WELCOME to Trains Online’s own window on the lost world of British Railways. Pictures appearing on this page date from the late 1960s through the 1970s and 1980s to the demise of British Rail.
THIS view of a Class 31 marshalling its ballast train in the former goods yard at Loughborough, Leicestershire, has changed greatly over the past 40 or so years. The former Brush factory in the background, where the locomotive was built, still carries out work on modern stock, but sadly no longer manufactures locomotives and the whole of the station area and goods yard have been redeveloped.
WHEN this Class 31 was pictured at Barnstaple, Devon, in the 1970s, the station was still quite busy, although through trains to Ilfracombe were already a memory and the writing was on the wall for services over the former LSWR route to Bideford. The locomotive, at the head of a rake of Mk 1 coaches bound for Exeter, is in obvious need of cleaning — as are the coaches!
