N2s on Holloway bank

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Mickey

N2s on Holloway bank

Post by Mickey »

A nice shot of N2 no.69521 is seen climbing Holloway bank along the Down slow line with a Hertford service approaching the Caledonian road overbridge and Holloway South Down s/box in 1950.

https://steve-banks.org/images/historic ... 000_72.jpg

At the other end of the Holloway bank is a N2 no.9583 is seen working bunker first along the Up slow line between Holloway North Up box seen in the far distance and Holloway South Up box with a rake of Pullman ECS for the Down Yorkshire Pullman service heading Up towards Kings Cross in 1948.

https://steve-banks.org/images/historic ... 800_72.jpg
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manna
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Re: N2s on Holloway bank

Post by manna »

G'Day Gents

Both very nice pictures, but in the second picture, there is, in the background, a reasonable picture of Holloway 'North up box' which IIRC, was the subject of a search a few years back of a picture of said box ??

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Re: N2s on Holloway bank

Post by Hatfield Shed »

Mickey wrote: Thu Aug 30, 2018 2:21 pm A nice shot of N2 no.69521 is seen climbing Holloway bank along the Down slow line with a Hertford service approaching the Caledonian road overbridge and Holloway South Down s/box in 1950...
Lovely picture, but doesn't the headcode indicate an ECS working? (Given the lighting presumably an early morning move to Hertford to form an up morning rush service.)
Mickey

Re: N2s on Holloway bank

Post by Mickey »

Hatfield Shed wrote: Thu Aug 30, 2018 10:49 pm
Mickey wrote: Thu Aug 30, 2018 2:21 pm A nice shot of N2 no.69521 is seen climbing Holloway bank along the Down slow line with a Hertford service approaching the Caledonian road overbridge and Holloway South Down s/box in 1950...
Lovely picture, but doesn't the headcode indicate an ECS working? (Given the lighting presumably an early morning move to Hertford to form an up morning rush service.)
Yeah your right about the lamps on the top loco Hatfield shed that isn't the headlamps for a class 2 passenger train although from memory I don't think they are the lamps for a train of ECS either?.

I use to know all the headlamp codes for various classes of trains from class 1 to class 9 and class 0 light engine(s) but have basically forgotten them all except for express passenger trains or as old Harry Fitzgerald at Welwyn Garden City box use to call them 'open headlights' meaning a headlamp either side of the buffer beam.
Mickey

Re: N2s on Holloway bank

Post by Mickey »

manna wrote: Thu Aug 30, 2018 9:07 pm Both very nice pictures, but in the second picture, there is, in the background, a reasonable picture of Holloway 'North up box' which IIRC, was the subject of a search a few years back of a picture of said box ??
Yeah a pretty hard box to find a decent photograph of manna although I've seen that one taken in 1912 and features a fairly good distant photograph of the box taken from the Down side of the running lines also there is a close up photograph of the box that is featured in the Middleton Press book Kings Cross to Potters Bar with a text saying that all the 'London boxes' (except Ashburton Grove and maybe East Goods yard(?) along with Ferme Park South Up, Hornsey No.1, Hornsey No.2, Wood Green Up Box No.4, New Southgate & Bounds Green on the Enfield lines) were all 'bricked up' from ground level to the level with the operating floor during WW2 in case of bomb damage?.

An old railwayman called George Croft that one or two people on here will remember and who was a local operations manager on the London Midland Region in London during the 1980s & early 1990s and was still apparently alive about 2 years ago once told me years ago that he was at onetime a regular signalman at Holloway North Up maybe during the late 1950s or 1960s?.
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Re: N2s on Holloway bank

Post by Hatfield Shed »

Mickey wrote: Fri Aug 31, 2018 7:10 am Yeah your right about the lamps on the top loco (69521) Hatfield shed that isn't the headlamps for a class 2 passenger train although from memory I don't think they are the lamps for a train of ECS either?...
Looked it up now, and under BR 1960 that lamp arrangment on 69521 is 'class C', with three categories, the last of which is ECS, and the bell code 2-2-1.
Mickey

Re: N2s on Holloway bank

Post by Mickey »

I am presuming that either the fireman(?) has left the Hertford destination board on the front of the loco by mistake or maybe the loco and it's coaches are actually destined for Hertford (North) for stabling?.

