29th March - Transport Scenes from the Last 40 Years

Allan Sibley - report by Chris Hurricks

The meeting started with a minute's silence in memory of our member and ITM stalwart, Peter Bannister, who had passed away recently. Our speaker, who had travelled from March with wife Marion, had visited us before and we were looking forward to another of his high quality shows laced with his inimitable style of humour. As the title indicated we certainly got our share of transport variety with vintage shots of air, rail, road and sea. Allan has a truly wide ranging transport interest and the knowledge to go with it - he would say that he is 'Master of None' but his coverage was very detailed and comprehensive.

We started with views at Gatwick Airport in 1969, a very different place from the the airport of today. All sorts of aircraft of the time were shown, all seemingly much smaller than today's planes. Of particular interest was the Blackburn Beverley with its peculiar shape and the three Vickers Varsities forming an aerobatic display team. Some very rare operators were featured e,g Air Samoa and Air Bahamas, whilst the first 747 to land at Heathrow was also seen. The famous RAF Harriers were seen in 1970 and the Nimrod, too, the last of which was taken out of service recently.

We then turned to road transport with some lovely views of RLH's at Upminster in 1969 and a 1932 open top Leyland at Swansea. Ex LT GS's were seen at Emsworth, built by ECW of course and which your scribe remembers passing over London Road bridge on their delivery runs. An Albion coal lorry and a Standard car converted to steam operation (!) were followed by the last day of the blue liveried Walsall trolleybuses. This town had acquired trolleybuses from Ipswich and we saw old friend ADX 191 as Walsall no 353.

The rail section started with the Ashford steam centre, long since closed, where we saw very smart 01, C and H class locos. Bulmers at Hereford is another centre long deceased where, for WR fans, we had D1047 and King 6000. 31's and 47's were seen hard at work on the GN at Harringay and Hadley Wood, followed by a first at our meetings, a 10 slide warning of the tea break ! This took the form of a slide of a giant teapot. The well known industrial system at Swanscombe featured a youthful Allan by loco no 7 and sterling efforts to bring back to the rails a derailed loco.

The second half started with a view of that fantastic semaphore signal gantry at the north end of Preston . A single LT car on the East London Line was a surprise whilst a 309 rake on the annual Bishops Stortford to Clacton excursion at Enfield Lock was interesting. A steam tour of the Harlaxton ironstone quarries contrasted with a series of shots of the remote Epping to Ongar section of LT, closed in 1970. Interesting facts emerged, e.g. that Blake Hall had just 12 passengers a week, surely a 'reverse' record for any LT station. North Weald even had a passing loop and there were semaphore signals, too, again probably the only place on LT where this existed. The final section showed various older ships and even hovercraft of the time.

Truly a masterclass in transport variety. Thanks Allan.