The Railway Magazine – July 2019

Upon hearing that an 1878-built London, Brighton & South Coast Railway‘Terrier’

had been painted in Stroudley bright yellow for working at Brighton Works,

Humphrey headed to the South Coast to record No. 377S in action in 1948.

The Locomotive Exchanges of 1948 presented some wonderfully rare photographic
opportunities for enthusiasts. With a dynamometer car coupled behind its

borrowed LMS tender, Southern‘West Country’Pacific No. 34006Budemakes an
incongruous sight on the fourth-rail tracks of the Metropolitan & Great Central Joint

main line as it storms through Northwood station.

Left: In Hampshire’s New Forest, Bulleid Light Pacific No. 21C160 approaches

Brockenhurst while working a Waterloo to Bournemouth train in the year the

engine was introduced, 1947. It was un-named at the time of the photo but later

became a member of the‘Battle of Britain’class as No. 3406025 Squadron.

The LNER’s prototype‘L1’class 2-6-4T No. 9000 was built in 1945 but remained the

only example of its type for three years until the other 99 members of the class were

constructed by British Railways between 1948 and 1950. Painted in lined apple

green, the big tank cuts a fine sight in this view at the country end of Liverpool

Street station in 1946.

base was Dol-llys Hall, just north of Llanidloes
in Montgomeryshire, and to get there, I had to

travel to Paddington, catch a train to Shrewsbury,
change there for Moat Lane Junction and then

change again onto the Builth Wells line. The place
was in deepest Great Western country and at that

time things hadn’t changed a great deal from
pre-Grouping days. In fact, in many respects they

were still pure Cambrian Railway.

Spectacle
“The hall – which must have been one of the

few the GW didn’t name an engine after – stood
on the side of a hill above the Severn and one of

its classrooms gave a marvellous panoramic view
of the line across the river. A few minutes before

lunch every weekday, a train would come up the
valley and I and a few other boys would always

look up from our lessons to gaze at the spectacle.

Luckily, the teachers were understanding and

turned a blind eye to us staring out of the window

instead of concentrating on our lessons.”

Travel between school and home at the

beginning and end of each term gave Humphrey

half a dozen long-distance train journeys a year

in which to broaden his knowledge of the British

railway system and its locomotives, but it wasn’t

until the end of the war that he was able to start

photographing them. Until then, he and his

pals had to spend much of their holiday time on

another form of spotting – keeping their eyes

and ears open for planes above their heads and

learning how to differentiate between the friendly

and the deadly on the basis of wing shape and

engine noise.

“Our family home in Northwood was close

to a Hawker Hurricane fighter base at RAF

Northolt and as that was a prime target for

German aircraft, we were grateful for our air raid

shelter,” he recalled. “In fact, during the London

blitzes we sometimes had to spend whole nights

down there.”

Air-raid sirens

Astonishingly in spite of the danger, his

mother and father were extraordinarily relaxed

about letting him take his younger brother into

the centre of London on loco-spotting trips!

“I was 14 and he was 10 and all my parents

said to us was: ‘If the air-raid sirens start sounding,

just make sure you get yourselves down into a

Tube station!’”

In 1943, Humphrey moved on to senior

education at Shrewsbury School, enabling him

to spend far more time at the Shropshire county

town’s junction station than his brief changes of

train had previously allowed. “Shrewsbury was an

24 •The Railway Magazine• July 2019

LINESIDEINTHE‘40sAND‘50s