A SOUTHERN REGION DAY TRIP TO CORNWALL
Having recently moved from Sussex to Nottinghamshire, I was looking forward to a journey which I had to make to London, as I could travel by train to St Pancras.
It was a real disappointment. I was looking out for various junctions, depots and goods yards but all I saw was a diesel stabling point at Leicester, a Thameslink depot at Bedford and a large depot at Cricklewood on the site of the old MPD(14A). While I knew the railways had changed a lot since the days when I would often travel to many parts of Britain by train, I hadn’t realised just how enormous the changes had been.
My journey set me thinking of the times when one could find steam locomotives all over Britain in numerous situations’ without having to look too hard.
This reminded me of a Sunday afternoon in 1956 cycling to a friend’s house. As I was passing my local station (Elmers End on the mid-Kent suburban line), I noticed smoke and steam from the far end of the station.
The usual trains on this line were two and four-car EPB electric units. The only steam locomotives that normally visited the station were the mid-week trains bringing coal wagons into the goods yard, so naturally I had to find out what was going on.
At the far end of the station, I found London & South Western Railway ‘700’ 0-6-0 No. 30699 which at the time was a Salisbury (72B) allocated locomotive. It was on a construction train’ lengthening the platforms to take ten-coach commuter trains. Before the lengthening work, the platforms could only take eight-coach trains.
I was unable to find out why a Salisbury locomotive was being
