What a lovely job this is
The article in the February Backtrack about railway documentaries shown on TV reminded me of a programme shown on TV in the late 1950s. The programme involved a TV presenter being shown around the locomotive shed yard at York by a member of the shed staff. They stopped at certain locomotives and the railwayman gave a simple description of the locomotive and what it was doing in the yard, for example “this is an express passenger engine which has just brought in an express from King’s Cross.” One of the locomotives featured was A4 No.60023 Golden Eagle. I have never seen this programme since, it has not appeared on DVD and I presume it no longer exists. Does any reader remember it?
Take the train for the boat
To add to Part Two (February) of Philip Benham’s review, an advantage of the Harwich-Hook of Holland route for overnight journeys was the full night’s sleep on the boat. Dinner and breakfast, served with style, on the ‘Hook Continental’ between Liverpool Street and Parkeston Quay added to the experience. In the 1970s this route provided a useful alternative to the ‘Night Ferry’ from Brussels, the evening Paris-Amsterdam Trans Europe Express connecting at Rotterdam for The Hook.
The Harwich-Manchester boat train became a ‘Sprinter’ DMU from May 1988, named the ‘Loreley’ and running through to Blackpool North. From May 1989 it was diverted to Liverpool. This caused the platform indicators at Harwich Parkeston Quay to show adjacent trains as bound for
