SEEING SOUTHERN STEAM’S SWANSONG

I don’t remember the end of Southern Region steam. I was ten years old in 1967 and this particular event passed me by. I do recall England’s solitary World Cup win the summer before, of course, and, bizarrely, do remember Labour’s general election victory of October 1964, when I was just seven. How weird is that?

I wish I remember the end of steam in the South, but not only am I amnesic, I was also growing up in the wrong part of the country. As a sprat in Fladbury, Worcestershire, I did see steam trains, but that is about as far as my consciousness went. (Fladbury was opened by the Oxford Worcester & Wolverhampton Railway in 1854, but closed in 1966). At least I can claim to have seen some main line steam, although I was far