Flying Scotsman

Yes, CT18 was 50ASA and CT21 was 100ASA. Virtually all my slides from 1969 to c.1991 were on CT18 then CT21. I've only has a few where mould has been a problem and the CT21 seems to have held its true colour better than CT18. I had used the odd roll of K25 and that has definitely stayed true to colour but, of course, that was a trade off as its slow speed meant that you could really only use it in good sunlight.
Ray

 

EM?

 

With all the comments about film, Agfa produced CT200 for a short while. It was awful and started to degrade after about 5 years. Any scans are done in grey scale to produce something usable.
The attached shot was taken using Ilford 100 slide film which has held its colour and saturation pretty well. I think I used this in the GB location quiz a while back. It was a gauging test trip for 4472 to North Woolwich prior to a Royal Train conveying the Queen Mother to open North Woolwich railway museum.

Cheers, Neil

PS : The sky was that hazy. It was worse at sunrise and sunset and went a sort of pinkish brown.....

 

I remember taking this picture at Kings Cross and thinking I was witnessing the very last time we would see steam on the main line. FS waiting for the goods brake to be attached for the reversing movement to Finsbury Park after working its last railtour before going to the USA, 31st August 1969. It was a requirement to have the brake van when running tenders first with the two tenders. Of course my pesimism about the end of steam proved to be unfounded.

 

Thank heavens for LEZ/ULEZ and other clean air measures then. I can remember seeing that filthy brown haze hanging over London under certain conditions when I used to commute into London forty years ago.

 

And that was after the Clean Air Act 1956 had come in.

 

Quite - that got rid of the "pea soupers" but then left the photochemical stuff arising from the rapid growth of the motor vehicle.

London must have been a really horrible place to live in back in the 40s and 50s.

 

When I lived in LA in the 1990s, the somewhat fatalistic comment about air quality and the desire for cleaner air was “why would you want to breathe something you couldn’t see?” The air went from roughly clear to yellow on an approximately two-week cycle, then there would be a weather system that cleaned everything up, and the cycle would start again.

Tom

 

I lived there from 1948 aged one. I think it is truer to say there were some horrible pollution events. I can remember one day when the smog was so bad the traffic was stationary and the only way to get home from school was walk the two miles barely being able to see your hand in front of your face. It was a kind of thick green consistency, pea souper was right.

Although the first half of the fifties was a pretty dreary time to be growing up, there were many great things about London then, cricket at the Oval, Richmond Park, the two bob benches at the top of the Old Vic, the trainspotting, then a bit later the music scene. There were worse places and times to be young, that's for sure!

 

Thanks for posting - it reminds me of what I think was my first sighting of 4472 roaring south through Hitchin station after dark on a southbound railtour. I have no notes but think it was this day. My father had popped out from work in the morning to see it run north and then he took me out that night for the return leg. Six Bells Jcn says arrival into Kings Cross was quite late and past my normal bed time in those days! I can't find any other rail tours 67-69 which fits with an out and back to KX.

I've been commuting through Peterborough past week or so and having chanced on Tornado last week, what should turn up yesterday but 60103! Surprised to see them running backwards for the distance to Lincoln though.

 

A few years ago we were driving across the Mojave from Las Vegas to LA, we could see LA in the distance from a long way off and it was covered in a 'mushroom' cloud of grey/yellow smog. "we're giving that a miss my love' says I, and we did. We bypassed LA and went up the coast highway to San Francisco. It was a good decision

 

I was five years old at the time of the 1952 smog and can just remember the days that remained almost dark. My father was a bus driver, conductors were issued with flares and walked in front of the bus to guide the driver during the worst of it. My dad paid for our bathroom to be replaced with all the overtime he earned.

 

If it was that day it already had the cow catcher, headlamp and bell fitted for the US tour.

 

You didn't miss much.. I disliked the place

 

Born in 1951 I can remember the 1950s London pea-soupers only vaguely now. Family moved out to Enfield (ex-Middlesex part of north London) in 1961 but later remember summer-time commuting into London. The Enfield Town - Liverpool Street line gave views across the city and my heart sank when seeing brown (petrochemical) haze enveloping upper reaches of skyscraper office blocks. Breathing that for hours at a time was no joke and I wondered at times if I shouldn't tell my doctor about it rather than my usual - "No, I've never smoked!".
Apologies for going off topic.

 

Monty Python hat on ... that's nowt oooop north we had mill chimneys pouring out terrible stuff...pea soupers, we had them big time. I remember working, commissioning plant, in Sheffield in the seventies... you'd come outside to find your car rusting...lots of little dots of iron. You had to get it washed off pdq... god knows what it did to people's lungs...

 

Neil, Thanks for posting this photo and, as you state, it appears to have retained it's colours well.
Brought back some more happy memories. I think I might be the less-than-hirsute head poking out from the Guard's door drop-down window of the support coach on the Monday 19th November 1984 test train. Clearances under one of the East London Docks waterways [forget which] were exceedingly tight.
So the following day's haulage of HM The Queen Mother to open North Woolwich Old Station Museum saw more water carried in the boiler to weight it down! Such an abnormally high water level saw Stratford driver, the late Tony Gooding, and fireman Reggie Rowe take it very carefully on the day as a consequence.
Whilst 4472 was inside Stratford shed being prepped over the weekend, Geoff Silcock led the team painting the roof white [it was to haul a 'Royal' train after all]. I painted the front vacuum hose and AWS cable white to match.
For historians - Woolwich line closed on 10th December 2006, to permit construction of Docklands Light Railway between Stratford and Canning Town, with the Museum closing in November 2008.
Peter

 

I remember the time some friends and I went to the Tinsley Open Day (remember those?). We passed a water course on the walk into the yard and it was bright orange...

 

I can't comment on the longer terms things but what is noticeable to me is that I used to go up to that London a lot in the early 90's for gigs in Brixton and whatnot and the black colour of the arisings when one blew ones nose was quite the eye opener to a country boy like me, its very stark that is no longer the case when I go there now....

 

Just done LA north to San Francisco earlier last month, still an amazing place, San Luis Opispo a favourite, especially BBQ place...