Sunday April 29 1962
Only minutes into this day and I’m already on the coach leaving Ipswich town centre for an East Midlands area shed bash - including 15 Great Central, London and North Eastern, Midland/London Midland Scottish sheds and Derby Works - visiting Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and what was then the Soke of Peterborough. This was a trip organised jointly by the Ipswich Land Transport Society and the Colchester branch of the Locomotive Club of Great Britain.
The first part of the story of this trip appeared in Steam World March 2019 and Part two in December 2022. Suffice to say that this 24 hours brought 548 cops: 345 LMS locomotives, 96 LNER, and 97 BR Standards. These were, of course, predominantly freight locomotives: ‘9F’ 2-10-0s, ‘WD’, ‘8F’ and ‘04’ 2-8-0s, ‘4F’ and ‘J39’ 0-6-0s. But there were also some old Johnson Midland ‘2F’ 0-6-0s at Coalville (even a Johnson ‘1F’ 0-6-0T at Kirkby-in-Ashfield) and variety including a Somerset and Dorset ‘7F’ 2-8-0 and Thundersley (a preserved London, Tilbury and Southend Railway 4-4-2T) and Cecil Raikes (a former Liverpool Railway 0-6-4T dating from 1896) - both the latter being spotted at Derby works. There was also a sad batch of withdrawn Stanier ‘3MT’ 2-6-2Ts at Kirkby-in-Ashfield.
My sustenance for the day comprised corned beef sandwiches, Rich Tea biscuits, ready salted crisps, a banana or two, a flask of ‘Camp’ coffee and some Ribena (in a bottle). I had to manage that very carefully to get me through the day. Little did I know that, as we journeyed, a landmark banquet of a very different character was being served up by President Kennedy. 173 scientists, writers and educationalists (including 49 Nobel prizewinners) were feasting on the best the White House could provide. One of them, Dr Linus Pauling - a Chemistry
