Loose_Grip/Pete's photos with the keyword: Preston

Glimpsed through the victorian ironwork of Preston's 1880 subway stairs on platform 1-2 is LMS Stanier Black 5 4-6-0 45305 with the 5305LA support coach. We were stabled overnight on what was one of the parcels platforms, later R.e.s. although originally they had been added to the west of the main trainshed in 1903 to handle the increase in passenger traffic. HFF & have a great weekend.

A reworked & re-cropped version of an earlier post. Ivatt 4MT 2-6-0 43106 darkens the skies over Lancashire while filling its tender from the archaic looking water column. Her blower is hard on to lift the smoke & get up steam ready to depart the shed for the Severn Valley Railway at Bridgnorth and a new life in preservation. Stanier 8F Class No 48476 had its day of fame on 4th August double-heading 1L50, the RCTS 'End of Steam' tour with Standard 5 73069.

Stanier Black 5 4-6-0 44971 taking water at the platform end of Preston station early on a Sunday morning near the end of BR steam. Myself & a friend had arrived at Preston station at approx. 05.00 in the morning after trying & failing to sleep on the footplate of a Black 5 at Lostock Hall shed, on a park bench in Leyland & at the cop shop in Leyland. We didn't really sleep in the waiting room at Preston either because this engine was pottering about. Later that morning we took the train to Carnforth to check out the shed before returning to Sheffield in the evening. An everyday scene about to disappear for ever.

Preston station & the signals are pulled off for Black 5 4-6-0 45212 heading north with a very short freight train. A gaggle of people on the platform are, myself included, taking in a sight very soon to disappear forever on British Railways. 45212 went on to pull BR's penultimate passenger train three days later from Preston to Liverpool & following the end of steam on British Railways was preserved on the Keighley & Worth Railway later working on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. In February 2016 it was in the last stages of a full overhaul at Riley's in Bury.