LOOK BEHIND YOU!
All readers of Steam World know what happened in August 1968 – it’s a year with ‘1066’ status to us. This was the month and year in which British Railways steam traction came to a grubby and actually rather ignominious end, in many ways.
The last handful of battered locomotives, allocated to the Motive Power Depots at Carnforth (10A), Preston’s Lostock Hall (10D) and Burnley’s Rose Grove (10F), were generally filthy, weary and neglected. As the end neared, it was no surprise – and actually common sense and good management of public funds – not to waste money on engines which would be going for razor blades in a few short weeks and months. If they couldn’t limp on thanks to parts stripped from already withdrawn engines in the scrap lines, or the most basic of repairs, they too were formally withdrawn and joined the sad rows of cold engines awaiting a tow to the scrapyard.
Thus, during the winter, spring and early summer of 1968, the main lines and goods yards around these three MPDs, and the routes they served, were crowded by linesiders photographing, watching or showing their children the last of the Stephenson’s creation, working out their last days.
This was certainly the case in and around Burnley’s Rose Grove shed, where the linesides to Burnley Central, Nelson, Colne and Skipton – and especially the famous climb to Copy Pit and subsequent descent into Todmorden - were thronged by photographers. I was one
