Evening Star - named 65 years ago today - 18.3.1960

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From WikiPedia

The naming ceremony took place on 18 March 1960 at the Swindon Works, where the locomotive was built. A speech was given by R.F. Hanks, Chairman of the Western Area Board of British Transport Commission:

"But it is also a very great day for Swindon, and, to my friends from other Regions and from the B.T.C., I trust I shall not be considered parochial when I say that it is a proud day for Great Western men everywhere who will find much satisfaction, since there had to be a "last one" that it should fall to the lot of Swindon to see the job through. [..] I am sure it has been truly said that no other product of man’s mind has ever exercised such a compelling hold upon the public’s imagination as the steam locomotive. No other machine, in its day, has been a more faithful friend to mankind and has contributed more to the cause of industrial prosperity in this, the land of its birth, and throughout the world."

Bit of a celebrity loco ....

On 27–28 June and 1 July 1960, No. 92220, then allocated to Cardiff Canton shed, hauled the BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) Western Region's flagship Paddington to Cardiff, Swansea, Neyland and Fishguard Harbour passenger express trains, the London bound Red Dragon and the return Capitals United Express between Cardiff and Paddington, reportedly having to delay its arrival at Paddington to allow for completion of restaurant services because it was running so early

On 8 September 1962 it hauled the last Pines Express on the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway

[Mark A]

I had to look it up: a working life of just five years.

It's rewarding to go to Bath, walk up to the old route and tuck oneself into one of the alcoves in Devonshire Tunnel, at which point it's difficult to believe that the likes of Evening Star would have physically fitted the structure's gauge. Following which, considering the darkness, the curve, the gradient, to imagine being in an alcove as the loco headed south while hauling... however many carriages she would have been pulling.

Then, at the entrance to Combe Down, preferably on a late afternoon in autumn, with the wind in the right direction and a steam loco hauled train calling at Bath Spa station, the sound of the train's departure can sound as though it's spookily close at hand, an impression reinforced when the loco's exhaust with its characteristic nineteen fifties aroma manages to drift into Lyncombe Vale.

Mark