Why Lickey Incline? The Lickey Hills is a well known local beauty spot in the Midlands and the Lickey Incline just south of Birmingham, on the Gloucester to Birmingham line was once the scene of powerful steam engines pushing passenger and freight trains up one of the steepest railway lines in the UK . It is reputedly the steepest sustained railway incline in Britain with a climb is just over two miles, at an average gradient of 1 in 38, between Bromsgrove and Blackwell, near Barnt Green.
Who can forget the sight and sound of up to four pannier tank engines blasting a Birmingham bound train headed by a Jubilee or Stanier Class 5 up to Blackwell? The web master grew up in the 1950s and remembers hanging out of the railway coach window on a school railway club "shed bashing" trip to Birmingham and listening to those panniers whistling to each other and the train engine as they prepared to push yet another train up towards Birmingham. One of Peter Handford's original long playing records of train sounds was incidentally of Lickey Incline trains.
Particular areas of interest are the individuals involved in creating and managing the railway companies, locomotive design and the economics and politics of railway development.
There is a web site that also celebrates railway age at www.lickeyincline.co.uk
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
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