SUNSET ON A LOST WEST LANCASHIRE LINE
Published at 14:00 on Thursday 12th August 2021
Tags: Photographs, Archive, Alan Castle, Preston, Penwortham, Middleforth, Whitehouse North Junction, Whitehouse South Junction, Whitehouse West Junction, Southport, 1960s, End of Steam
You can almost hear the bees buzzing and the birds singing in the grass-lined cutting at Penwortham (Cop Lane) on this balmy summer morning as Lostock Hall's unkempt Fairburn 2-6-4T No. 42286 clears its cylinders, disturbing the solitude, and slowly accelerates away up the gradient the 10:12 Preston to Southport service, laden with day-trippers to the seaside on 9th August 1964. Alan Castle/AF Collection
In the first of a new occasional series of articles in Railway Herald, featuring the work of the late photographer and Master Neverers Association member, Alan Castle, Bill Hughes introduces us to the man himself and takes a look at his long lost local line.
An accomplished photographer and dedicated rail enthusiast, Alan Castle lived near Preston in his early life. The now demolished primary school that he attended was around 150 yards from the former West Lancashire Railway line that linked Preston and Southport, but sealed his interest in steam locomotives and the railways in general for the rest of his life.
As the number of steam locomotives began to dwindle in the mid-1960s, Alan met fellow photographer Paul Riley at the lineside and became a key member of the Master Neverers Association (MNA), a small but elite group of enthusiasts that travelled the country by rail, sleeping in permanent way huts and visiting depots by night to clean locomotives in preparation for photographing them on their duties the following day. The group’s activities became prolific in steam’s final years, which was a bonus for Alan as he lived at the epicentre of operations as the group were concentrated in the North West.
Alan sadly passed away in 2015, but his superb photographic collection of more than 40,000 images survives as wonderful insight to bygone world, and it is a pleasure to present this initial selection of images, looking at the first part of the Preston to Southport line, in Issue 736. The second half of this route, together with a look at more of the collection will follow over the coming months.
