Joss – I hope you got a chance to look round the Doncaster works. The stuff at my dad’s depot was mainly carriages with a few diesel and steam shunters, not the proper serious loco’s your brother dealt with. The impression left in my mind is just how BIG everything was and most of the machinery made out of cast iron!
The depot where my dad worked was just part of a huge south London marshalling yard/delivery facility. It branched off the passenger network at Bermondsey and went 2 or 3 miles further in to the Canal Bridge and Bricklayer’s Arms freight depots where everything from fruit to fridges was loaded on to BRS lorries for onward distribution. The freight tracks were massive. About three times the width of a motorway and handling thousands of tons a day. People forget, or just don’t know, how much ordinary stuff was delivered by train right into the city centres.
Just remembered, for some obscure reason they had a Deltic “diesel” loco at dad’s depot once. THAT was really something to see and hear!