That Was The Year That Was – 1971

Another fascinating afternoon with Geoff Plumb, “That was the Year That was 1971”, but much to my surprise Geoff spent quite some-time during this year in East & West Germany, their railways featured strongly in this presentation. We started here in England, looking at several of the industrial locos that were still around, albeit in very differing states of repair, bearing in mind this was almost the end of coal in the UK. At this point we went to Germany and saw several of their very large steam locos for work on freight, primarily coal. These included photographs of Classes 011, 012, 023 & 042, we saw several other shots of trains working on or on the approaches to the double deck road / rail bridge at Alf-Bullay where it crosses the Moselle River, this was followed by visits to several other stations and depots within West Germany. The second part of the presentation started with some of the RCTS Railtours that took place around that time, followed with the little trains in North Wales and Snowdonia. A slight change of subject next, with a visit to the Seaton Tramway and the Humber Ferry, with the boats built for the LNER, the Wingfield Castle (1934) and the Lincoln Castle (1940). We then travelled to East Germany, where we again saw some huge locomotives only this time majority of their steam engines were oil fired, Geoff focused on the many variations of the Class 99 tank locos in the Berlin / Dresden areas. Before concluding with King George V in Sonning Cutting working from Kensington Olympia to Swindon in 1981.

Dave Elsdon
Branch Secretary