Foreign Territory - LMS

For one fully immersed in BR(S) I felt like a foreigner on a visit to The Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway last week, a 3.5 mile stretch of line in the Lake District.

The ornate station bathed in LMS red paintwork

1245 (Barclay) was the engine in service, an ex colliery locomotive. Here it exits the short tunnel at the end of the station platform to run around its train. This scene shows how a tunnel can be the ideal exit from a station to a fiddle yard on a model railway and be completely authentic to prototype.

Surprise finds in the Engine Shed. 

BR Fairburns, 4MT Nos. 42073 & 42085 that started life on British Rail Southern in Kent and a Lowmac. The Lowmac was of interest because I had scratch built a rake of N gauge Lowmac models and this was the first time I saw a real one.

There was a small selection of Bachmann rolling stock in the railway shop and some attractive locomotive models carved from coal. No other shops were found to satisfy the railway modeller around the lakes. I did get a surprise in our local Co Op grocery store where they had some back issues of Steam World from 2007 price cut to 50p each. I came away with the July 07 issue that featured several articles on BR(S) in the final year of steam engine services (1967).