16 December 2020 · NCB Steam 1970 – 1981

Presenter: John Barrowdale

Industrial steam had been noticeably absent from the Chichester Branch meeting agenda for a long time but John Barrowdale finally filled the gap with this excellent and well informed presentation peppered with anecdotes about the challenges offered by ‘gricing’ in old cars which on occasion served as sleeping accommodation as well.

An audience of almost 60 people, including two from Germany, joined the ‘virtual’ meeting – a number that greatly exceeded what we might expect to normally get on a midwinter’s night.

The presentation gave us a glimpse into an industrial past when ‘Old King Coal’ still ruled in many parts of Britain from Kent and Somerset to Ayrshire and Fife and many places in between. Naturally, the locomotives from a variety of builders including Robert Stephenson & Hawthorn and Andrew Barclay were ‘stars of the show’ with the 0-6-0 Saddle Tank wheel arrangement predominating but alongside this John showed a landscape of colliery winding towers, slag heaps and flat-sided mineral wagons now all consigned to the history books as well.

John’s diligent research revealed just how many heritage lines operating today had acquired locomotives from the NCB – a legacy that surely bears comparison with that from Barry Scrapyard. Some collieries kept their engines reasonably clean but many bore the standard NCB livery of black grime. Many of the locos were equipped with Giesl oblong ejectors to improve fuel consumption – not on the face of it a prime consideration in a colliery! – and one even boasted a mechanical stoker.

All good things come to an end and by 1981 only Bold Colliery in Lancashire and Bedlay Colliery in Scotland saw steam in regular use, some 13 years after the steam era had finished on the ‘big railway