If you goto Lvov, Ukraine on any train from Hungary or Poland.. you can still witness it several times a day.
Though for many trains the passengers dont notice.. they pull the wheels from under your carriage and swap them for the other gauge at the Border stations (csop, medyka etc) !

 

But wouldn't it be better to have one direct train, rather than have to change? And don't forget the freight traffic: they had to remove all the freight from one train and put it on a different one!

Richard

 

All derived from where???

What about Wolverhampton?

 

As a railway manager in my day job, I too have to vote for the period before the grouping of 1923. I like the inventiveness, the 'spark', the variety and that they were lucky to be in the ascendency and in a fantastic market position. They did some things that modern railways would not even dream of - I think the LNWR once moved a gunboat by rail which necessitated a block on the adjacent line all the way. As an enthusiast (I hate that word) the variety of the period and the technological innovation interests me too.

Particular favourites? Stroudley on the LBSCR, Wainwright on the SECR, Johnson on the Midland, Webb for inventiveness (though I'll give his brakes a miss) and a few others. After 1923 the Southern and the L.M.S. would get my vote, having half grown up at the Bluebell and coming from a family from Staffordshire I couldn't say anything else! As an engineman I like BR Standards too, they are great to work on, but I was born well after the steam era so any nostalgia is from books, films or preserved stuff and the images of BR steam all appear to be on the decline - how can you get excited about a filthy engine pulling a half empty train?

 

So I am not alone! It is a period that to me (born after the end of steam on BR) seems inexplicably popular. I want to see the glory days of the railways, not the dog days.

For me, I always thought I was an LSWR fan, but find myself increasingly seduced by the charms of the LBSC. And the transition periods are fascinating; I love that early grouping period when technically the railway was SR and a few engines and carriages had been repainted, but by and large life went on as before with pre-grouping liveries well to the fore.

Tom

 

Just so!

Paul

 

I think that is a bit harsh, as i can well understand why people would like to re-create something from when they were younger - I even have a small amount of nostalgia for St Pancras in pre-Eurostar days when it was full of Intercity Swallow liveried 125s! And I can see the logic that the Mid-Hants used, that recreating BR means you can have a historically accurate, consistent 'style' for your entire railway.

But if you look at the whole of steam railways from 1830ish to 1968, I would not have picked BR as the high point, and I think we stereotype our history by focussing on this one relatively short period which has associations (however right or wrong) of being run down and inefficient. The 'Races to the North' period is more interesting to me.

 

jeez you type very well for someone over 90

 

:confused1:

Tom

 

well, i suppose grudgingly you could have a preference for a particular pre-group company based on preserved examples so I withdraw.

 

I don't really understand the point you are getting at. Afterall, BR was more or less scrapping BR standards while there were still Terriers in operation - so it is perfectly feasible that a person of, say, 55 could have first hand memories of pre-grouping steam, albeit in BR livery. But in any case, the poll was about what is your favourite: nothing to say you had to have first hand experience of what you prefer - if so, all of us under 44 would instantly be excluded from expressing a preference for anything other than industrial steam! For most people I suspect, their preference is based on a combination of factors; for some people it will be because they were lucky enough to see certain things first hand, but for many of us - myself included - my preference is based as much on an understanding of history, and an admiration for the way my preferred railway was managed, its image and all sorts of other factors - as for anything first hand.

Tom

 

Nice to see that there are more than a few pre-grouping fans out there although I do understand the appeal of steam in its twilight years, not least because it's within living memory for many. It's interested to note that given like me, BR-era steam happens to be just as remote as the steam in 1900, people younger than 44 aren't influenced by personal associations but are attracted to a period or railway by other concerns.

My interest in railway history is becoming increasingly idiosyncratic! Perhaps I'll build an O-gauge model of Curzon Street circa 1850 or Nine Elms before they put me in a box?

Incidentally, a small plug. If you're interested in the pre-grouping period, I encourage people to get behind the project listed in my signature below.

 

I think that you may be surprised how many enthusiasts have a soft spot for the pre-grouping era. One of the first railway books I ever owned was Dick Riley's Brighton Line Album. As it happens, at the time (and indeed for well over half my life), I have lived near to the LB&SCR network, and in spite of LB&SCR locos not being quite in the same league for power end efficiency as, say Maunsell's designs for the SE&CR, I've always retained a soft spot for that company. It's quite interesting to read how popular the Brighton line was 100 years ago with the enthusiats fraternity. Perhaps part of its mystique for me is that the widespread electrification of the 1930s saw the character of the ex-LB&SCR main lines change so dramatically, with steam confimed to the secondary routes. This is a sharp contrast to the other two main pre-grouping companies that made up the Southern. In Kent, the superb D1 and E1 rebuilds were still running on the main lines into the late 1950s, with some remarkable performances being recorded by drivers like Sammy Gingell. On the L&SWR lines, the T9s likewise lasted into the early 1960s, while M7 tanks continued pulling empty stock out of Waterloo until about 4-5 years before the total end of Southern steam.

Not surprisingly, I've voted for the Southern in the poll, as my soft spot for the LB&SCR doesn't also prevent me liking the L&SWR and SE&CR (my grandfather actually started his railway career as a cleaner at Ashford, so I'm bound to have some affection for this line also!) I think a lot of us have voted with our hearts rather than for any other reason, One's favourite line can often be influenced by geography, where you grew up (or took holidays) or what you can remember. I was born in 1958, and thus my only memories of UK working steam are very hazy, and are almost all of the Southern. I probably saw some GWR engines when we had a family holiday neaer Taunton (very near the present WSR, in fact) when I was 5 years old, and would almost certainly have seen LMS-designed engines at Basingstoke when visiting my other grandarents at Overton or near Clapham Junction when travelling up to London. I would suspect that the first LNER engine I ever saw was "Mallard" in the old Clapham Museum after the end of steam. For all that, I think that all the railways have their good points. We're very privileged that with the private sector rather than the state responsible for our railways until 1948, we have a legacy of a fascinating variety not just of loco styles and designs, but also of carriage, signalbox and station designs too. We're also privileged to have such a vibrant heritage railway industry, which has done a great job in preserving artefacts from the "Big Four" and their predecessors. OK, some locos and carriages have ended up on a line built by a different pre-grouping company, and in some cases by a different "big four" company, but we can never recreate the past with anything like 100% accuracy. I'm not fussed by, for example, the Dukedog or the GNR Directors saloon on the Bluebell or 5775 on the Worth Valley.

Perhaps in summary. I have my favourite companies both pre- and post-1923 , (as do many others), but I'm not so narrow as to fail to appreciate the other railways. I remain a Southern man, even though I currently live in Glouccestershire, yet thoroughly enjoyed being on last month's Glos-Warks full line re-opening special behind No. 7903 Foremarke hall as much as any dyed-on-the-wool Swindon fanatic.