'Rocket' gremlin
Alas the two picture captions on p347 of the June issue are transposed: North Star is the one at the top, it says so on the side of it! Ed.
The coalman cometh
Well done in providing a picture of the ex-Midland Railway battery loco B.E.L.1 at West India Dock coal depot (back cover April issue). Somehow I got to know of this unlikely survivor while I was at college in New Cross and succeeded in tracking it down to photograph. It was an elusive beast so far as the usual number books were concerned. I have looked it up in my old 1950s ABCs. It does not appear under ‘Service Locos’ in my combined volume for 1960/1, nor the individual London Midland. books for 1956/7 or 1955. However, it is there in my 1951 edition, along with a second hand copy for 1949 and a facsimile reprint of the 1948 combined volume. It is missing from the two original 1943 LMS volumes (reprints!). Interestingly it is numbered 41550. Its companion in the Battery section of the Former LMS Service Locomotives, built by the North Staffordshire Railway, was unnumbered. This locomotive was saved for preservation in the National Collection.
Robin Leleux, Ilkley
Hastings to Tunbridge Wells
To add to Malcolm Cowtan's excellent
