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Visitors to the Southern
Ex-GWR Hall

photograph: Mike Morant collection

Hall N°5956 Horsley Hall in platform 6 at East Croydon on 14th August 1954, having left Reading at the head of the 7:35 a.m. Birkenhead to Margate. Diverted to travel via Kensington and Clapham Junction, the locomotive reached Redhill where it was removed and retired to the shed for servicing. The Railway Observer for September 1954 reported the event as follows: 'As the heat of the emergency faded, doubts evidently began to arise as to the propriety of allowing this out-of-gauge machine to use Central Section metals. Horsley Hall was then impounded in Redhill loco yard while enquires were made of the Civil Engineer as to means of returning it to its homeland, and on 19th August it was still in detention with apparently no immediate prospect of release, although a story in the News Chronicle the following day intimated that N°5956 could return home if it did not exceed 15mph'. text from Peter Kellett

photograph by Michael Blackbourn.

Ex-GWR N°5922 Caxton Hall seen at Bournemouth MPD circa 1961/2. We do not presently know what this locomotive was doing at Bournemouth other than that she obviously arrived with an inter-regional working, of which there were three a day in the early 1960s, one from York via Banbury, one from Oxford and one from Bristol to Weymouth, with the loco going on to Bournemouth for servicing. However, as 5922 was a Swindon loco during 1961/2 it would seem likely that she arrived with one of the first two mentioned.

This page was last updated 17 July 2010