Uploaded January 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
For me, there’s no denying that enjoying the sound of hard working locomotives - steam or diesel, is what makes up a big part of being a rail enthusiast, and I love to apply this to railway modelling.
However, none of the resident Neville Grove model locos are sound chipped yet, so I like to use old archive sound recordings instead and put them to videos of running sessions.
The late Peter Handford was a professional sound engineer with the BBC, but he was also an avid rail enthusiast. So when steam was being phased out in the UK, he made hundreds of railway related recordings from all over the country for prosperity. Of course this was in a time when there was only cine film - and cine film had no sound.
Originally released on vinyl by Argo Transacord, Old Thundridge Records are currently in the process of digitally remastering many of these sound recordings and are releasing them on CD.
The audio used here is of a Britannia Class loco at Tebay attacking the foot of the long climb to Shap Summit (1959) combined with a recording made by Handford on the footplate of another class member on a Norwich - London Liverpool Street express (1956).
This particular Britannia, 70013 Oliver Cromwell was famously reserved for railtour duty in the last years of steam and was kept in tip top external condition. I wanted this superb Hornby model to have the look of a polished celebrity locomotive, but of one that was still a hard working machine.
Of course, this condition is also appropriate for modern image layouts as this is how 70013 and her sister “Britannia” typically appear in preservation - on the mainline and on heritage railways.
All sound effects in these clips are used with kind permission from Old Thundridge Records.
For me, there’s no denying that enjoying the sound of hard working locomotives - steam or diesel, is what makes up a big part of being a rail enthusiast, and I love to apply this to railway modelling.
However, none of the resident Neville Grove model locos are sound chipped yet, so I like to use old archive sound recordings instead and put them to videos of running sessions.
The late Peter Handford was a professional sound engineer with the BBC, but he was also an avid rail enthusiast. So when steam was being phased out in the UK, he made hundreds of railway related recordings from all over the country for prosperity. Of course this was in a time when there was only cine film - and cine film had no sound.
Originally released on vinyl by Argo Transacord, Old Thundridge Records are currently in the process of digitally remastering many of these sound recordings and are releasing them on CD.
The audio used here is of a Britannia Class loco at Tebay attacking the foot of the long climb to Shap Summit (1959) combined with a recording made by Handford on the footplate of another class member on a Norwich - London Liverpool Street express (1956).
This particular Britannia, 70013 Oliver Cromwell was famously reserved for railtour duty in the last years of steam and was kept in tip top external condition. I wanted this superb Hornby model to have the look of a polished celebrity locomotive, but of one that was still a hard working machine.
Of course, this condition is also appropriate for modern image layouts as this is how 70013 and her sister “Britannia” typically appear in preservation - on the mainline and on heritage railways.
All sound effects in these clips are used with kind permission from Old Thundridge Records.
