Jump to content

Coaches for the Evening Star


Magpye2

Recommended Posts

 

Evening Star

The loco has had two lives.

 Life 1 - Built at Swindon and entered traffic 25th March 1960 she was based initially at Cardiff Canton Depot. She moved to Bath Green Park in 1962 then moved variously to Old Oak Common. And  Oxford, and returning to Bath in August 1963. She returned to Cardiff in October that year, Withdrawn from Cardiff by BR on 26 March 1965, and stored at Severn Tunnel Junction, and at various locations in South Wales until moved to Brighton Preston Park for preservation.

Life 2 - When the NRM was opened in 1975 she left Preston Park but went first to Shildon for the Stockton & Darlington Anniversary Cavalcade. She worked main line special steam services from York until banned in 1976 because of flangeless centre driving wheels.A change of policy occurred in 1980 and she attended the Rainhill Cavalcade before transferring to Didcot for special services again. From then onwards located variously at Didcot and York worked main line specials and visited various heritage railways in steam. Withdrawn finally in 1989 when the flangeless driving wheel ban was reinstated and is now on permanent display in the Great Hall at York NRM.

What did she pull?

In life 1 - The 9F locos were built to haul heavy goods trains so any BR vacuum braked or unfitted wagons with a guards van at the rear would be OK.

Evening Star as a celebrity loco did however get picked for hauling passenger trains. When at Cardiff, Old Oak or Oxford she would haul Mark 1 carriages usually in maroon, or in Western Region chocolate & cream.  However at Bath Green Park she worked trains on the Somerset & Dorset Joint line where Southern Region Maunsell coaches in BR green were still commonly used.  She would also work inter-regional services on maroon mark 1 stock.

In life 2 - She would mostly haul BR Mark 1s in blue and grey. But with a few in Inter City ‘Raspberry Ripple’ in later years. On heritage railways she might haul almost any type or colour of rolling stock, although Mark 1 carriages would be the most common, but maroon or crimson & cream would be most likely.

On Steam Specials on BR there would always be a ‘Support Coach’ behind the tender. I believe the NRM support coach was always a maroon Mark 1 BSK.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
  • Create New...