This photograph shows the Black 5 locomotive 44920 bringing the Drikold train through Billingham station on 16th June 1959. The picture also shows the rarely seen layout of the Billingham Station Yard with its old NER shunting signals. Courtesy of David P Williams. 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Class 5 44920 was a locomotive shedded at Saltley, Birmingham and at the time of the photo the Drikold was usually headed by a Saltley loco -shed code 21A- quite often one of Saltley’s BR Standard 9F locos. This appearance of London Midland Region based locos created quite a stir amongst local enthusiasts when it began and gained the area a mention in Trains Illustrated magazine at the time. Previously, this train was often a B16 locomotive from York shed.
One reason for this photograph could be the relative rarity of black fives in the Teesside area, although they ran into Newport yards occasionally. The ‘Drikold’ through Billingham could bring all kinds of locos, and as a train spotter during the fifties and early sixties, was not one to miss. Most locos on the ‘Drikold’ were power classification ‘5’. The most common locos on the ‘Drikold’ were B1’s. Quite often one would turn up from a south or west Yorkshire shed, giving us spotters a ‘cop’. The nearest shed with black fives was Leeds Holbeck, an ex Midland shed, although they could be seen in numbers working to York, from other parts of the Midland system. Possibly this loco had replaced another failed loco, and was on a return working, back to the south Yorkshire area, possibly Normanton.
when i worked there in the 70s the containers were made of aluminium and were about 6ft high 4ft wide and 3ft deep with a door that swung out and with the insulation they were 6 inches thick
I am currently trying to model the Dri-Kold train but I am lacking any detail of the containers used. Would anybody out there have close up pictures of the containers?
A most interesting photo showing an ex LMS Class 5 on the Dri Kold (see previous posts on this subject). The Stockton shed turntable could only take up to a B1 loco and anything larger working in, such as Pacifics or V2s had to go up to Norton Junction to turn on the triangle. One such working was a morning Leeds -West Hartlepool passenger train in the early 1950s which occasionally arrived with a Leeds (Neville Hill ) Class A3 Pacific loco. This would go up to the Junction to turn and would then couple on to the front of the engine of a Newcastle( Delaval) – London parcels and stock train (Train No 39 up stock)at Stockton around 11.00 am. The Leeds engine worked as far as Thirsk and from there took a Leeds portion of the stock train to Leeds via Melmerby and Ripon.This working gave the unusual sight of two Pacific locos double -heading. Later the morning parcels was re-routed via Darlington and the main line.
I have read Davids article in the Steam Days magazine and found great reading, taking me back to my days around Norton in my youth. I later worked the Norton signal boxes, I learnt from drivers that apart from the traffic the Norton triangle was used to turn large engines from Stockton shed that could not fit on the turntable, running up to Norton South then to the West then from there to the East, hence the loco was turned, like stated. A good article and photos.