Loco sheds and other railway buildings...

About fifteen ago I was road learning the Midland Mainline with a mate when we were put into the loop at Wigston, a few miles south of Leicester, with an hour or so to kill we went mooching about in the bushes and found a very mangled upper quadrant semaphore arm, we bunged it in the cab and it's now resting in my garage.

Ahem… somewhere on the Liverpool St to Norwich line…

When I tramped up there about 10 years ago the roof frames were still on it - a shame (but not at all surprising) to see it has deteriorated further.

On a day, in a season, and in weather like in your pics it must have been a brilliant place to work. Such a magnificent view, perched on its corner between the Belah valley and Edendale. Just the sheep, the birds, the wind and the track gangs stopping by for a tea and a chat. A nice simple double-track through line - no junctions, no lie-bys, no shunting, no trains joining or dividing.

Then of course you have to imagine it on a foul autumn day with a gale sweeping up the fells and bringing down the telegraph wires, or having to climb up a signal post to change a lamp being lashed by horizontal rain, or several feet of snow being dumped overnight, blocking your signal wires and marooning you in your little pebbledashed hut, two miles (and several hundred feet above) the nearest village. Then I think they probably earned those enjoyable spring and summer days several times over!

A few days later I trekked over to Ribblehead and Blea Moor, which despite being as scenically spectacular (if not more so) never felt quite as enticing to me as somewhere I'd like to spend eight hours a day pulling levers and ringing bells. Blea Moor had a strangely hostile, threatening atmosphere to it that Belah and Stainmore did not. I don't think I'm alone in that - you can see why there are ghost stories and tall tales about the place.

That's a familiar sight, a similar view from the mid-80's here with my Dad giving it the lot on a Bomo-Reading cross country turn.
IIRC its somewhere north of Winchester, summertime as he's got the pale blue lighweight jacket on, and being an ex-steam man is using a bit of BR issue cloth to operate the controls...some of the cabs on certain depots diesels were none too clean, though I seem to remember this being Stratford based 47487 who did make an effort to look after stuff.
As a rule Southern drivers didn't wear uniform hats once steam finished...I'm guessing the bloke in Modern Railways on the 47/3 was a Western man!

Love the pic of the happy driver on D1044 too, Dad was based at Basingstoke and drove Warships and Hymeks regularly, he never done the course for Westerns but drove them occassionally as a pilotman and whatever.

He definitely preferred steam, but took to the diesels and electric traction with no problems...a lot of footplatemen packed the job in when steam went for various reasons.

Having started as a 15 y/o engine cleaner at Eastleigh shed in 1953 he passed out for driving at 26 but as Eastleigh was a big depot he found himself in the bottom link again to start with as a junior driver doing local work mostly...M7 Tanks up to Alton and similar jobs.
Keen to get back on the express work he had fired on a transfer to Basingstoke was done within weeks and he saw out the final years of steam there driving what remained of the classic Southern Raiway designs and the newer BR Standards as well as incoming diesels of various sorts.
Being a mixed traction depot there was a good mix of passenger and freight work and he stayed there for the next 30 years or so, commuting up from Eastleigh most days.

I think he was lucky to have seen the transition years when you might go to work not knowing what would turn up, he got back on steam in the 80's at various events around Andover, Salisbury, Basingstoke & Winchfield as well as a few railtours.
Eventually privatisation loomed and a stark choice of SWT or EWS loomed, being only a few years from retirement he'd had enough of nights on freight and ballast jobs so finished up doing EMU work for SWT until taking voluntary redundancy when offered...apparently over 400 drivers applied for the 75 packages offered which I suppose shows how low moral had gone at the time despite the improved pay and conditions privatisation gave.

Much improved now the fitters leave wipes in (some of) the cabs!

Thanks Bert. Why the preference for steam do you think? They were (and remain) hard and dirty work to operate.

I love the things, but don't know that firing and driving them day in, day out would be so much fun.

Indeed. I spent the night in Blea Moor signal box in 1976, I was outside taking some photographs about 8pm and the signalman invited me in for a brew. We chatted throughout the night, watching the sun come up over Whernside at 3.30 was awesome I left at 6.30 when his shift finished and had to drive home to his home in Horton in Ribblesdale.

I also spent the night in Torside signal box on the Woodhead line in 1971, similar story.

Found this the other day:-

My equally secondhand knowledge backs that up, too.

Some - many - enginemen were very happy to see the back of steam with its physicality, noise, dirt, smoke, heat, awkward 'oiling round' procedures, draughty cabs and the vagaries of a steam engine's behavior which, through no fault of the crew, can make their life difficult. Especially since during the transition away from steam so many of the locos were tired, under-maintained and rarely cleaned. As were the sheds they were kept in. They stepped into the clean, warm, bright cab of a diesel or an electric with its padded seats, electric heaters, big front-mounted windows, a start/stop button and servo-action controls and never wanted to go back.

Others just didn't fancy relearning the basics of their job from scratch, often late in their careers. They either left or took to the new traction rather begrudgingly - operating safely and diligently but 'by the book' and not caring to develop the 'knacks' and in-depth knowledge that they had to get the best out of the steam traction or the ways in which diesel or electric traction could be worked better, but differently.

Others just felt the heart of the job had gone. They were the ones with a real affinity for steam and who saw it as a calling, a craft - even an art form. They appreciated the elemental nature of steam work - the coal, fire, water, steam, steel and oil - and the inherent theatre and romanticism of what it entailed. I read something by an ex-Southern/BR(S) engineman who said that starting a long Exeter-bound express from Waterloo in a Bulleid Pacific was like raising the curtain on a play in a theatre, and he was an actor walking onto the stage. The play has a cast, a plot and a script, just as you have your train, your timetable and your rulebook. But it's the performance of a play that turns it into an art and something that will enthrall an audience, and it's the way the men on the footplate of a steam locomotive do their work that puts the majesty into a steam train. He also said that when you were bowling along at 80+ between Basingstoke and Salisbury, everything set just right so you don't have to touch the controls for dozens of miles, the engine was working well, the boiler pressure was steady just below the mark, the injector was singing and the fireman was into his rhythm, and you didn't have to exchange a word with him for an hour or so - just nods and quick hand gestures - it was approaching a state of blissful, satisfied ecstasy that you simply never came even within sight of as an EMU 'motorman', regardless of how perfectly you kept to time, how smoothly you made every stop or how smartly you made each getaway.