Letters

REFERENCE the article in issue 241 on page 13 about Class 306s: firstly the unit number should read No. 017 not 107. Originally they were only used as far as Gidea Park, where many services turned back to Liverpool Street before extending to Shenfield. A total of 92 three-car units were built, all except unit…

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Martin McGinty makes the point (issue 240) that Sarah Woolaston MP lacks understanding of Devon and Cornwall’s need for a second railway line using the Okehampton/Plymouth route. He suggests that she needs to wake up. I have to agree. I spend a lot of my time in the South Hams which is in her constituency…

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AS the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway’s Ian Crowder pointed out in HR issue238 when referring to damage to the Station Road overbridge at Broadway, the widespread menace of bridge strikes needs to be tackled. Apart from the expense and disruption caused by bridge bashing, there is serious danger of a fatal accident occurring. A few years…

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I was interested to see the picture in Platform, issue 238, of the Christmas card submitted by Heritage Railway reader Mike Sanderson, depicting D49 4-4-0 No. 246 Morayshire – but with a non-matching extra GWR tender! My little grandson had the misfortune to be given a jigsaw puzzle with the same picture. Although he is…

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I live in Wroughton and a few weeks ago I attended an exhibition put on by the Science Museum to advertise its intentions to build a new building at the Wroughton Airfield site at last. I was advised at that time that they had the funding and I have recently learned that their plans are…

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I have been following the articles in Geoff Courtney’s railwayana column and the letters pages concerning the debate about whether the original bronze nameplates on the Metropolitan Railway Bo-Bo electric locomotives were removed for melting down to aid the Second World War effort, or were sold to Stratford railwaymen in the 1950s. As one of…

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In issue 237 in Off The Shelf there is a brief review of a book, Locomotives and Railways of The Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. I have not seen or read the book, but the review mentions that the MD&HB railway stretched for 7½ miles along the east bank of the Mersey (the Liverpool side).…

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As A Bristolian brought up in the postwar era, I was bequeathed the dual delights of steam on the BR Western Region and the steamers of the White Funnel Fleet care of P&A Campbell. Even today I can enjoy the West Somerset, Lynton & Barnstaple and Brecon Mountain railways, while for the last three years…

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I was glad to read the story of the preservation of No. 43924. I recall, as a young member of the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, spending a day scraping grease and dirt from the underside of the tender as it stood behind the shed in Haworth yard… and I have since ridden behind it.…

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I was astonished to see the article by Geoff Courtney in issue 235 about the photograph of the RT reproduced from my book London’s Classic Buses in Black and White. I enjoyed compiling the book some 17 years ago, never dreaming I would see its prominence in a leading railway journal so many years on.…

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