It’s full steam ahead for the Daily Post’s Yuletide Specials, as Peter Elson reports
AS ONE of Merseyside’s leading broadcasters, Linda McDermott loves the movies and enjoys nostalgic travel.
So what could be better than for her to host a Christmas radio show onboard the Daily Post’s York Yuletide Express next month?
BBC Radio Merseyside will record the December 9 excursion from Liverpool and St Helens for broadcast on Christmas Day.
The programme will be a journey in words and music with special guests, produced by Linda’s former Morning Merseyside co-presenter, Andy Ball.
“I love York and I’m besotted by sights like the Minster, The Shambles and the city’s Christmas shopping,” says Linda.
“Also, we have the added bonus of getting there in really nostalgic style aboard a magnificent steam train.
“I have dreams of the Orient Express, of being trapped in a snowdrift with Albert Finney, Ingrid Bergman and Lauren Bacall.
“Obviously chugging over the Pennines, eating a sandwich with Andy Ball won’t be quite the same, but it will be a triumph of British character over Continental glamour.
“I love the connection between all the incredible old movies and steam trains, such as The Lady Vanishes and Strangers on a Train.
“When I visit the Lake District, I always try to call in at the beautifully restored Carnforth station, the location for the film Brief Encounter.
“They run the film there continuously and solid northern women – of the kind played by Les Dawson – sit mouthing along to the dialogue!”
The York Yuletide Express will be hauled by a Daily Post excursion stalwart, Princess Royal class Pacific No 6201 Princess Elizabeth, built at Crewe, in 1933, for the London Midland & Scottish Railway.
This former resident of Edge Hill shed remains one of Britain’s most powerful locomotives and holds the London – Glasgow and return steam speed record.
This was achieved in 1936 as a test run for the proposed streamlined Coronation Scot express, which in service never surpassed Lizzie’s record run.
That Lizzie can still haul heavy high-speed trains, after 76 years’ service, is an incredible tribute to this locomotive’s designer, Sir William Stanier, the builders, and current owners 6201 Princess Elizabeth Locomotive Society.
Acclaimed detective writer Stephen Done, whose latest novel, The Torn Curtain, will soon be published, claims there is an “illogical connection” between Christmas and steam trains.
“Somehow the image of a steam train going to York and Dickens and Christmas carols all works together and sounds so cosy and magical,” says Stephen, who lives in New Brighton.
“York at Christmas is absolutely beautiful, it literally says Christmas. There’s no better destination with ancient pubs serving good food and strong Yorkshire ale.
“It also has one of the most handsome railway stations, unsurprising as it was designed by Joseph Hansome.
“The National Railway Museum, which is unquestionably one of the world’s greatest railway museums, is next door to the station.
“You get more steam in winter, it hangs in the damp, moisture-laden air. The engines seem to ooze more steam from unexpected places.
“There’s that lovely contrast between the glowing heat from the engine and the bitter coldness of the air around you.
“The reality for the engine’s footplate crew hurtling along is the opposite. Looking out for signals, they’re pelted by icy rain and inside roasted by the firebox.
“My previous book in the Inspector Vignoles series, called The Murder of Crows, is set in one of Britain’s coldest winters as this sort of atmosphere is important.
“Our country is notorious for its poor weather, but the steam engine brings out its best. Shopping in drizzle is miserable, but going on a steam train in the wet is quite fun.”
Such romantic notions of travel were not apparent in the Meccano magazine back in 1960.
Hot off the Binns Road factory press in Liverpool, the news was unflinching: the steam engine is dead.
“I recall it quite clearly. Back in 1960, there was an article about Evening Star, the last steam locomotive built in Britain,” says Stephen Guy, West Derby Society chairman.
“It was the end of the line for this great British invention. If I’d been told back then that, nearly 50 years later, I’d be travelling by steam train from Lime Street, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
Stephen, a keen local historian, will be interviewed by Linda McDermott on the York Yuletide Express. His grandfather, Joseph Potter, was National Union of Railwaymen secretary at Edge Hill shed.
“It was a big steam shed with a massive union branch in which my grandfather, a foreman bricklayer, was involved before and after the war,” says Stephen.
“In those days, railway workers and their families had free tickets, coal and other benefits.
“As a teenager, I travelled to London with a school friend Carol Hurley to get an award from Betsy Blair, Gene Kelly’s wife, at the National Film Theatre, for appearing in and designing a film called The Great Jam Butty Rush.
“I always associate that trip with steam trains. We rode on ‘the theatre train’, which left Lime Street late afternoon and returned from Euston at 11.30pm.”
As a junior reporter on the Bootle Times, Stephen put parcels of story copy on the trains at Marsh Lane station to go up to sub-editors in Southport.
“The smell of the steam trains was always very distinctive,” says Stephen.
“It lingered in the seats, mixed with the smell of humans, as people had different washing regimes back then. Coach compartments had oblong photos of beauty spots.
“I remember West Derby station on the Cheshire Lines route from Warrington to Southport, via Knotty Ash. The stations and flower beds were beautifully kept, each manned by a handful of staff before Dr Beeching axed them.
“You used to hear and see trains far more than now, at night chuffing in the distance, or in daytime with plumes of steam.
“Every child once knew the great thrill of being on a bridge, enveloped by steam and smoke from a passing train beneath.
“When Dr Beeching cut those 65,000 railway jobs, he didn’t realise the tourist potential as shown by this trip and the media interest in it.
“Volunteers transformed and saved private lines like the Talyllyn, Ffestiniog, Llangollen and East Lancs railways.
“They’ll also be out in force on this trip, looking after the locomotive and acting as stewards in the coaches.
David Charters, Daily Post columnist and a featured guest on BBC Radio Merseyside’s Linda McDermott’s Late Night Line-up will be on board, too.
“Steam trains are part of the collective memory stretching back over sepia images of the England we all remember but could never quite touch,” says David, from Birkenhead.
“This is the image symbolised in black and white films, poems and farewell scenes in which the railway station became the setting for kisses between sweethearts, uncertain if they would ever see each other again.
“Beneath the belching clouds of steamy smoke were made some of our country’s most poignant moments.
“As is so often the case, with the modern efficiency of diesel and electric engines we have lost something of our souls.
“So, for me, steam trains will always have a special place and in my dreams they still thunder through our green country.
“The crossing we’ll make from Merseyside to Yorkshire over those snow-dusted moors, still haunted by the Bronte sisters and their characters, is one of the most impressive in Britain.
“These trains, the shuddering ghosts of the memory, forever haunt our picture of England. The special mood of Christmas with its deeply emotional picture of the bleak midwinter is a fine time to travel – to eat well, to drink and to think of that universal Nativity.
“Of course, the Christmas season is a time for friends and family, and traditionally they would have been reunited for the festivities by our network of railways.
“I particularly liked the old- fashioned compartments where there was so much more atmosphere than in modern carriages.
“I wondered what secrets were held by the chap sitting opposite me, reading the Daily Sketch – another old friend from a never to be forgotten time.”
peter.elson
