“Built in January 1945 by The Vulcan Foundry Ltd., Newton-le-Willows, for the war effort, the locomotive was shipped to the continent on completion to aid troop and supplies movement across Europe. At the cessation of hostilities, it was sold to the Netherlands State Railways where it became their 4300 class no. 4464. In 1953 it was re-sold to the Swedish State Railways and given the classification G11, re-built to Swedish outline and re-numbered 1931, entering service in 1954. It was not operational for long being withdrawn in October 1956. Some minor restoration work took place prior to it being taken to an isolated forest clearing in northern Sweden where it was stored undercover as part of a strategic reserve until the end of 1972. In September 1972, 1931 was purchased by the Railway arriving back in UK at Hull on the 12th January 1973 and offloaded at Ingrow the following day. Only a minimal amount of work was necessary to put the locomotive back into service, but in 1976 it was withdrawn due to its general run down condition. A heavy repair was started in 1993 to rebuild it to as built form and re-number the engine by continuing the series of numbers for repatriated engines on British Railways. The chassis of an original 8 wheel tender was purchased to replace the Swedish 6 wheeler tender and a new tender tank constructed. Restoration complete, the locomotive finally returned to Haworth on Monday 16th April 2007 and following a period of testing and running-in, it officially re-entered traffic on Monday 23rd July 2007, now numbered in the BR series as 90733.”

British Railways at war

Ian Chapman-Curry Originally posted on Updated on

Britain’s railway network has been an indispensable service for the British armed services almost from the earliest days of passenger transport. But it was in the Second World War that the network went through a transformative period of intensification and enemy destruction. 

If you travel to south Wales by train roughly ten miles north of Bristol you will plunge into darkness and enter the Severn Tunnel. Seven kilometres later, you will emerge into the light and over the border into Wales. The tunnel was built by the Great Western Railway between 1873 and 1886 and was, for many years, the UK’s longest mainline railway tunnel.

I had never travelled through the tunnel, so I decided to look it up on Wikipedia and see if there was anything interesting in its construction or history. Doing so, I came across this:

“During World War II, a Great Western Railway passenger train was pursued by a German aircraft along the main line to Wales. Reaching speeds estimated at 90 mph (140 km/h), well above the wartime restrictions in place, the train successfully escaped into the tunnel and stopped beneath the river until the driver judged that the danger had passed. The train was struck by several bullets during the chase but there were no serious injuries.”

Severn Tunnel at Caldicot By mattbuck (category) (Own work by mattbuck.) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

This story seemed to be confirmed in a report from the South Wales Argus celebrating the 125th anniversary of the tunnel. It also got me thinking about the role British Railways played during the Second World War.

The railways played a key role in both the First and Second World Wars, but this article focuses on their role in the latter conflict. Troop transportation and munition production would have ground to a halt without regular and intensive use of the railway network. The railways were also instrumental to the evacuation of children from the danger of bomb-targeted urban areas. According to the National Railway Museum:

“During a weekend in September 1939 over 1,300,000 children in over 3,000 special trains were evacuated from the cities to the countryside.”

The railways were also vital to removing evacuated British troops from Dover after the retreat over the English Channel from Dunkirk. Such a massive effort required centralised control and direction. During the 1920s, the railways had already been consolidated (or ‘grouped’) from an uneconomically viable patchwork of companies into the Big Four:

  • London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS);
  • London and North Eastern Railway (LNER);
  • Southern Railway (SR) and
  • Great Western Railway (GWR).

This made further centralisation much easier when war came.

Almost immediately following the outbreak of war, control of the railways was passed to the Railway Executive Committee. For the first time, the term ‘British Railways’ was officially sanctioned and used. The Railway Executive Committee also had control of the extensive advertising hoardings and information posters at stations and used them to hammer home messages on air raid protection, reduced and emergency services and urging people to avoid unnecessary or leisure travel.

All clear for the guns on British Railways

The railways were soon dressed for war, with station names blacked out to confuse the enemy in case of invasion, a network-wide blackout and fixing wire mesh to train windows to limit the damage from flying glass following bomb explosions.

Timetables were radically altered to prioritise war work and the public were repeatedly asked to consider “is your journey really necessary?” People were urged to ‘keep ‘em moving’ by travelling less, travelling lighter or by staggering their journeys.

By the end of the Second World War, the British Railway network was completely worn out but, unlike continental railways, was sufficiently undamaged to allow it to be patched up rather than radically replaced or overhauled. According to a calculation by the Central Statistical Office during the period 1938–1953 the railways suffered a net disinvestment of £440 million (around £11 billion in 2005 prices)

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