|
This is how the same
engine looked in 2002 when it was stored at the LNWR
Heritage workshops
in Crewe. This engine was, for years years, a Longsight allocation
and I saw it many times as a schoolboy as it worked into Manchester,
London Road (now Piccadilly). The practice then was to leave
the locomotive attached to its train as the station pilot took
the stock to the Longsight depot for servicing and to see these
express engines being dragged backwards out of the station was
quite intriguing. Sometime the engine would unhook and follow
the stock to the end of the platform where it would wait before
leaving for the depot as light engine. One of my enduring memories
was seeing 46115 passing through Hale Station which was close
to where I lived at the time. Trains were being diverted at weekends
while the Manchester-Crewe line was electrified and this entailed
using the Middlewich branch from Sandbach through to Northwich
and then along the CLC lines - what attention that would have
brought in today's digital age! Other memorable locomotives of
the time were members of the Britannia class, notably "Byron",
"Tennyson" and "Charles Dickens"
- all Longsight engines. The two others were "Earl
Haigh" and "Lord Kitchener"
but, for a long time, they ran without names or windshields because
they were fitted with air pumps near the smokebox (super photo
HERE). Something to do with trials on air
braked freight trains I understand. I believe these two did eventually
get their windshields and nameplates fitted but I don't know
when. Happy days... |
- BANGOR - HOLYHEAD
