Rosegrove, 1968
One fine October afternoon in 1966 I visited Wellingborough MPD (15B). It was four months after the last of the steam locos had been withdrawn and hauled away. The shed stood abandoned, untouched since its last days of activity, but now completely empty. Ash and clinker from locomotives lay between the roads, tools were scattered on the brick floor, PWS notices had turned yellow and brittle under the glass of the noticeboard. Several of those ancient and curiously ornate iron wheelbarrows for ash removal lay around. The light of the autumn afternoon streamed through the small windows, with their cobwebbed, sooty panes, curiously like stained glass in a cathedral. Sunrays gilded the dust and etched the shadows. It remains imprinted on my memory all these years later: a silent scene crowded with the ghosts of a century of daily toil amid the vapours, hot oil, grit, ash and coal dust of the steam age.
Having read so much about Willesden shed (1A) I felt I had to go and see it. Finally, on a blustery, overcast day in November 1965 I trod my way cautiously down the cinder path by the Grand Union Canal and was there. It was too late. The cavernous mouth of the running shed was empty, vast, windswept and black with dust. But there was a surprise. In the corner were the last four BR '2MTs', the ones that took the empty stock into and out of Euston until steam finished at the London end of the WCML. There they were, black and oily, but by no means decrepit: nos. 78029, 78032, 78033 and 78043, all withdrawn in October 1965. These serviceable little engines were a mere eleven years old. They were coupled up ready to be hauled off and scrapped at Cashmore's in South Wales. All four would be in pieces within six weeks.
But down at Nine Elms (70A) I did get a ride of a few tens of yards inside the shed on 'West Country' Pacific no. 34005 Barnstaple, thanks to a kindly driver who didn't seem to care much about the rules. It was a place I couldn't bear to visit when steam ended. The description of the final evening in July 1967 was just too poignant: the melodious whistle of the last Pacific on shed echoing in the dark off the nearby blocks of flats until there was no longer enough steam to make it sound.
