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Tank Gang

Unlike many of Riddles’ other designs for British Railways these engines were a hybridisation of pre-existing locomotives. The frames and running gear were essentially Ivatt in origin, while the boilers were a domed and slightly shortened version of the standard Swindon No 2 boiler which was fitted to locomotives such as the 5600 class 0-6-2Ts and the large prairies.

Riddles was born in 1892 and began his railway career at Crewe in 1909, so strictly speaking, he was an LNWR man. He effectively started his railway life in what was, probably, the high point for the railways in Britain. The motor car had yet to make a real impact and horses were still an essential feature of all road haulage. It may be that having grown up and started working during this era, Riddles had a similar attachment to the steam locomotive as many of you reading this article.

Riddles, it has been said, harboured ambitions to be the last great steam locomotive engineer and there has been no shortage of criticism of his failure to embrace diesel and electric traction, the reluctance to embrace DMUs and the failure to extend the Wath-Manchester electrification being cases in point. However, it is equally possible that with oil supplies ‘insecure’ and the nationalisation of the mining industry, building more coal burning steam locomotives was a way of saving scarce foreign exchange and keeping the mines busy.

Despite his work with the Ministry of Supply, and the designing of the WD 2-8-0s, Riddles was passed over for the post of CME on the LMS, a job which went instead to HG Ivatt. Riddles however, did get his chance with the newly nationalised British Railways, when Ivatt retired in 1951. Riddles spent some time learning his trade under the eye of Sir William A Stanier which, perhaps adds a further element of the GWR into the mix, as Stanier had been at Swindon before moving to the LMS. During his career with the LMS, Riddles also spent time at Horwich and Derby and worked with Ivatt as well as with Stanier.

However, unlike many locomotive engineers, Riddles had practical footplate experience having spent some time both firing and driving locomotives in regular service.

During the General Strike of 1926, Riddles was, essentially, a management ‘blackleg’ and worked trains from Crewe to Manchester and Crewe to Carlisle. In the months before the outbreak of WWII, Riddles went to America accompanying the Stanier Pacific No 6220 Coronation. While in America, due to the illness of the driver, Riddles drove Stanier’s Pacific for many miles during its tour of the States. These practical experiences may account for his building locomotives which did make some concessions to the more unpleasant aspects of footplate work, fire and smokebox cleaning, as many of his engines incorporated both rocking grates and the  self-cleaning smokebox. Though why he never included electric lighting on them remains something of a mystery.

The 82000 class 2-6-2Ts were designed for working suburban and branch line services, a fact reflected in their allocations. Unusually, for mixed traffic engines, some of them were originally painted in lined green livery, that is the ones which were destined for use at former GWR depots. One can only assume that this was Swindon Works’ way of putting its own stamp on them.  However, the duties for which they were built began to disappear almost as soon as the engines were rolling out of Swindon, branch line closures and, as time went on, an increasing use of DMUs saw to that. The last engines of the class to be kept working were withdrawn from Nine Elms in the summer of 1967 when steam traction ended on the Southern Region. A few of the class were in store at other locations and did not actually go for scrapping until 1968, but 1967 was their final year actually in traffic. Most of the class had working lives of less than 15 years, some as little as eight years, and a shamefully short existence for a steam locomotive with a design life of circa 40 years.

The tanks’ duties
Initial allocations of the 3MTs were to Tyseley, Hull (Botanic Gardens), Exmouth Junction, Kirkby Stephen, Newton Abbott, and Barry. Over time they found their way to many other depots including Scarborough, and Malton from where they worked over what is, today, the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. They were also to be found at Chester, Machynlleth, Bristol (Bath Road) and Wrexham making it equally likely that they worked over what is now the Llangollen Railway, the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway and probably the West Somerset Railway, as four of them spent some time allocated to Taunton MPD. However, my own links to these plucky little engines was with the batch that was transferred to Nine Elms from around 1963 onwards. There were quite a number allocated to the shed over the period to 1967 – the main batch were Nos 82010 to 82025, followed later by some of the engines previously allocated to Bournemouth, Nos 82026 to 82029.

One of my very first turns of duty after transferring to Nine Elms (70A), in 1963 was with one of the 82000s, on empty coaching stock workings from Clapham carriage sidings to Waterloo and back. The ancient Drummond M7 0-4-4Ts, which used to haul these trains, had all retired by then and the duties were generally, in the hands of Riddles’ standard designs, both his 4MT 2-6-4Ts and the 3MT 2-6-2Ts were used, with the latter predominating.

After booking on and getting the engine ready, preparing the fire, taking on coal and water, it was back to the messroom to make a brew before going off shed and travelling light engine up to Waterloo to await the arrival of our first train. The run down to Clapham was uneventful and after uncoupling and running round it was time to await instructions from the shunters and we pulled up alongside the shunters’ cabin. My driver for the day chose to leave the footplate at this moment and disappeared, I know not where. Shortly after his departure from the footplate another driver approached the engine asking where my driver was – I didn’t know. He then asked me who he was – I didn’t know that either. The next question was, “did I know what he looked like” – my description was rather less than flattering, “he’s got a big nose and is wearing a cloth cap” I replied.

