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clive BRretired posted an update
(Tiptoe steps n long-uns)! I’m cleaning my kitchen worktops n walls with Flash! A sort of spring clean, So i visit West Somerset web site for their Spring gala? But is it an old page? Or for 2025? I ask because 6990 Witherstack Hall appears! An old engine of mine i knew on Bristol Barrow rd, Late 1965 i took it to scrap! And 6984 Owsden was very similar, Both taken through the Severn tunnel in late 1965? Me n my Driver took four or five at a time, Winder mid stroke n cylinder cocks open it was a matter of releasing their handbrakes! I mentioned before any main drive rods missing were chucked in their tenders! They would still protest loudly when deep in that long Severn tunnel! The computer also found that 41 Ivatt i once spoke of when on Passenger branchline work in late 50s early 60s. I had nine 82 standard tank types (None preserved), Nine of the heavier 800 Riddle sorts, and Nine or more that i can remember of the 41 Ivatt 2Mt type (that i loved) over a couple year or so period! But it was 41323 that didn’t steam so well? If only i could of inspected the damper flaps that day while in the pit? But this big senior fireman that nearly sold me a car because i was nearly seventeen yrs old and wouldn’t return my cash deposit? And of course the same man that relieved me in that yarn i once wrote of the senior fireman i left with a quarter ton of coal dust in my tender!! Yes, Same bloke who later grabbed me in the Exmth jct shed pay queue with a ‘Hey! I want a word with You!! I was away with long steps and not tiptoe ones that day! Lol. PS, (You could buy a good car for 40 quid back in them days)! Plus you got 15/- (shillings) a firing turn on top of your cleaning money if passed out? Strange you would be driving a 100 ton Merchant Navy before allowed a Ford Prefect! And to get out my little 850cc 1965 Mini to clamber aboard 1000 Western Prince or Renown out of Bristol Bath rd was a very odd contrast? Oh my lord, Ill leave this lot a day then chop it in half!! ‘One Small step for Man, One Giant Leap for mankind’? Its a historic fault?
