Steam Days

Steam Days is a monthly magazine dedicated to all steam railway enthusiasts. Each issue covers the six regions of British Railways: Western, Southern, London, Midland, Eastern, and Scottish, with the occasional article on Irish railways and the industrial scene. These well illustrated articles in the magazine cover the history of the railways of Britain from the early days of the 1800s through to the end of steam on British Railways in August 1968.

Steam Days

TRAINS of thought

Pullman carriages of the Caledonian Railway and LMS • Employed from 1914 to 1934 as Pullman cars and then purchased outright by the LMS as part of its catering fleet, John Macnab offers an overview of these vehicles through to their final use in 1961.

The name’s the same: City of London • Andrew Wilson examines the careers of six main line locomotives named ‘City of London’ between May 1888 and September 1964.

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STEAM DAYS In Colour 218: Passenger duties between Reading (General) and the Solent • The first major revision of BR regional boundaries came on 2 April 1950 when all former Great Western lines south of the Berks & Hants line and West of England main line between Reading and Taunton were transferred to the Southern Region. Overnight the erstwhile GWR Basingstoke branch beyond Southcote Junction was under new management but although the line then took on something of a hybrid identity, it had always hosted what would by now be termed inter-regional trains. Alongside the well known long distance workings from the Eastern, Midland and Western regions to the South Coast, which were covered in the January 2021 edition of ‘Steam Days’, there were shorter distance ‘local’ duties that shared the same route between Reading and Basingstoke and could be termed inter-regionals if only by default. These local passenger trains were inevitably configured to service the needs of the shift workers, servicemen, mariners and travellers from such diverse businesses as Huntley & Palmers’ biscuit factory in Reading, Eli Lilly in Basingstoke, the railway workshops at Eastleigh and the naval dockyard at Portsmouth, as well as the activities of the ocean liner port at Southampton, plus many more.

Connah’s Quay & Shotton to Chester (Northgate) and Seacombe: Station by station • Richard Clarke concludes his four-part Deeside overview with coverage of the Great Central Railway line into Chester and the 14-mile former North Wales & Liverpool Railway through to Bidston, and then over Wirral Railway metals to the banks of the River Mersey.

You can win super rail reads • The dark evenings of the new year… just the time for sitting back and enjoying a railway read. And here at Steam Days we’ve got some super prizes which must be won… all you have to do is find the words hidden in our grid…

West of England Rail Rover 1960 From Launceston to the English Riviera • The 2 June 1960 notes of Leslie R Freeman include travel on the ex-GWR branch line from Launceston and through Tavistock, entering Plymouth from the east before taking in the Kingsbridge, Kingswear and Brixham branches on the next day. Diary notes and all photographs courtesy of Transport Treasury.

Readers’ Letters