Life on the west coast railway in the 1960s

On the 5th January 2022 the branch welcomed Len Clark to give a presentation on “Life on the West coast railway in the 1960s”.
Len gave us a brief outline of his introduction to the WC railway as his father had worked at Tebay for many years and started as a junior porter but due to serious staff shortages was soon transferred to Lowgill Junction at a higher level, further staff shortages meant he was soon to work on the locomotive side. He fired for 2 months but was only allowed due to his age to work one of the 3 banking engines based at Tebay. In 1966 he did 2 years national service. As we all know this was a traumatic time in the steam railway world with many redundancies etc so initially he worked in a family building business as a driver. However, his real love drew him to a change of occupation working on the permanent way at Grayrigg in 1960.
Working as a track maintenance man Len outlined with samples many features of the actual railway track and its infrastructure complete with many interesting anecdotes from his time on the railways e.g., explained about the use of a cross level as some track was tilted to allow better stability for locomotives, Penrith had a cant of 6” the maximum allowed.
As a Ganger he would work with his area of track carrying 6 detonators to provide a warning if there was a problem.
Throughout his session Len would use a piece of railway infrastructure to explain its role in the railway operation in an interesting manner.
He was keen to explain the problem of leaves on the line which was no laughing matter, particularly in modern times where DMUs have little weight and therefore have serious traction problems on leaf strewn tracks.
On Sundays much rail renovation occurred where it would take 20 men to load a length of rail, a real labour-intensive operation. Obviously, the area is prone to particularly bad weather and he was often called out to rescue stranded trains, especially one incident involving a goods train stuck in a snow bound cutting just north of Shap summit. He also recalled another major incident on the Settle Carlisle railway at Stain forth where a goods train had left the track.
He covered the other disastrous accident on 15/4/2004 where a runaway 6-ton wagon rolled from scout green down the incline killing 4 men and injuring 5 men. This incident particularly affected the area as they were all local men.
To finish his excellent and informative session Len showed several rare pictures of trains in action between Lowgill and Shap summit, many working wrong line as work was taking place on the other track. Of particular interest was the fact that sometimes banking engines were sent to Oxenholme so that there was no need to stop at Tebay and get a good run at Shap bank.
So, an excellent session but a disappointing turnout obviously caused by the current pandemic problems.
Alan Sattenstall
Secretary