REPORT ON MEETING OF SHAP LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY HELD ON MONDAY 27th FEBRUARY 2006.

Tales of the days of Steam at Tebay.

Shap Local History Society met in the Green Room of Shap Memorial Hall, and Vice Chairman Jean Scott-Smith welcomed over thirty members and friends before introducing the speaker for the evening, Len Clark from Tebay. She said that Mr Clark had a Shap connection, his grandfather having been one of the village policemen. The topic for the talk – ‘Steam at Tebay in the 1950’s’ would explore another aspect of transport, the theme of the Society’s forthcoming Summer Exhibition.

Mr Clark who spent all his working life on the railway, is the author of the book ‘On and off the Rails’, he said he had spent many hours on Shap Station collecting train numbers during his visits to his grandfather. His father, also called Len was a signalman at Scout Green and Tebay. Between the years 1953 and 1958 Mr Clark worked at Tebay Station, starting as an engine cleaner and gradually working up to be a fireman. Tebay at that time was very busy village and station, it lay on the London to Glasgow main line, and had two branch lines, one – the ‘North East’, going up over Stainmore to Darlington and the other via Ingleton to Settle where it joined the Settle to Carlisle line. He explained some of the terms; engines were always referred to as ‘she’, it is ‘up’ to London and ‘down’ to Carlisle, and the railway was always referred to as ‘the road’. There were three signal boxes at Tebay and the station boasted a large refreshment room accessible from the ‘up’ and the North East platforms, the platforms and connecting bridge were originally glassed in and quite cosy, eventually due to storm damage, these canopies were removed and the platforms became rather draughty.

Mr Clark recalled many of the people who worked at the station and some of the routines. The dirty job of cleaning engines, replacing brake blocks and fire bars, even bricklaying when the brick arch in the firebox caved in and needed replacing. The vast amounts of Yorkshire coal delivered to Tebay was amazing, thousands of tons in the summer months when prices were cheaper, this arrived in train loads and all had to be shovelled out by hand onto heaps in the yard.

The famous bank engines at Tebay were described, it took six to seven hours to raise steam on an engine and there would be three steamed up for each shift, these were then summoned by whistle signals to push heavy goods trains and any with more than 45 wagons up the steep incline to Shap Summit. Once there, the bank engine would cross over the tracks and run ‘light’ back to Tebay. Mr Clark described the various lamp positions to indicate the type of train, for instance two lamps on the front above the buffers indicated an express.

The hard winter of 1962-3 was recalled when he along with 30 men spent weeks continually breaking the ice on Dillicar water troughs, frost fires were kept burning in the sheds to prevent the boiler in the engines freezing and braziers were burned at the foot of the water columns.

Many famous engines were recalled, the Princess class named after royal princesses, such as Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, the Royal Scot class, all named after regiments, and the Duchess class named after cities, the last steam engine to be built at Swindon was the Evening Star in 1960.

Following his time at Tebay station, Mr Clark went on to work on the track for 42 years, and he ended by describing the cutbacks he has witnessed, how miles of track were closed, and stations including Shap and Tebay closed in 1968, the advent of the diesel engines meant the end of steam, and 20,000 locomotives went for scrap. Tebay locomotive depot closed in 1968, it lay derelict for three years before being demolished. All the signal boxes closed in 1973, and the whole line from Carlisle to Carnforth is worked by one box at Carlisle. The Scout Green signal box has been rebuilt on a private line in Kent.

Jean Jackson thanked Mr Clark and recalled going to watch the mail click at Penrith as a child. There was an opportunity for questions over refreshments.