The end of steam

It continued for another year in the north and then that was it, all over.

I was at an 80th birthday party last week of a former steam loco driver when someone suggested I should get hold of all the remaining drivers and firemen and record their memories of that last historic week.

I thought: ‘Why stop there?’

There must be guards who worked the last services in the first week of July 1967.

And what about steam raisers, coal men, fitters and all the other trades involved with running steam locomotives and the sheds?

If any of you are still about, please contact me.

Ring The News on (023) 9266 4488 and ask for my phone number. Thank you.

While on the subject of railways, author Geoff Burch has revised and re-published his ‘Ramblings of a Railwayman’ and there are many extra photographs.

Many of the new colour photographs come from the railway-mad photographer Dave Salmon who died late last year. Geoff acquired his whole library of photographs.

Go to [email protected] for more info.

In this photograph from Geoff’s book we see three former mainline Bullied locomotives being towed by a diesel Crompton later Class 33 to their fate on Sunday, August 13, 1967.

Behind the diesel are 34008 ‘Padstow’ then 34034 ‘Honition’ then 35007 ‘Aberdeen Commonwealth’.