Royal Claud
I worry about uploading another ancient picture that wasn't taken by me, especially one that may be well known to some people, but it's where I have been spending my time recently, restoring old images and working up accurate captions, and there is a photographic twist here, too….
It's from an old CCQ slide that's a copy of an even older slide from 1937 that shows "Royal" D16 No 8787 pausing on the slow line at Welwyn Garden City (the principal expresses tore through on the centre roads) with a train to King's Cross. It's always been captioned as a fabled "Cambridge Buffet Car Express", but it's not. The whole story and a ton of detail is on my website, here's the salient bits:
During the late 1930s the LNER fleet of locos and carriages was still three-quarters pre-LNER and, in this case, we have an ex-GER loco and ex-GNR carriages. The train is a secondary express without catering making selected stops along the way - it's actually the 2.4pm from Cambridge, which was rostered for one of the unique pair of apple-green "Claud Hamiltons" kept in tip-top condition in case a royal train needed to be hauled from Sandringham, and was deployed on this secondary working to earn its keep and ensure its reliability.
Relatively old carriages were deployed - the most prestigious expresses got the new stuff! - and the oldest one here, behind the tender, was 32 years old. The fabled varnished teak so lovingly represented by most modellers like fresh pine has aged to the colour of an old leather satchel while the once-white roofs are clad with soot. This is what nearly all LNER trains actually looked like. You just can't tell from the b&w pictures. Still perfectly harmonious, but different.
For photographers, the spotless loco was an enormous magnet and there are countless pictures of this train in LNER days, probably making it the most photographed after the truly elite Flying Scotsman! Indeed, as can be the seen, this isn't so much a train picture as a loco portrait with a few carriages thrown in for good measure. The style hasn't exactly disappeared, has it? :)
Details: The original concentrates on the loco even more with space ahead of it and more sky, which I cropped a little for the sake of balance. Website www.steve-banks.org, see under "Prototype and Traffic/LNER coaches",
Royal Claud
I worry about uploading another ancient picture that wasn't taken by me, especially one that may be well known to some people, but it's where I have been spending my time recently, restoring old images and working up accurate captions, and there is a photographic twist here, too….
It's from an old CCQ slide that's a copy of an even older slide from 1937 that shows "Royal" D16 No 8787 pausing on the slow line at Welwyn Garden City (the principal expresses tore through on the centre roads) with a train to King's Cross. It's always been captioned as a fabled "Cambridge Buffet Car Express", but it's not. The whole story and a ton of detail is on my website, here's the salient bits:
During the late 1930s the LNER fleet of locos and carriages was still three-quarters pre-LNER and, in this case, we have an ex-GER loco and ex-GNR carriages. The train is a secondary express without catering making selected stops along the way - it's actually the 2.4pm from Cambridge, which was rostered for one of the unique pair of apple-green "Claud Hamiltons" kept in tip-top condition in case a royal train needed to be hauled from Sandringham, and was deployed on this secondary working to earn its keep and ensure its reliability.
Relatively old carriages were deployed - the most prestigious expresses got the new stuff! - and the oldest one here, behind the tender, was 32 years old. The fabled varnished teak so lovingly represented by most modellers like fresh pine has aged to the colour of an old leather satchel while the once-white roofs are clad with soot. This is what nearly all LNER trains actually looked like. You just can't tell from the b&w pictures. Still perfectly harmonious, but different.
For photographers, the spotless loco was an enormous magnet and there are countless pictures of this train in LNER days, probably making it the most photographed after the truly elite Flying Scotsman! Indeed, as can be the seen, this isn't so much a train picture as a loco portrait with a few carriages thrown in for good measure. The style hasn't exactly disappeared, has it? :)
Details: The original concentrates on the loco even more with space ahead of it and more sky, which I cropped a little for the sake of balance. Website www.steve-banks.org, see under "Prototype and Traffic/LNER coaches",