When I did a short stint as a secondman at Kings Cross between 1974-1975 and when I was at first a loco cleaner and in the classroom with the other new intake of loco cleaners we had to amongst other basic things to learn back then were the loco/train headcode lights on the front of the dwindling few diesel loco classes that still had 'disc headcodes' on the front of the locos such as the few remaining English Electric type 4s (class 40s) that were still knocking about and the 'toffee apple' (non-headcode box in the roof) Brush type 2s (class 31s) that were all allocated to the GE and were at Stratford depot and as such weren't usually seen on the GN out of Kings Cross.
Mickey

Re: N2s on Holloway bank

Post by Mickey »

Just a thought?. Those Pullmans may have originated from the 'long road' on the Down side of the running lines at the top of the Holloway bank because during the BR days of the late 1960s & early 1970s I vaguely recall sometimes seeing a 'Pullman set' of BR Mk1 coaches from a passing train that was standing on the 'long road' with a loco facing towards Kings Cross waiting the road to cross from the 'long road' across the Down slow no.2 line and then the Down slow no.1 line and then the Down fast line and onto the Up fast line where it would travel along the Up fast line a short distance to Holloway South Up where it would either remain on the Up fast line towards Belle Isle or be 'turned in' Up the slow line towards Belle Isle.

At the time that the bottom photograph was taken in 1948 I believe that there was still a connection that continued into the Up slow line from the 'long road' and is what that train of Pullmans is running along although the connection into the Up slow line was removed at some unknown date maybe during the 1960s?.

That group of 4 semaphore signals on the wooden bracket post were Holloway South Up distant signals reading when approaching them face on from right to left-

Up fast line
Up fast to Up slow line
Up slow to Up fast line
Up slow line
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Re: N2s on Holloway bank

Post by StevieG »

Regarding that second photo, the long 'through' or 'ladder' crossover at Holloway North extended further to other Up lines until the great simplification of HNU in c1970 (when more than half of its considerable pointwork was put out of use, and leaving only around 30 or less levers working out of 85); previously it had reached to the Up Slow and Up Goods in fact, and was closely followed by the UG facing to Up Coal crossover.

I think that it would be entirely possible for the shot to date from 1948 because the three-dolled bracket signal for the Up Goods, Coal, and Carriage ('the creep-up') lines that we knew, with a single arm plus stencil route indicator for each road, had been preceded some years previously (until the 1950s?) by what is seen in this photo just below right of, and further away than, that 4-armed Distants bracket for South Up box : A much taller three-dolled signal having separate somersault arms for each route, vertically stacked for each road, as were several signals at Finsbury Park until the general resignalling.
Last edited by StevieG on Mon Jun 17, 2019 1:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Mickey

Re: N2s on Holloway bank

Post by Mickey »

Yes you are correct Stevie regarding the 'long crossover' extending from the Down side of the running lines right across into either the Up Goods line or Up Coal line (I can never remember which road was which?) because I believe it is shown as such on one of RPs track diagrams of Holloway North Up from the late 1950s.

I vaguely remember Holloway North Up from as early as the second half of 1967/68 era before the track rationalisation took place around 1968/69 prior to the box closing in August 1970. The Up Goods line & Up Coal lines running south passed Holloway North Up box with there individual Holloway South Up box Up Goods line & Up Coal line distant signals as seen in the bottom photograph with those x2 distant signals being mounted side by side on the bracket post which were altered around 1968/69 when the right-hand doll/post as a train would approach the signal face on being removed when the Up Goods or Up Coal line (the road second left in the photograph) was abolished and then removed.

The x4 Holloway South Up distant signals shown in the photograph that were mounted on the bracket post located between the Up fast line and the Up slow line were all abolished at the same time as Holloway North Up box was closed in August 1970 although the bracket post it's self remained in situ until around 1974 before being finally removed.

Finally as a point of interest from the bottom photograph those x2 Goods roads (one of them is the Up Coal line) didn't appear to have had much ballast in them compared to modern day standards?.


