Trainspotting- The Atlantic Coast Express
So, is this the Atlantic Coast Express?
It’s hard not to find the name of this lost Express train captivating. It conjures thoughts of gazing over glorious coves and wild headlands to an unbroken vista of the Atlantic Ocean.
Ask a moderate rail enthusiast a little more about it and they’ll probably tell you that it was the Southern Railway’s most iconic Express, heading out of London Waterloo bound for the West Country.
But, press more to find out exactly which captivating coastal town it was destined for, and you’ll probably get less surety in the answer:
“Plymouth? Padstow? Bude? Ilfracombe? Exmouth?..perhaps just to Exeter...”
And so might the litany of names continue, because the truth is that it ended up at all of the above, and more. In a remarkable feat of logistics, the 13 coach train that left London was split en-route into up to 7 parts, to serve a whole range of final destinations in the West Country.
A similar feat in reverse meant 7 or so little trains would simultaneously be setting out from all these coastal towns and progressively reforming into a glamorous 13 coach express again to return to London!
And possible confusions about the ‘A.C. E.’ didn’t end there:
The timetables often didn’t show the Express’s iconic name, and apparently to track the whole route required consulting 4 separate timetable books anyway.
The Loco supposedly carried a headboard with the A.C.E. name on it... but often it didn’t.
Sometimes extra untimetabled ‘relief’ trains were added to the schedule as well, and many other identical looking Southern trains also plied the same routes.
All of which meant that for many, any Southern Railway service between Waterloo to the West Country was probably the ‘A.C.E.’!
For the two boys in my painting, I don’t think all this mattered. This Loco, the beautiful Merchant Navy Class ‘Shaw Savill’, won’t have been a rare sighting for them here, somewhere between Exeter and Salisbury. Maybe they’ve jumped school,
or are just enjoying a warm summer’s early evening in a favourite spot.
And it’s not hard to see why, with the irrepressible lure of such majestic beasts as this, thundering by...over and over again...
It’s hard not to find the name of this lost Express train captivating. It conjures thoughts of gazing over glorious coves and wild headlands to an unbroken vista of the Atlantic Ocean.
Ask a moderate rail enthusiast a little more about it and they’ll probably tell you that it was the Southern Railway’s most iconic Express, heading out of London Waterloo bound for the West Country.
But, press more to find out exactly which captivating coastal town it was destined for, and you’ll probably get less surety in the answer:
“Plymouth? Padstow? Bude? Ilfracombe? Exmouth?..perhaps just to Exeter...”
And so might the litany of names continue, because the truth is that it ended up at all of the above, and more. In a remarkable feat of logistics, the 13 coach train that left London was split en-route into up to 7 parts, to serve a whole range of final destinations in the West Country.
A similar feat in reverse meant 7 or so little trains would simultaneously be setting out from all these coastal towns and progressively reforming into a glamorous 13 coach express again to return to London!
And possible confusions about the ‘A.C. E.’ didn’t end there:
The timetables often didn’t show the Express’s iconic name, and apparently to track the whole route required consulting 4 separate timetable books anyway.
The Loco supposedly carried a headboard with the A.C.E. name on it... but often it didn’t.
Sometimes extra untimetabled ‘relief’ trains were added to the schedule as well, and many other identical looking Southern trains also plied the same routes.
All of which meant that for many, any Southern Railway service between Waterloo to the West Country was probably the ‘A.C.E.’!
For the two boys in my painting, I don’t think all this mattered. This Loco, the beautiful Merchant Navy Class ‘Shaw Savill’, won’t have been a rare sighting for them here, somewhere between Exeter and Salisbury. Maybe they’ve jumped school,
or are just enjoying a warm summer’s early evening in a favourite spot.
And it’s not hard to see why, with the irrepressible lure of such majestic beasts as this, thundering by...over and over again...