pomoct01

My earliest memories of railways are from Clay Cross,the first station south of Chesterfield on the Midland main line.Just after the war it was quite normal for young children to roam freely and I can just remember sitting on the platform at Clay Cross and seeing a red LMS Compound.This was about 1947,when I was six years old.
    At that time the station was a hive of activity,paticularly during the working week,with express and local passenger trains,loaded coal trains and empty iron ore hoppers going south and the reverse in the down direction.Around early evening this activity gave way to a procession of fitted freight trains,both on the Erewash fast lines and the Derby line.During the day the heaviest traffic was on the goods lines and it was not unusual to see from the bridge as many as four or five mineral or empties trains at once.One would be disappearing around the curve to the Erewash valley,one would be stood at the South box,with another stood at Clay Cross North box,with two more in sight on the down line.It was not out of the ordinary even to see permissive block working where a train was drawn up to within a few yards of the train in front.Indeed what strikes me as unusual about Beyer-Garrat,No 47995 seen above about 1955,is that it is in full cry with a clear road.
     The 2-6-6-2T Beyer-Garratt's were introduced by Henry Fowler,with the first three,Nos 4997-4999 entering service in 1927.While these engines were designed by Beyer-Peacock,the details were to Derby specifications.Thus they were fitted with the same cylinder and motion arrangement as the 1914 batch of SDJR 2-8-0s and worse still,they had axlebox bearing sizes to traditional Derby standards,adequate for 4F O-6-0s but nothing larger.These engines had fixed coal bunkers with a capacity of 7 tons and water tanks at each end with a total capacity of 4700 gallons.
     They ran on the Midland main line for three years,officially undergoing a series of trials and despite some defects in the design,they proved capable of hauling the coal trains which had required double-heading with 0-6-0s,at the same average speed of 17mph.However one fireman had to do all the work and the inadequacy of the bearings brought them into works for repair far too often.In spite of this a further 30 entered service in 1930.These were numbered 4967-4996 and one,No 4986,was fitted with a Beyer-Peacock patent self-trimming rotating coal bunker of 9 tons capacity.Following trials the whole 1930s batch were fitted with 10 ton rotating bunkers and the original 9 ton example was fitted to no 4997.The engines were renumbered 7967-7999 in 1938,with 40000 added under the 1948 BR scheme.No 47995,allocated to 18c,Hasland when photographed,was withdrawn in 1956 and the class became extinct in 1958.
     Had Beyer-Peacock been made fully responsible for the design,these engines may well have proved to be modern,powerful machines,as seen in other parts of the world,but in the event they trundled up and down the Midland without hitting the headlines,although they seemed awesome brutes to young train spotters of the day.

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