Readers’ Letters
GWR locos withdrawals convoy at Stockport
Sir: Thank you to Steve Bartlett for solving a mystery of more than 50 years for me!
His article ‘Shrewsbury’s Central Wales line sub-sheds’ (Steam Days, January 2024) shows pictures on pages 11 and 12 of stored GWR locomotives at Craven Arms shed. I was surprised to see some of these on Sunday, 15 December 1963 on Stockport Edgeley shed and assumed they were perhaps en route to the Central Wagon Works at Ince near Wigan for scrapping. They were in illustrious company in that No 70000 Britannia was also on shed that day (but not for scrapping). Steve has revealed that they were actually going to Wards in Sheffield for breaking up.
I was unable to make further enquiries later in the week as that night I boarded the 01.00 Manchester Exchange to Glasgow sleeper as a precursor to spending most of the rest of my life north of the border.
Obtaining the numbers of these anonymous locos was difficult as we had to rely on chalk markings. My records showed them to be Nos 5015, 1016, 1022, 1026, 7309 and 7336, which differ in one case from Steve’s in that I have noted down 1016 rather than 1017. With only chalk to go on, I could well be wrong.
Thank you too for the delightful 1963 picture of Inverness on page 49. I do hope Trevor Lambert has been back on the Far North Line since then. I am sure he would appreciate it more now. The website of the Friends of the FNL is well worth investigating – www.fofnl.org.uk – not least for the thrice yearly magazine. We are currently working up appropriate celebrations for the 150th anniversary of completion to Thurso and Wick at the end of July 2024.
R J Ardern Inverness
John Macnab
We are sad to report that John Macnab died suddenly in the first week of January. He was born in March 1936, and lost his wife Margaret in 2003 and missed her dearly.
Through the pages of Steam Days we have had the good fortune to learn much about John’s career on the railway since he first wrote for us back in 2006, and even as recently as last month, although regrettably he never saw the completed Colliston article in the February 2024 issue. In a sense it was the most appropriate of all articles for him to leave us with as it touched on his boyhood travels by train in Angus, early work and various postings on the railway, and also there was mention of national service, very briefly, and his subsequent role in Glasgow North District HQ and as such his position within coaching stock employ. This aspect was at the heart of his Colliston story,
