Steam Days

Steam Days is a monthly magazine dedicated to all steam railway enthusiasts. Each issue covers the six regions of British Railways: Western, Southern, London, Midland, Eastern, and Scottish, with the occasional article on Irish railways and the industrial scene. These well illustrated articles in the magazine cover the history of the railways of Britain from the early days of the 1800s through to the end of steam on British Railways in August 1968.

Steam Days

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TRAINS of thought

Llanelly Area freight trip working • Steve Bartlett looks back to November 1964 and Llanelly’s fast disappearing steam-hauled freight trip working, servicing local collieries and heavy industry from one of south-west Wales’s last operational steam sheds.

Somerset & Dorset I witnessed the Slow Death of a railway • Sixty years since he talked his way into getting a cab ride on the last S&D Down service train to run in daylight, Kevin Byrne presents a personal view of the run-down of the railway as a backdrop to a teenager’s life as he progressed through his latter school days at Chilcompton, and concluding with no trains.

In Colour 239: North through West Hartlepool • A magnet for enthusiasts seeking pre-Grouping steam as late as autumn 1967, this town boasted roundhouses, a 3-road through engine shed and a near constant fl ow of heavy freight duties, not least in its role as a staging point for incoming coal from the Durham coalfi eld to Yorkshire power stations. Rich with photographic locations and infrastructure, the distance covered here is little more than a mile of main line, from Newburn Junction to the town’s current station, just inland from Swainson Dock.

Mystery locations • Well known for his etched brass model railway nameplates and since January 2022 a regular Steam Days author, Chris Gordon Watford spent the early 1950s photographing the contemporary railway scene to inspire modelling projects. By his special request, we present a handful of ‘unknowns’ – locations recorded during these travels but mostly just when passing through – in a quest to identify their whereabouts.

Subscriptions • Steam nostalgia and railway history at its best, we are dedicated to bringing you superb features from the steam railway scene, providing archive trackside photography and rare documents to make Steam Days what it is today, the leading UK steam heritage magazine.

Sanquhar Station’s Spectacular Secret Starlight and Seaside Specials • Peppered with personal highlights of time spent at the station and its environs, Douglas McNaught delivers a brief history of the Royal Burgh of Sanquhar and its industries, looks at the early railway years and recalls observations of the 1950s and early 1960s.

Tail Lamp • Readers Letters