There is another thread on here called 'the Holloway bank' which covers some of this same material.
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Re: N2s on Holloway bank

Post by rockinjohn »

Hi, unusual in later years to see N2 or N1 tanks on Pullman ECW's, along with the heavy night sleepers like the Aberdonian which from memory could be d/headed N2/J50 or L1/J50 combinations or even L1or j50(a v.powerful tank even if they did wheeze) solo or B1 tender first out to Bounds Green Sidings.jj
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Re: N2s on Holloway bank

Post by Mickey »

rockinjohn wrote: Mon Jun 17, 2019 7:51 am Hi, unusual in later years to see N2 or N1 tanks on Pullman ECW's, along with the heavy night sleepers like the Aberdonian which from memory could be d/headed N2/J50 or L1/J50 combinations or even L1or j50(a v.powerful tank even if they did wheeze) solo or B1 tender first out to Bounds Green Sidings.jj
Yes I would tend to agree even though I wasn't around in 'steam days' with using N2s on ECS trains heading out towards Bounds Green or Hornsey carriage sidings on the front of a rake of 11 or 12 heavy main line coaches appears to be a bit of a heavy task for a small 0-6-2 tank loco which probably was working hard on a rising gradient from the bottom of the 'Regents canal dip' inside Gasworks tunnel then up through Belle Isle and continuing on a rising gradient through Copenhagen tunnel and still on a rising gradient of the 'Holloway bank' heading towards Holloway North Down before the road levelled out heading towards Finsbury Park.

From personal memory during the early/mid 1970s Brush type 2s (class 31s) on ECS workings with a rake or 11 or 12 B.R. Mk1s & Mk2s behind the loco going out to either Holloway, Ferme Park, Bounds Green or Hornsey carriage sidings sometimes use to struggle a bit from inside Gasworks tunnel after the 'Regents canal dip' with sometimes the driver using the locos 'sanders' blowing sand onto the railhead inside Gasworks tunnel so the locos wheels could get a grip on the railhead and it didn't help adhesion matters for the loco if it was a rainy day and a wet railhead between Gasworks & Copenhagen tunnels in Belle Isle either.
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Re: N2s on Holloway bank

Post by rockinjohn »

Hi Mickey,thanks to you and others I have learnt so much about the "area"track /boxes&workings. I added something about "69574"being ex works, now this is something which I forgot to mention, it turned up as a coloured picture card as a give away in a packet of bubble gum! resplendent ex works so someone somewhere was proud of its finish! ,their were other locos of various regions in the set,bit like cigarette cards pre-war inside the pkt.Well what was different day to day in those steam days non-condensing N2's from Hatfield or Hitchin,although Hatfield usually sent up an N7,they had enough laying around for the Luton branch,a Hitchin J68 for a boiler washout,69814 ex works trundling around for 2weeks before some celebration@Marylebone, J6's most Sundays on Hitchin's Ballast or Engineers trains/York B16's passing "up" before heading north later that evening, because York couldn't muster a V2(did it come via Woodford Halse or Neasden &just needed to find a way home? A York B1 @the Cross nothing special it happened sometimes along with the Ardsley B1's, but with a set of Apple green painted Driving Wheels!All the other mundane things that happened in the steam /diesel green era which we stopped looking @ because it was an everyday sight, even my daily sighting & I mean daily of Hitchins 61251 Oliver "bloody"Berry tender first up the "creep" &the crew slowing&whistling for me to come out and wave to them, god bless 'em, making a certain young boy's day special.....jj
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Re: N2 running up to town

Post by rockinjohn »

Hi all, one thing that always puzzled me was that the N2's/N1's always(98%of the time)ran "up" to town bunker first & "down" boiler leading,braking or water boiler level?Other ideas?....jj
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Re: N2s on Holloway bank

Post by Darryl Tooley »

Hi all, one thing that always puzzled me was that the N2's/N1's always(98%of the time)ran "up" to town bunker first & "down" boiler leading,braking or water boiler level?Other ideas?....jj
Also true of their oppos at Liverpool Street, and generally ascribed to the second reason you mention ie uphill headfirst is best from the point of view of keeping water over the firebox crown.

D
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