Steam Days

Steam Days is a monthly magazine dedicated to all steam railway enthusiasts. Each issue covers the six regions of British Railways: Western, Southern, London, Midland, Eastern, and Scottish, with the occasional article on Irish railways and the industrial scene. These well illustrated articles in the magazine cover the history of the railways of Britain from the early days of the 1800s through to the end of steam on British Railways in August 1968.

Steam Days

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TRAINS of thought

A favourite railway – County Donegal • Probably the favourite Irish narrow gauge system in the eyes of most British railway enthusiasts in the 1950s was that of the County Donegal Railways Joint Committee – Colin Boocock describes his visits to this surprising railway.All photographs by the author, except where credited otherwise.

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The Great Western Railway’s Hall names The near, the far, and the who knows where? • Jim Lindsay reveals how the inspiration for the names of the Collett 4900 and Hawksworth 6959 class 4-6-0s, 259 and 71 locomotives embraced far more than stately homes in GWR territory – and included many oddities.

The last five years of the LNER Pacifics: 1962 to 1966 • Leonard Rogers tracks the latter-day activities of the 4‑6‑2s of LNER lineage, the Gresley A3s and A4s, the Thompson and Peppercorn A2 variations, and the A1s that naturally followed in 1948/49.

Only known photographs of obscure engine sheds • Delving into the vaults, Roger Griffiths takes us to some little-known and often short-lived locomotive servicing facilities.

Varsity variations • Completed in July 1862, a direct railway between the university cities of Oxford and Cambridge served until the turn of 1968, its reinstatement today at the heart of the EastWest Rail scheme.With the Bicester-Bletchley section now on the brink of passenger reopening, Chris Gordon Watford looks back to the 1950s at what were then the central and western sections of the ex-L&NWR Oxford-Bletchley-Bedford-Cambridge route.

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