A new photograph from Ian Simpson
Class 40 40139 stands on the centre road at Stockport station at quarter past midnight on 23rd February 1979, held between duties with nothing yet decided about what comes next. The centre road is not where passengers stand; it is where a locomotive waits, clear of the platforms, while the railway around it works out what to do with it. Whatever happened to 40139 once it moved off, this is the moment before that decision reached it.
Quarter past midnight in February is not a quiet hour at Stockport, whatever it looks like from the platform where this photograph was taken. The station sat beside a large Royal Mail sorting office, and through the small hours a steady procession of parcels trains called there, feeding mail and parcels in and out of the sorting office long after the last passenger service of the evening had gone. Services ran through from Manchester to Cleethorpes, to Lincoln, and to Crewe, and further trains linked in with the overnight travelling post office running between York and Shrewsbury. The town slept; the railway did not. Stood on its centre road under whatever light the station offered, 40139 was one part of that traffic, waiting to be told which part.
No record survives of what the locomotive did once it moved off that centre road. It might have taken over 4M08, the 02.22 am parcels working to Bolton, a train that had begun its journey as the 18.45 from Cardiff and worked its way north through the evening and into the night. Equally, it might have gone forward on the Shrewsbury to York working, another of the regular overnight turns through the station. Both were genuine possibilities that night, and nothing fixes which one 40139 actually took. The photograph holds the locomotive exactly at the point where either was still open.
Class 40s like 40139 were a familiar sight around Stockport by the late 1970s, several of the class stabled at nearby Longsight depot and cycling in and out of the town’s overnight parcels and mail work. Like many of the class, 40139 had had its steam heating equipment removed, which meant that if it was indeed drafted onto the York to Shrewsbury travelling post office that night, whoever rode in the train behind it faced a cold few hours. Enthusiasts who regularly used that service to move between Yorkshire and the Midlands on overnight trips knew the discomfort well. The unheated compartments of the Mark 1 BCK and SK carriages that made up such trains were cold enough, deep into winter, to be treated almost as a test of commitment: a rite of passage undertaken every season by those determined enough to travel that way rather than wait for daylight and a warmer train.
There is something in that detail worth sitting with. The same railway that carried the nation’s mail through the night, briskly and without ceremony, also carried a smaller, stranger traffic of enthusiasts choosing the cold compartment over the easy option, because the overnight move between Yorkshire and the Midlands was itself part of what they had come for. Both kinds of passenger, if 40139’s train that night carried any at all, would have been glad of the locomotive whatever its heating arrangements, glad simply that something was moving through Stockport at that hour to take them where they needed to be.
Why this photograph?
What stays with the photograph is exactly the uncertainty it refuses to resolve. Most railway photographs of this kind settle into a clean fact: a train, a place, a working, a time, all fixed and nameable. This one does not. 40139 sits on the centre road at Stockport at quarter past midnight, waiting for a decision that was made somewhere else, by someone else, and never written down for anyone to find later. The mail kept moving through the station regardless of what became of this one locomotive; the sorting office kept working; the parcels kept shifting towards Cleethorpes and Lincoln and Crewe whether or not 40139 had any part in carrying them. Somewhere in all of that, the locomotive found its place for the rest of the night. What the photograph leaves us with is the moment just before it did, and that, in its way, is the more honest picture: not the answer, but the question, caught exactly as it stood at quarter past midnight on a cold night in Stockport.
Available as Prints and Frames
| Format | Sizes | Finishes | From |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 x 9″, 16 x 12″, 24 x 18″ | Lustre, Gloss, Velvet, Photo Rag | £15 | |
| Matted Print | 14 x 11″ mount (12 x 9″ image), 20 x 16″ mount (16 x 12″ image) | Lustre, Gloss, Fine Art Pearl, Photo Rag | £32 |
| Sanctuary Framed Print | 14 x 11″ frame (12 x 9″ image), 20 x 16″ frame (16 x 12″ image) | Lustre, Gloss, Fine Art Pearl, Photo Rag | £109 |
| Fine Art Tray Frame | 16 x 12″, 24 x 18″ | Fine Art Pearl | £150 |
| Limited Edition Fine Art Float Frame | 20 x 16″ frame (16 x 12″ image) | Fine Art Cotton Smooth | £200 |
Browse the Night Whistler print and framed editions, or see more of our After Dark photography.
The photograph
- Locomotive: Class 40, 40139
- Location: Stockport station, centre road
- Date: 23rd February 1979
- Photographer: Ian Simpson
Copyright Notice
This photograph is the copyright of Ian Simpson. It is reproduced here by permission and offered as fine art prints and framed editions by Memories of Motion.
The image may not be copied, reproduced, redistributed, transmitted or used in any form, in print or digitally, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder. All rights reserved.
