Re: Strategic Reserve.

["chris 'fufas' grace" <chris@transdata.co.nz>]

Les Brown wrote:
> 
> "Roger L. Traviss" <rogertra@islandnet.com> wrote in aus.rail:
> >
> >Rory Lushman wrote:
> >
> >> I am currently looking into the case of the Strategic Reserve here
> >> in the UK. This is an alleged pool of locomotives stored away for
> >> future use. Many of the alleged stories involve steam locomotives
> >> being tucked away in secret.
> >
> >Oh God, not this red herring again!

> I've heard of stories like this for over 30 years - some even
> involving steam engines apparently put into long term storage here in
> Victoria, Australia, but the only actual "storage" I ever saw was in
> the scrap yard.
> 
> Thus we find the strange appearence of steam engines apparently
> "hidden" in storage whereas the reality was that they were merely
> awaiting the scrapper's torch.
> 

There are no doubt all sorts of things hidden
round the UK, given a thousand years or so of the
British passion for secrecy, but the guy who
started this thread appears to be a UFO freak,
and, not only that, his facts are wrong.

He states that there was no underground railway at
Box, and shows pictures to prove
it, saying that the Quarry tunnel entrance is too
small to accommodate full size trains.
It's a pity he didn't do some more research at
Subterranea Britannica or the RSG home site, or
even better, if he had looked at:

http://www.terran.org.uk/underground.html

he would have found photographs of a full-size
train entering the tunnel he said was too small,
and not only that more photographs of the
full-sized underground station with military
personnel loading trains of ammunition.

I have read stories in the railway press about
steam engines being taken off tracks, put in
barns, and covered with oiled sacking. How true
they are I do not know. But remember the UK had
stockpiles of all sorts of things, including a
large number of WW2 fire engines which they
brought out of storage once during a firefighter's
strike. Give the size of Kineton, Bicester, Long
Marston and Ludgershall depots, to name but four,
and one of those is officially closed but still
apparently in use, it's quite possible that all
sorts of stuff is in storage. Remember that is
wasn't that long ago that eight whole trains were
brought into the light of day having been kept
secret for years to be used as mobile control
centres. SOme of these were stored quite openly -
and nobody knew they were there.
Given that until the last days of steam most
scrapping was done in railway workshops it's quite
concievable that some locomotives were only
scrapped on paper. It's also possible that more
locomotives were built for the MOS than were
publically acknowledged. We're talking about 50
years ago here and the number of people 'in the
know' is rapidly decreasing.

I suggest reading uk.rec.subterranea. There's all
sorts of interesting stuff in that group and you'd
be surprised what's hidden and where.