Working on the 3MTs
The driver who was making the enquiries was, though I didn’t know it the time, the legendary Bert Hooker who had been a fireman in the Locomotive Exchanges in 1948. Bert was fireman for Driver Jack Swain and together they put in some terrific performances over the Highland routes in Scotland with the Bulleid light Pacific No 34006 Bude. Many years later in 1990, I met up again with Bert Hooker, this time at the Bluebell Railway. The event was something of a Nine Elms footplatemen's reunion, Clive Groome, another Nine Elms man, had just started his famous Footplate Days and Ways courses at the Bluebell and it was Bert’s birthday. At the time I was publishing Wilson’s Preserved Steam Railway Timetable and was also Publication Competition organiser for the Association of Railway Preservation Societies, now the Heritage Railway Association. I had been invited, by Clive, to a special dinner, to be served on the Bluebell’s Wine and Dine train, and Bert was guest of honour.

Having not seen Bert since I had left Nine Elms at the end of 1965, we struck up a conversation about what we had been up to in the intervening years and what he was doing with his well-earned retirement. During this chat Bert told me about his occasional turns as an after-dinner speaker at various railway events and he reminded me of our first meeting at Clapham carriage sidings – yes the one in which I described my driver as, 'big nosed and cloth capped'. I had forgotten all about the incident, but not Bert, he’d used it as one of his anecdotes. The driver himself was a West Country chap by the name of Jack Aplin – and I learned a little lesson, always know the name of your driver.

The ECS workings were, in their own way, an enjoyable turn. You could build up the fire and fill up the boiler and the engine would then complete the run without any further coal or water being needed. What this meant, in practice, was that the drivers would, quite often, let the fireman do a spot of driving. If you fired like this you would arrive at Waterloo with plenty of room in the boiler, so you could keep adding water, to keep the engine quiet until it was time to bank the train away. A large part of the fire had also burned away and this helped to keep the smoke down – so it might not have been copy-book firing but it did have its benefits. Blacking out the concourse at Waterloo and constant blowing-off would get you a serious telling off from the station foreman – and from the driver.

Another regular form of entertainment on these turns was trying to race the ‘juicers’, (EMUs), – until you had to shut-off to stop at Clapham. With regulator ‘up in the roof’ and 50 per cent cut-off,  these free steaming little engines would go like the rockets which flew from the chimney top when they were worked like this – and by the time you were passing Queens Road station, even with 11 or 12 coaches on, speed was somewhat higher than the schedules demanded.

In one of those odd little quirks, which life often seems to spring, my very first firing turn as a ‘passed’ cleaner was also with a 2-6-2T, though not the Riddles version. It was a Saturday evening turn on the station pilot at Leeds City station with one of the Ivatt 2-6-2Ts that were, at that time, allocated to Farnley Junction, (55C), which was where my railway career had begun in 1962.

Station pilot at Waterloo was also a regular turn for the Nine Elms-based Riddles 3MTs. If you were booked on the late turn station pilot at Waterloo – throwing coal at the rats, which lived under the platforms, helped to pass the time between one shunt and the next, or while you were on steam heating duties during the winter timetable.

Towards the end
There was another turn on which the 82000 class was the locomotive of choice – a turn which didn’t appear in any passenger timetables, but which did carry passengers. This turn, known to the crews as the ‘Kenny Belle’ or the ‘Kenny Flyer’ was a special service from Clapham Junction to Kensington Olympia via Latchmere Junction and the West London Extension line.

There were services in the morning from Clapham to Kensington and an afternoon service in the opposite direction – these trains were for the use of Post Office workers from the large Royal Mail sorting offices at Kensington and were one of the last regular passenger duties performed by these engines. In fact this service was one of the last steam-hauled suburban services in London.

Another duty which often saw the 82000s in charge was the ‘Vauxhall Milk’ – aka the ‘Torrington Milk’. For Nine Elms footplatemen this turn involved nothing more arduous than spending about four or five hours at Vauxhall station while the milk tanks were emptied – an hour or two kipped down on the footplate was a very common occurrence. One night, on this turn, I went to sleep with my foot resting against the firehole door, not knowingly of course. When I awoke I had slow roasted my big toe and utterly ruined an almost brand new pair of Doc Martin’s ‘Airwear’ shoes – it was a painful lesson, physically and financially.

Despite being in service until 1967 and the last members of the class not being sent for scrap until 1968 it is, perhaps, surprising that none of the 82000 class survived into preservation. When you consider their design, short working lives and the nature of the motive power requirements of a preserved railway this seems a shame – as they would be ideally suited to work the leisurely timings and short distances of many preserved lines. Indeed, as I’ve already mentioned, several of today’s preserved lines would have seen these engines at work on them during their British Railways ownership.

However, one dedicated band of enthusiasts decided to remedy this omission and have begun to build a new 82000. I will let Chris Proudfoot, the new build project’s commercial officer, tell you, in his own words, the why, how and when of what I can only describe as a ‘very sensible idea’ – the 82045 Steam Locomotive Trust.