Introducing “The Paul Foxwell Express Freight Fund”
Express ‘fitted’ (vacuum-braked) van trains were a frequent sight on all regions of British Railways during the steam and early diesel-era. Like passenger stock, rakes of ‘fitted’ wagons had a continuous train brake. This allowed much more control of the train, and therefore a substantially higher speed limit than that permitted for ‘unfitted’ goods trains – which relied on the brakes on the engine and brake van, not to mention the skill of the footplate crew and guard, to control the train. Higher permitted speeds meant that as well as being hauled by freight and mixed-traffic locomotives, express van trains were also handled by glamorous passenger engines such as Gresley and Stanier ‘Pacifics’, the ‘Castle’ 4-6-0s of the Western Region, and Oliver Bulleid’s versatile ‘Merchant Navy’ and ‘West Country’/Battle of Britain’ classes.
Most of the Nene Valley Railway’s extensive collection of BR goods vans came to the railway from the British Sugar factory at Spalding, Lincolnshire. They had been purchased directly from British Rail, for internal-use as stores vehicles around the factory complex. The Nene Valley Railway acquired them in 1992 – a filming contract seeing them moved en masse to the railway that summer. They were immediately pressed into service as the railway’s demonstration goods train, featuring in a number of photographic charters during the 1990s with resident and visiting locomotives. Inevitably the years of service with BR, British Sugar, and NVR took their toll on the timber bodywork in particular, and one by one, the vans gradually dropped out of use, to the point where none remained in traffic.
For several years the vans have been scattered around the railway, quietly mouldering away, neglected and apparently unloved. Saddened by this state of affairs, and inspired by 1990s photographs of the NVR van train in action, as well as historic photos of British Railway’s steam-era goods trains, the newly-reformed Wagon Group have always recognised that the collective BR van train is the key component of the NVR wagon collection. Once restored, we anticipate that the rake will create keen interest amongst the ‘railway enthusiast’ fraternity, and that as a unique and historically authentic asset, will be capable of earning the NVR and Wagon Group a commercial income via photo charters.
In 2012, the first van was outshopped from the works into traffic – 1952-built B759852. A few other jobs have had to be completed on other wagon projects in the meantime – see our gallery – but we are now at a point where we can focus almost exclusively on vans, with the end goal of having enough vans in traffic to form the bulk of a train that ‘looks right’ behind even the largest locomotives. Few locomotives in preservation will look out of place at the head of the van train. Even the NVR’s ‘mascot’, 0-6-0T Hudswell-Clarke locomotive No.1800, (better known to all as No.1 “Thomas”), earned a living shunting long strings of ‘fitted’ BR vans around the British Sugar plant at Peterborough whilst in industrial service!
The restored van train will operate as “The Foxwell Enterprise” not only as a tribute to Paul but to create our own named freight service preserving the idea of those that ran before, such as, Condor, Lea Valley Enterprise, East Essex Enterprise, Fenland Freighter, Tees-Tyne Freighter, The Welshman, The Bristol, The Humber-Clyde, Birmingham Braked, Kings Cross Freighter, Blue Spot, The Lothian Piper, Galloway Piper, The Kitty, Fifer, Grand Vitesse or the Clayliner.
Carrying the crests of Paul’s home town of Royston and the City of Peterborough were the Wagon group calls home, the train will also be identified by the van posters it will carry, displaying the Hooded Crow, a symbol of Royston.
NVR Wagon Group 