Courtesy of Rail-Online, I’ve added a new photo to the Pelton page of a J39 entering Pelton Station with a coal train.
Pelton (23/12/2017)
Courtesy of Rail-Online, I’ve added a new photo to the Pelton page of a J39 entering Pelton Station with a coal train.
It’s cracking shot John, thanks for posting.
Sunderland had a few J39s and they used to appear from time to time, but photos of them are rare on this route. I remember 64846 around 1960 but nothing after that.
A lot of steel flats used to go up on Saturdays and were loaded with finished steel. Sometimes – on the way up – ancient rolling stock would be strung along for scrapping at the works.
I think this must have been 1958 as the loco in question 64919 had moved to Low Moor by ’59. But even by them they were removing the platform edging, presumably for safety and to reduce maintenance.
Great shot of Stella Gill too.
Love the site, all the best for Christmas
Dave
Thanks Dave, you are right about the date, I’ve just checked and it’s a typo, I’ll get it changed 🙂
John
As Dave Milburn points out, it’s a J39 and not a J72 as captioned. They were one of the first steam classes that I remember seeing in my childhood in the early sixties. We had a bunch of them at Dairycoates in Hull for use on local freight turns and they were operational right up to the class’s demise as part of the great purge at the end of 1962. This purge saw dozens of classes, e.g. the Q7’s at Tyne Dock, removed from the books in a short space of time as the year’s end approached. it was apparently at the behest of the accountants and carried out as part of the transition from the British Transport Commission to the new British Railways Board at the start of 1963. The irony was that numbers of them then had to be re-instated to cope with the atrocious weather in the first three months of 1963 when their diesel replacements were failing left, right and centre.