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Manchester - Penzance express ascending Rattery Bank near Tigley

View eastward, towards Totnes, Newton Abbot, Exeter etc.; ex-GWR London/Bristol etc. - Plymouth and Penzance main line. The occasion (27 July 1957) was so disastrous a Summer Saturday that it later provided the subject of a classic book, 'Summer Saturdays in the West' by D. St.J. Thomas and S. Rocksborough-Smith that ran to two Editions, about how the railways were overburdened by the traffic produced by Holidays-with-Pay in the 1950s. When this train, which had left Manchester (London Road) at 00.25 (!) reached here at 14.00 it was almost FOUR HOURS late: the locomotive was 'Castle' 4-6-0 No. 5054 'Earl of Ducie' (built 6/36 as 'Lamphey Castle', renamed 9/37, withdrawn 10/64). At the time, I had been puzzled by the long breaks between scheduled Down trains but was unaware until months later of the extent of the disorganisation. Having surmounted Dainton Bank, Down trains faced from Totnes a climb of five miles of gradients as steep as 1-in-50 to Rattery Box, then another four miles only a little less steep to Wrangaton.