GALATEA IN DISGUISE
GREEN ‘Jubilees’ were the staple diet of trans-Pennine passenger trains between the Second World War and the January 1961 dieselisation of the route’s expresses.
For the remainder of the 1960s they were to be found on summer Saturday seaside trains, reliefs and parcel duties. Towards the end of steam a Farnley Jct example could be seen, from the top deck of my school bus, making its Huddersfield station call with the late-afternoon ‘Wavertree Parcels’. Often glimpsed and then, it seemed, gone forever.
Not so. Here, in 2020, No. 45562 Alberta glides into Lancaster station at 08.00 on a blustery February morning, with the rhythmic ‘swoosh’ from its cylinder drain cocks adding a sense of determination to the task ahead.
Its 10-coach train weighs in at 370 tons tare, edging towards 400 tons gross by the last pick-up point at Manchester Victoria.
The locomotive was really No. 45699 Galatea, normally associated with its time at Bristol Barrow Road in the 1950s and, if not there, then the Midland Main Line from St Pancras. However, it was no stranger to northern England as the Railway Performance Society (RPS) electronic archive contains many examples of the locomotive’s work on cross-country expresses to Leeds – and my Wortley Jct article in Practice and Performance (RM Oct 2019) mentions its presence on Bradford Forster Square duties.
Being shedded at Bristol resulted in its disposal to Woodham’s of Barry and the passport to preservation subsequently issued to many of its scrapyard soulmates.
The Standedge route was different though and a change of identity to a Yorkshire-based locomotive was deemed appropriate for the ‘Cotton Mill Express’ despite the rumble of rebellion from the purists against such duplicity. On the other hand, anything that stimulates interest in our hobby is welcome, although such distortions of history might admittedly be lost on future generations, should they have the slightest interest of course.
Alter-ego
Initially, the significance of choosing as the alter-ego to was lost on
