few years before the event described Ain this article, I was travelling with my parents from the Isle of Wight towards London, on the Portsmouth direct line, when I noticeda line of stored locomotives on a siding near what I later discovered was Liss station in Hampshire. This siding hosted a couple of former London Brighton& South Coast Railway 4-4-2Ts, the only ones of that genre I ever saw. The benefit of hindsight, and modern access to the internet, tells me that these were formerly LBSCR class I2 442Ts Nos. 2013 and 2019, which the Longmoor Military Railway had once numbered 2400 and 2401, then 72400 and 72401 before discarding them in 1947, which may well have been the yearI saw them.
By September 1953, I was sufficiently aware to know that the Longmoor Military Railway was run by the army (actually the Royal Engineers). It was used to train soldiers in the techniques involved in laying, repairing and
