The Steaming Sixties: #01 'A North East Redoubt' -Stirring Episodes from the Last Decade of Steam on BR- (IR991)

Product No.: IR991
Title: The Steaming Sixties: #01 A North East Redoubt' -Stirring Episodes from the Last Decade of Steam on BR-
Author(s): Anderson, Paul
Illustrator(s): N/A
Publisher: Irwell Press
ISBN: 9781903266991
Condition: New
Binding: Laminated Pictorial Boards
Dust Jacket: None
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Year: 2008

Features: 64 Pages with Colour Photos.

Paul Anderson begins a new series of steam colour albums looking at the grimy and gritty freight workings in the North East. They were scruffy, typified a dying era and were about to close when most of the photographs in this book were taken, but the sheds at Tyne Dock, Blyth, West Hartlepool and Sunderland had a definite charm about them, of not-too genteel decay.

They housed the remaining BR steam locomotives employed on moving mineral traffic in County Durham and Northumberland, a pedigree stretching back over a century and a half. Furthermore, some of the mainly unkempt engines allocated to the four sheds in their last year had experienced very interesting careers. Locos still active in the North East during 1967 included two venerable and robust North Eastern Railway designs, the P3 0-6-0s (later J27) and T2 0-8-0s (later Q6).

The other surviving engine of North Eastern design was a J72 0-6-0T, this particular example having been built by BR. There were three other types of main line locomotives in the North East. These were the War Department 2-8-0 'Austerities', originally meant to last just two years, the K1 2-6-0s, of LNER design but built after Nationalisation and the Ivatt 2-6-0s of LMS origin, but mainly built by BR. Fortunately there is one of each of the above classes preserved.