50 YEARS SINCE THE RETURN OF STEAM!
“The sale of the Worth Valley branch was the first Privatisation of any part of British Railways...”
HAD I bought a 1949-built Ivatt 2MT 2-6-2T and painted it in a bright maroon livery that even a pre-Grouping company might have found somewhat over the top, I not only would be laughed to scorn, but our Platform pages would be overflowing with letters from angry purists for the foreseeable future.
Yet one such locomotive in its totally outrageous (for its class and era) crimson lake livery not only made transport history, but is now well and truly part of it.
It was on June 29, 1968 that, due to a rail strike, the only part of the national network in operation was a redundant branch line in West Yorkshire, and in an act of seeming defiance to the trend of the time, steam ruled the roost on the day – six weeks before BR ran its
