Difference between revisions of "User talk:Ianbutton1"

Revision as of 20:10, 2 October 2021

I have just registered, as I have some historical material on train workings during WW2, and am not sure how best to submit this. Is this wiki the right vehicle for mentioning this?

My father John ("Jack") Button worked for the GWRGreat Western Railway as a clerk at various SVRSevern Valley Railway stations from the 1930's until 1941, and was a very keen railway enthusiast & observer. He noted all the steam locos he saw, including information on the working (if known), the location (station/platform/running-line etc), no of carriages & so on. I have his log-book covering June 1940-September 1941. Basic information is clear, but there are various symbols to indicate whether tender/bunker-first etc, so much remains to be deciphered. Is this material likely to be of interest? The LNERLondon & North Eastern Railway J25 locos are noted quite frequently, and obviously wartime observations are relatively scarce. How best to submit this - as scans of his logbook pages? Thank you.

Hello Ian, and welcome. There's reference to the J25s and other locos on Locomotives used on the Severn Valley Branch in commercial service. There's also some information on the period at The Severn Valley Railway under GWR/BR ownership. All material is of interest, and this is an open edit Wiki so you can add material yourself, either as a new page and/or with a summary of the data on existing pages. You can upload scans of the pages too. A reminiscence on Tales from the Severn Valley might be good. If you've any questions, do ask.

If you eventually decide to archive his material, pre-preservation material is usually held by Kidderminster Railway Museum and David Postle might be a good person to speak to.

It's also prompted me to ponder whether pages for the SVRSevern Valley Railway in each of the two World Wars might be an idea?--Patrick Hearn (talk) 11:17, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Hello Ian and welcome from me too. Yes, the information would be very much of interest as Patrick says. Just to add another suggestion, I know that a while ago Graham set up a drop box (I think it was) account to hold scanned images of things like old maps so that we can get shared access without having to upload everything onto the Wiki itself. There are presumably quite a number of pages involved so if you can do scans it might be worth doing the same. We may be able to use the same account - he'll probably see this but I'll drop him a note to check. --Robin (talk) 14:24, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your replies, Patrick & Robin. I will try to scan and upload a page or two. My father was a GWRGreat Western Railway employee on SVRSevern Valley Railway from 1938, and this logbook covers the period 17/6/40 to 26/9/41. The records comprise 148 pages, with 2 columns of 22 lines per page - i.e. about 6000 sightings. It isn't purely SVRSevern Valley Railway, it includes a few trips away and weekend trips back home to Crewe. I understand (from my father's diary) that his previous notebook was lost, but I have the others covering 1928 (age 13, living in Crewe) - 1964 (end of rail commuting when our local station closed at Churchdown, near Gloucester where he was working in the BRBritish Rail or British Railways WR District Commercial Office). More later, when hopefully I will have learned how to do wiki editing. --Ianbutton1 (talk) 18:37, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Hello again - I have uploaded three files - two scans from the 1940 log-book

and an interim key to help decoding

--Ianbutton1 (talk) 18:11, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

My eye is drawn to 3650 at Small Heath on 27.8.41 - locomotive preserved at Didcot and former visitor to the SVRSevern Valley Railway--Patrick Hearn (talk) 18:45, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Ian. There's a wealth of information there, but as you say the tricky bit is decoding it all. Looking at the entry on 29 August 1941, NE257, 8.20 Sal, f, at Bridgnorth 1.30. Adrian Turley's The Railway at Kidderminster in the 1940s p. 106. confirms that 257 was one of three J25s allocated to Shrewsbury and used on goods trains to Kidderminster and Hartlebury. The post-War timetable still showed an 8.20 goods departure off Shrewsbuty's Coton Hill yard which got to Bridgnorth at 12.33 and left at 2.10pm. That appears to confirm that in column 2 Sal is Shrewsbury (Salop) goods yard (with Sy being Shrewsbury passenger station), the station and time shown is the origin and that f is freight. --Robin (talk) 20:10, 2 October 2021 (UTC)