Railways around Coventry

Hi again Dutchman, Hi all, When I was first courting Pam, I never let on that I was a trainspotter. My interest was waning anyway as most steam was vanishing fast then. We had an engagement holiday in 1966. One early evening, we had parked in a layby south of Glasgow which was next to a steeply climbing line (I bet steeper than 1-50) which emerged from a tunnel. To my delight a Crab blasted out of the tunnel with a long fitted freight. It was maintaining a steady say 20-25mph with clean even blasts as it kept its load going. That was when it was obvious to Pam that she was engaged to a steam nut!

Back to Coventry, now! Once our son was into his senior school, Pam decided that she wanted to go out for work. Our friendship with many of Coventry station staff meant that she had a try at being a station announcer. She decided against it & settled for a doctors surgery where she announced next please to the patients in the waiting room.

I almost forgot the D2900, the old station pilot. It could often be seen shunting parcel vans in the bay platform area. For some odd reason it was replaced by a much older steam locomotive during station reconstruction and was never seen again.

Think this has been mentioned before but am I right this old bridge on Terry Road was the old line that shipped the car bodies into the Stoke plant?

Yes and before 1967 it was used by freight trains from Rugby and Nuneaton to bypass Coventry station. (The connection to Rugby was severed after electrification of the main line). If just one of the bridges on the line had been hit by the Luftwaffe in 1940 the effect on war production would have been devastating.

Hi. The one time industrial area around where the BTH (became AEI) works was, which was also the original site of the Humber works (currently Alma St.) received a lot of their goods via Gosford Green goods yard. I was told by a railway man that before the avoiding line was built, there used to be a small goods yard at Whitley Wharf, now a small oil depot.

I have taken this pic from the Sulzer site for you all to see the Three Spires Junction scene facing towards Bedworth & Nuneaton. The line going to the left is serving the Prologis Park terminal, which at the time of this photo was Keresley Colliery & is also the site of my fictitious Hall Brooks model. It's not very photogenic for the ladies on our site, but this photo does at least demonstrate how busy a line this was with three trains in the picture at this one point in time. The gates are at Bedlam Lane & just to the left of the gates is the small signal box that I have sheltered in a few times. The coke stove inside of the box was right opposite the lever that pulled off the down distant signal. My friend, signalman Roy, who later became Coventry station inspector singed more than one pair of trousers pulling that distant off in the winter. The distant signal always required a hefty pull from any signal box, as the lever was moving up to a half-a-ton load with such a length of cable. Hope you like. Please look at this link to see all of the other pics. I know a lot of modellers who would love a straight piece of track on their railway like that. The locos in the picture are a class 25 facing the camera whilst a class 47 is heading towards Nuneaton. The way the signals are set & the fact that the gates are closed suggests that the 47 may have been involved with a bit of shunting, using the main running lines to do so. It was not uncommon for a loco on another freight train duty (even oil) to assist with top & tail shunting duty on-route. Now I wonder who or where else that happens?? What a pip.

Thanks Philip I've been familiar with the site for some years and have posted links to it elsewhere

Do you recall the station under the Brico bridge Philip, I used to be taken there every week in a big pram, me one end, a lad I played with the other end, by a teenage girl, she use to sit on the platform so we could watch the trains.

Hi all. Thank you for that Dutchman, that is indeed a compliment. The town end of the railway is the same. I can get instant access anywhere by just removing one building & the others can slide along. Access is a big consideration. I learned that the hard way on earlier models. Foleshill station was a regular for me Morgana. Most Tuesday mornings, my mum would drop me off at the station to go to school. She had a shop inside the Morris Factory in Durbar Ave for a number of years. I was organist at the church next to the station in Durbar Ave.

How wonderful for you Philip like a dream to a young schoolboy, I bet nowadays the youth of today wonder why the Railway Hotel is called such with no station there any more, I know I've been asked by my grandchidlren. I also know Durbar Ave, one of my friends moved there, her little boy some years ago was in the Coventry papers for winning a washing machine, he had a lot of illness at the time too, they found through drinking too much Coca Cola rotted his spleen.

Foleshill Station looking from the Nuneaton end towards Coventry:

Hi & thank you for the picture. So many landmarks there. Courtaulds tall chimney, the 'Railway Hotel'. In the distance is the footbridge that still connects Lockhurst Lane with Radford. The junction bracket signal is quite elaborate in having a distant for the Kingfield Rd, sidings. I can't really work that one out, Dutchman. Why a distant for that? I will have to look at the maps again. ps. I might add a distant arm to the centre signal on our model bracket signal post as that is the through line which passes the next station, Burrow Hill. Foleshill station was full of schoolboys at 8am weekdays Morgana. Bablake & King Henry. Saturdays too for Bablake as Bablake pupils went to school on Saturday mornings as they had Thursday afternoon off instead. That is Bablakes link to its commercial & trading ancestry.

Hi all Just chat. Yesterday, Coventry railway station lost its Euston service for most of the day because of a light engine derailment at Bletchley. Just to explain the term light engine for anyone confused, a light engine is an engine travelling on its own without a train, it has nothing to do with weight. Anyway, at Coventry, confused & frustrated passengers struggled to find alternative routes to the capital. Throughout railway history, derailments have been a common event in yards or anywhere where track maintainence is left unattended. Many situations can bring about a derailment, the two most common are what is called splitting the track at pointwork or bufferlocking. Splitting the track is what has caused several of the big recent disasters including Grayrigg. A heavy railway vehicle passing over the movable blade of a point can sometimes cause the blade to move whilst it is halfway across as happened at Grayrigg at high speed. I watched a fitter & his team jacking an 8F back onto the track where it had split pointwork whilst shunting, roughly where the Central Six shopping area is now, about 1958. To safeguard this happening at high speed, locking bars are installed into the pointwork. They are expensive to maintain which is why old railway practise avoided facing points on mainlines as far as was possible. Buffer locking occurs when the buffer of one vehicle overrides the buffer next to it. I saw a Hall class loco where its front bogie had come off along with a parcels van, as it worked a train into Par station from Newquay. It was working tender first and the curved trackwork was not graduated well enough. On our model here at home, we last had a derailment over a year ago, until the new class 47 loco arrived which kept derailing. The problem with that was the bogie swing clearance which Bachmann had to sort out. I hope that you liked that Saturday morning interlude. Lets hope that the company 'Railtrack' pay a bit more attention to the maintenance of their trackwork so we can all have peace of mind when we travel from Coventry station, or anywhere else.

Great photo of Foleshill Station Dutchman. It was interesting to see Bretts Stamping works in the background, by the footbridge that joined Foleshill with Radford.