Old Oak Common allocated King No. 6010 'King Charles I' with the nine coach down ‘Cornish Riviera Express’ passes through Totnes on the through lines on a miserable February day in 1958. Comparing the English Riviera with the south of France is probably unfair but I bet it was not raining like this down there!

The CRE was timed to leave Newton Abbot at 2.35pm so this would be about 2.45pm and if the load was over ten coaches an engine would invariably assist as pilot from Newton Abbot to Plymouth for the trip over the Devon Banks, but in the winter with the lighter loading a King could cope quite happily by itself with only nine coaches. The following year Warships started to work the train.

Note the Large Prairie tank No 5195 carrying Newton Abbot Duty Target No.3 sitting inside the goods shed. I thought this duty would just be a Pilot and Banking turn but it also included marshalling the milk tank wagons for London bound milk trains from the important Daws' Creamery and milk facility. So much for the often quoted adage that steam engines did not usually pass through goods sheds but used a rake of wagons to extract vehicles so as not to fill the goods shed with smoke - certainly not here!