FRAMED 

TERRENCE CUNEO

THE LICKEY INCLINE

LENGTH 96CM X HEIGHT 72CM

Patrick Whitehouse, the author, steam railway preservationist and joint presenter of BBC TV's 'Railway Roundabout', commissioned 'The Lickey Incline' directly from Cuneo in the 1960s. 'The Lickey Incline' was painted on site and from a photograph taken by Whitehouse. The two children depicted in the lower left corner are Whitehouse’s son and daughter. The Lickey Incline, south of Birmingham, is the steepest sustained main-line railway incline in Great Britain. The climb is just over two miles (3.2 km), at an average gradient of 1 in 37.7 (2.65%), between Bromsgrove and Blackwell (near Barnt Green). It is on the railway line between Birmingham and Gloucester (grid reference SO985710). The Lickey Incline is the steepest sustained adhesion-worked gradient on a British standard gauge railway. It climbs into Birmingham from the south over the Bunter geological formation (one or two exposures are visible from the track-side), and passes about a mile and a half (2.4 km) away from the Lickey Hills, a well-known local beauty spot. To assist trains up the incline and in some cases to provide additional braking, particularly to unfitted freights, specialised banking engines were kept at Bromsgrove shed at the foot of the incline.

USED

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