We were away for the weekend, so I missed Sunday’s meeting.  I gather that there were 6.5 members present, plus a couple of visitors from West Sussex to talk about Stuttgart.  But Brian faithfully recorded some of the action.

I phoned in from Warwick Services to ask whether there would be a curry after the meeting.  Unfortunately, no, but Maxine and Michael came with me to the curry house anyway.  Just what was needed after driving 200 miles!

Here’s how fish travelled south in 1964, from the north-east to London.  Note the variety of vans in the train.  There’s a few modern ‘Blue Spot’ fish vans, but much of the train is old LNER wooden fish vans.  And there’s what looks like a Southern Railway bogie utility van, and perhaps an LMS long express van (unless it’s a GWR fruit van repurposed.)

As for the loco, an A4 Pacific might seem a bit of a comedown for this train.  However, the original caption to the photo noted that an express loco was needed at the head of the train to keep the driver and fireman ahead of the smell….

More reasonably, this was an express cargo, in the days of limited refrigeration.  After the trawlers came back to port, the fish needed to get to the railway as quickly as possible, and then down to London (Billingsgate) whilst still fresh and ready for distribution to the shops – and the fish and chip shops.

Of course, this train only ran Monday to Saturday evenings.  No self-respecting trawler would work on the Sabbath, so there were no fish to carry south on Sunday – and even today most fish and chip shops are closed on Monday.