Realising to my horror that it had been a whole year without a visit to Bristol and Swindon, I quickly applied for permits. Luck was with me, receiving them in time for a weekend ‘bash’ on October 20-23 1962, to one of my favourite areas. This time I would travel overnight on the Saturday, by the Birkenhead-Paddington and start with the Reading area first (which was a major error of judgement that I would not repeat).
Setting off on Saturday night in time to connect at Chester with the Paddington service, all went well for the first part of the journey with a compartment to myself and a takeaway cup of tea at Shrewsbury from the platform trolley, but from then on it was downhill! With several passengers joining at Wolverhampton Low Level, I arrived at Birmingham Snow Hill at midnight, with (I was informed) the usual punch-up on the platform spilling onto the train, resulting in the railway police with dogs boarding and chasing out the drunks and dossers without tickets, throughout the long journey in the night hours. I got very little sleep in my shared compartment without being able to doss down on the seat; what a contrast to the comfort of my usual service from Crewe. Still, it was no good moaning: the die was cast and Ihad to make the best of it.
I was glad to leave the well-filled overnight train at Reading General just after 4am on Sunday October 21, although at 81D – a large shed with plenty of steam on view – a section of the workshop had been converted to a diesel depot providing a vision of the new order with several of the new DMUs plus a couple of diesel shunters. On the steam side, however, 0-6-0PT No. 8496 was my only booking out of 38; over at Southern shed, now just a sub, its three roads were very well filled as one would expect at 5am on a Sunday. ‘U’ class 2-6-0 No. 31612, along with ‘N’ class 2-6-0 No. 31869 were ‘copped’ out of nine steam on duty. Also seen were two of my favourite ‘Schools’ class engines.
