ISSUE Number 64 Keeping Calm & Carrying On! st WATFORD BRANCH NEWSLETTER Issue Date – 31 March 2020 From the Chairman elcome to a rare event – another Watford Branch Newsletter! By now, every one of our members will be W aware of the current crisis with regard to the Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, and the restrictions it has put on all our lives – especially as many of us are in the ‘vulnerable’ demographic. The branch committee hopes that everyone is safe and well and that once this period is over we can get back to a more normal situation – though that timescale at the moment is an unknown. Prior to the government’s decrees on social distancing and any sort of mass gathering not being allowed to go ahead, your committee was in discussions as to whether we should continue with meetings as advertised and Rob Davidson sent out emails to all those on our e-mail contacts list to sound out opinions. We received a good number of replies though without any consensus, some wishing to carry on and some thinking we should cancel. I gave a presentation to a reduced audience at the RCTS Peterborough Branch on Thursday 12th March 2020 – and the subject came up as to whether meetings could still go ahead, or if some sort of guidance might come from the Management Committee/Society Trustees. Things rapidly escalated and the decisions were taken out of our hands, firstly by the speaker due to give the Watford Branch presentation on 7th April having to pull out as he is in one of the groups with serious underlying health problems and is also his elderly mother’s prime carer. Adrian had also had to pull out of his presentation to the South Essex Branch on Monday 16th March and also had to cancel meetings of the Stevenage Locomotive Society, where he is the Fixtures Secretary, and where I was due to give a presentation on Thursday 26th March. Secondly, David Jackman, who had been involved in our discussions and is also one of the society webmasters who was updating the RCTS site as things developed, informed us that some branches were cancelling and some not, at that stage. David informed us that a MC/Trustees meeting was scheduled for the following Saturday, 21st March and the prospect of postponing April’s national AGM in Coventry would be discussed. Events then overtook that as well as the government edicts went out that all social contact must be kept to the minimum, with all those that could to remain at home apart from essential and key workers, so the decision was made that all RCTS meetings, events, visits etc. would be cancelled/postponed for the foreseeable future – the website being updated to show the status of events. The committee hopes that we will be able to recommence our programme in the not too far distant future, subject to speaker availability, venue availability and so on. In the meantime, our Treasurer, Richard Dyett, came up with the suggestion that occasional Newsletters should be sent out to keep everyone informed and also to make sure that by the end of several weeks/months of self- isolation/quarantine that the RCTS was at least still somewhere in everyone’s minds and not forgotten. Apart from simply keeping in touch with news of what’s happening, Richard also thought it would be a good idea if we asked for contributions to the Newsletter from our members to keep us all interested, informed and entertained, something along the lines of: "My earliest railway memory", "my best cop", "brushes with the authorities when shed bashing", "recent gossip" etc. A Charitable Incorporated Organisation registered with The Charities Commission. Registered number 1169995. If anyone does have something in mind they would like to contribute, including photos, please send your articles, scribblings or whatever to me at: [email protected] and I will attempt to incorporate them into some sort of document to be sent out by e-mail. Please submit written contributions as Microsoft “word” documents and photos as jpeg files (not too large! 800 x 600 pixels, or thereabouts, is fine). Thanks in advance and stay safe. Geoff Plumb, Chairman, RCTS Watford Branch ******************************************************************************** To get things under way, I was contacted on the evening of 25th March by Humphrey Gillott, one of our regular attendees at meetings, who kindly phoned to wish me a “Happy Birthday” (71st, since you ask!) whilst I was enjoying a pint of real ale delivered from my local pub in Haddenham (they have had to close for the duration and were giving away their remaining stocks to regular customers – very kind of them) in front of a log fire and listening to a bit of Bach on the CD player (that’s Johann Sebastian, not Dai!). We had a long and enjoyable chat covering various subjects, including model railways, and also talked about various footplate trips on railtours long gone by. One that came up was the RCTS ‘The Grafton Railtour’ that ran on 9th August 1959, so I thought I would reminisce a little about that trip. RCTS (London Branch), ‘The Grafton Railtour’, Sunday 9th August 1959 This was a very complicated tour involving the use of six engines (not all at once!) over diverse routes, inevitably eventually running at ‘Railtour Standard Time’ and then some! Weather-wise, it was mostly cloudy and dull. The train, consisting of seven coaches of mainly former LNER stock, including a restaurant car, was booked to depart from King’s Cross at 09:10, the first leg to Hitchin hauled by North British built Class 21 (later Class 29) Bo-Bo No. D6101, then only a few months old. At Hitchin, the diesel came off and was replaced by a somewhat older engine in the form of MR 3F 0-6-0 No. 43474, built by Neilson, Reid in Glasgow in 1896. This was a Bedford allocated engine and hauled the train to Bedford Midland Road via Shefford, over the line later used for the filming of the wonderful sequence with the ‘Jones Goods’, HR No. 103, for ‘Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines’ with Terry Thomas, among many others. The 3F, like all the other steam locos involved in the tour, was filthy dirty. The 3F came off the train at Bedford and was replaced by ‘Black 5’ 4-6-0 No. 45193 for the next stretch. My father Derek, whom many of you will remember, was conducting his usual duties on many tours, that of fitting the RCTS headboard to the engines involved. This was always a good way to introduce himself to the engine crews and having ‘the gift of the gab’ he would often be offered a trip on the footplate, in those far off days of flexible interpretation of the rules! So it was on this occasion, except that I, as a ten-year-old, was included as well, much to my delight! Not only was the engine filthy, it was obviously rather a long time out of works and was a pretty rough rider as we set off northwards along the Midland Main Line, though only as far as Oakley Junction where we took the line through Olney to Northampton Bridge Street and on to Blisworth. The junctions here were rather complicated and involved crossing the WCML, the train having to reverse here to continue on the S&MJR line towards Towcester. No. 45193 came off the train and was replaced by an equally filthy No. 45091 on the other end of the train. With the change of engine came a change of the headboard too, so my father and I continued on the footplate of this engine, to another reversal at Byfield. Here the engine ran-round, and we continued to Woodford Halse running tenderfirst. Having run-round again the train set off southwards down the Great Central main line (the GCR went down to London, whereas most lines went up to London). So far, I had spent much of the time on the footplate standing up and trying to keep out of the fireman’s way, also quickly learning that it was not a good idea to stand on the fall-plate (the flexible flap that covered the gap in the floor between the engine and tender) as this bucked about quite violently. On this section of the main line I was advised to sit in the fireman’s seat and hang on as the train got up to over 70mph as we roared through Brackley and Finmere (see later article) to yet another reversal at Calvert. Page | 2 We ran-round again at Calvert and then it was another tenderfirst run through Claydon and onto Verney Junction where another reversal took place. In order to run-round though, the engine had to go all the way to Winslow to cross over and return, this exercise taking around twenty minutes against the booked eight minutes allowed. Setting off from Verney Junction, the train took the line to Buckingham and through Brackley for the second time, though on a different route, then via Cockley Brake Junction, where the line from Green’s Norton Junction trailed-in and on to Banbury Merton Street, the terminus of the line. Fortunately, plenty of time had been allowed here for the complicated moves to get the train from Merton Street to the adjacent Banbury General station. I can’t recall the exact moves to accomplish this, but one possibility was that 45091 ran-round the train in the Merton Street platform and then hauled the train out of the station passing the gas works yard to cross over to the far side of the lines, as there was only one track that connected between the two stations.