A great black and white shot of Merchant Navy 4-6-2 35005 “Canadian Pacific” with that fantastic signal gantry at the platform end, and the road is clear for it to leave Bournemouth Central with an up express for Waterloo.
The Weymouth portion will have been attached at the rear. We were drawn here right up to the last days of steam on the Southern Region to see it all end. 35023 “Holland Africa Line” was the very last Pacific to work up to London out of Weymouth on a boat train that final day, I took a picture of it on Weymouth depot before it left that day, also attached. It was then much later it became our stomping ground at work with Virgin Trains working on class 47’s, HST’s and Voyagers but it hasn’t changed much even now.
The middle two roads have now been taken up this end of the station, the electric third rail put down and of course colour lights signals have been installed but the station is still much the same.
There’s a really good painting of Battle of Britain 34072 257 Squadron standing in this very spot. It’s on the wall of the bar of the public house at the road island by Toddington station on the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway.
Regards
Ledg.
