Maunsels and Martins

A change from birding this week as my advisor on all things avian, who is also a huge steam engine fan, suggested a visit to the Bluebell Railway. So I packed a picnic as usual but was picked up and taken to Sheffield Park, which is the southern terminus of one of the oldest preserved railways in the country. Indeed it began life in 1960, before steam had actually met its final demise on the national railway network, and only three years after one of the locomotives in use today was built at Brighton. 

 

While my birding guru pursued yet another of his passions by buying a number of pot plants, in aid of work on the Bluebell's extension to meet the national rail network again, I had a potter round the shop, buying a nice print and a couple of 1940s magazines with an article on the history of the Brighton works.

It was the first time I had been back since the new Woodpax site carriage shed had been completed, along with all the beautiful work on the canopy and buildings of the platform across the bridge, so we went to have a closer look. 

The museum had been updated and re-housed and repaid a visit to see the exhibits and watch some videos, one on the history of the Bluebell itself and another fascinating one on the mechanics of signals and points.

Outside again the attention to period detail was noticeable in the impressive new gas lamps joining the existing ones I had already admired in crossing the footbridge.

Having watched the lovely green-liveried Longhedge-built 1902 0-6-0 C class tender engine with its shiny brass dome, hauling a beautifully restored set of wooden Metropolitan railway carriages on its way to Horsted Keynes, we crossed over the bridge again for lunch.

Detail from one of the Metropolitan carriages

Cheeky sparrow asking to share my roll

It had turned out to be a very pleasant hot Summer day and we bought a cup of tea from the restaurant there and ate our lunch sitting on the platform watching the trains steaming in and out of the station on their way the end of the line at Kingscote, while above us house-martins flitted backwards and forwards from their neat nest under the eaves of the restaurant building. 

Martin at home

After lunch we visited the engine shed and workshop area which is always a highlight of a visit to Sheffield Park station.

There we found the Brighton-built A1 Class “Terriers”. My father had asked me to look out for these neat 0-6-0 engines as he wants to film or photograph one like the OO scale version I bought for him some years ago.

In particular he wanted to be able to see one in Stroudley's “Improved Engine Green” colour-scheme like the model, which has “Brighton Works” on its sides. IEG, which to my eyes is nothing like green and has more a gold or perhaps ochre look, was no longer to be found at the Bluebell unfortunately, and Stepney, whose likeness in IEG I'd bought earlier, was to be found in the shed, but now clad in black. Fenchurch, a similar locomotive, was to be found at the back of the shed, non-operational and decidedly brown .

We found the two operational P class Ashford-built 0-6-0 tank locos together outside the shed with one of them, Bluebell itself in its striking blue colour scheme, clearly in steam.

The other locomotive in use was a BR Standard tank engine built in Brighton in 1957 and younger than me. It was pulling a familiar looking Southern green carriage set complete with buffet car.

I can't say I've ever had a disappointing visit to the Bluebell and even without a train ride it was a very interesting visit. Top entertainment for the very small price of a platform ticket.

...and the Maunsel of the title? Well, R.E.L. Maunsel was one of the names, like Stroudley that formed part of the poetry that made my early Hornby and Tri-ang catalogues so exciting and were part of the beginnings of my love of railways (which is in the family blood in fact) and there is a beautiful example of one of his most successful designs here: The "Schools class" passenger express locomotive "Stowe" and the Maunsel Society can be seen to be hard at work here restoring a Maunsel U Class.