Photo Gallery - Railways 4

The pictures on this page were all taken at Tyseley. Tyseley is the site of a rail depot in the southern suburbs of Birmingham. It is on the former Great Western Railway line between Birmingham and Oxford, near the junction with the line to Stratford-upon-Avon via Henley-in-Arden. The "live" railway facilities there now only occupy part of the site, and the rest has been given over to the Birmingham Railway Museum.

An Open Day was held at the depot on 4 Oct 1987, and many preserved diesel and electric locomotives were brought there for the event. It was one of the best opportunities that year to see so many different classes of locomotive together.

Thanks to Steve Blighton for providing additional information about the above.

The Class 27 locomotives were built only a few miles from Tyseley depot, at the Smethwick factory of the Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company. However, they spent the vast majority of their working lives in Scotland. Locomotive 27 059 would therefore have been an extremely unusual sight in Birmingham under normal circumstances. Two of the steam locomotives undergoing restoration at the museum can be seen above and behind 27 059.

In contrast to the above, the class 40 locomotives were sometimes to be seen in Birmingham. This is D335. (When these locomotives were first delivered, steam locomotives were still in service, so diesel and electric locomotives were numbered with D and E prefixes to avoid any confusion with overlapping number ranges. A few years after steam locomotives had been withdrawn, diesel and electric locomotives were renumbered - except for those which were themselves scheduled for withdrawal. Under this scheme, this locomotive became 40 135; in preservation, her original identity was preferred.)

This is D4 Great Gable of Class 44 (renumbered 44 004 for a period as described above). The locomotives of this class were all named after British hills and mountains, and in consequence the class acquired the nickname "Peaks". This nickname was also applied to those locomotives which were essentially more powerful variants of class 44, classes 45 and 46, although none of those were named after mountains. Whilst the class 44's were based at Toton depot, between Derby and Nottingham, they were not often seen in the Birmingham area. These locomotives were principally employed on freight in later years, due to their lack of suitable train heating equipment.

This is an electric locomotive of class 77, although here it is in Dutch Railways livery. This is the six-axled version of the design - class 76 has an externally similar design, but only four axles. These locomotives were built to a London and North Eastern Railway design for the line which ran between Manchester (London Road) and Sheffield (Victoria) via the Woodhead Tunnel. The line was electrified at 1,500 V DC overhead, a system not in general use elsewhere in Britain. The 76's were used on freight (almost exclusively coal) and the 77's on passenger workings. When the passenger trains were withdrawn from the route, there was still much useful life in the class 77's, and they were sold to the Netherlands. This extended their life, because the Woodhead route was completely closed long before NS had finished with these locomotives. No. 1502 was brought back to Britain after having been withdrawn (again) in Holland.

Click here to return to the foyer of the Gallery

Click here to go to Railways - 1 (a cross reference page)

Click here to go back to Railways - 3 (steam trains)

Click here to go forward to Railways - 5 (French trains)

This page is a part of Chris Tolley's web-site.                                             Latest update: Sunday, June 25, 2000 22:25
Links on my pages can point to other web-sites. If you find that the administrators of those web-sites have made changes which mean you can't access them, please let me know, so I can update or remove the links. As far as I know, none of my links point to sites likely to contain offensive material - but if you discover otherwise, please let me know, as I would like to remove such links from my pages.
return to my home page.	Frequently asked Questions	send me an e-mail
©1996 to 2000: Christopher J. Tolley