The Ways of Our Railways, by Charles H. Grinling (and C. E. Grasemann, Edward Davy Pain, C.J. Bowen Cooke) Ward , Lock & CO. Limited,1905 [ebook] £4.25
Following Findlay’s “Working and Management of an English Railway” there followed several books in the late 1890s and early 1900s, adopting a similar theme, but looking at the railways of England as a whole. At the time, the railways were regarded with almost the same veneration as the Fleet and the Army and the books were quite expensively produced, in much the same style as those celebrating those other two institutions of Empire.
The railway books fell into two basic types; those written by professional railwaymen which were generally authoritative and detailed, and those written by general journalists and authors, which tended to be more superficial, quite cheaply produced, but with colorful covers, intended for the juvenile and school prize market. These were often more easily readable than the offerings of the professional railwaymen, few of whom had a natural talent for wielding the pen. “The Ways of Our Railways” benefits from being by a professional journalist with a railway background, and by including contributions and advice from active Railway Officers and engineers.

Posters by Royal Academicians and other eminent Artists. With an appreciation by Sir Martin Conway MP. London Midland and Scottish Railway [ebook] £4.95 Booklet, stiff card coloured covers , cord bound, 9.5”x 8”, unpaginated, pp. Text 10, colour plates 18, each interleaved with protective tissue
This is one of the most beautifully produced works in the collection. Until the dead hand of Sir Josiah Stamp, his economists, the ER0 and a policy of what was (I believe, by the late Pat Whitehouse) described as “retrenchment and despair” set in, the LMS produced some strikingly attractive publications, particularly posters. After the late 1920s, while the quality of posters was largely maintained, other printed material often gave the impression of being “penny pinched” – interiors being spoiled by cheap covers, sometimes printed on little better than wrapping paper.
In March 1923, T. C. Jeffrey, the former Midland Railway Superintendent of Advertising, was appointed LMS Superintendent of Advertising and Publicity, so as with so many thngs in the first years of the new company, under the aggressive chairmanship of Sir Guy Granet, Midland methods and style held sway. One of the few visible attempts at producing a “Corporate Identity” was the introduction of some strangely designed “standard” station nameboards which soon ceased to be installed as station maintenance budgets were slashed. A positive move was the commissioning of three posters from the renowned artist Norman Wilkinson beginning a fruitful relationship which would last almost until the end of the company’s life. Wilkinson, (24 November 1878 – 31 May 1971) was never actually on the payroll as such, but acted as a kind of “artist in residence” for publicity material, producing around a hundred poster designs himself, and recommending other artists.

The Evolution of the Steam Locomotive, by G.A. Sekon, Railway Publishing Co. 1899 [ebook] £3.25p
Hard cover book, bound in gilt embossed blue cloth, 8.5”x 5.5”, pp. 327, 146 drawings and B&W photographic illustrations. Classic locomotive history, published at the end of the Victorian era, at a moent of great changes in locomotive design were about to take place. The frontispiece illustrates Ivatt’s first Atlantic, plainly a late Victorian machine in outline, which its large boiler successors to follow soon, were plainly not..One of the great pleasures to be had from railway books published in the late 19th early 20th centuries is the quality of design and printing involved, which is usually, as in this case, of a very high order. The “Railwayacs”, of the period, as they called themselves, were generally speaking a well-heeled lot, and could afford good work. “Evolution” is a pleasure to handle. Less than three-quartersof an inch thick, its over 300 pages ãre printed on a special thin coated paper, thick enough not to show “ghost” images from the reverse side, but good enough for reproduction of half – tone blocks of a quality which could only be surpassed by the expensive “photogravure” process Furthermore, publishers treated each production as an item in its own right, no nonsense about shoe-horning the book into a house style, which was often an excuse in the 50’s and 60’s for a lack of imagination, or aN exercise in penny pinching. We were glad to have them, as there was no alternative, but how boring the formula became. Full page frontispiece, in colour if you were lucky, two or three signatures of text, followed by a signature of black and white illustrations, most of them half a page or less – in the paper covered editions, often bled of the page edge – and do not get me started on so called “perfect binding”! The illustrations were seldom anywhere near the text referring to them. None of that nonsense here!

The Midland Grand Hotel – Visitors Guide -with the Manager’s Compliments. Midland Railway, n.d. but Spring, 1883 from internal evidence [ebook] £3.05
Book, stiff green, gilt embossed cloth binding 5”x 3.5”, p.273, plus adverts. Numerous steel engravings of London sights. In 1865 the Midland Railway held a competition for the design of a 150-bed hotel to be constructed next to its railway station, St Pancras which was still under construction at the time. Eleven designs were submitted, including one by George Gilbert Scott which, at 300 rooms, was much bigger and more expensive than the original specifications. Despite this, as “the New Kid on the Block” the railway company needed to make an impact, liked his plans and construction began. The east wing opened in 1873, and the rest followed in Spring 1876. The hotel was expensive, with costly fixtures including a grand staircase, rooms with gold leaf walls and a fireplace in every room. It had many innovative features such as hydraulic lifts, fireproof concrete floors, and revolving doors, though (as was the convention of the time) none of the rooms had bathrooms. The hotel was part of the London Midland and Scottish Railway hotels group from1923 before closing in 1935, by which time its facilities were outdated and too costly to maintain, such as the armies of servants needed to carry chamber pots, jugs of hot water, coal scuttles and hip-baths.
After closing as a hotel, the building was renamed St Pancras Chambers and used as railway offices, latterly for British Rail which had hoped to demolish it, but was thwarted in a high-profile campaign by the Victorian Society, a historic preservationist organisation founded in part to preserve the Victorian railways and other buildings. In 1967, the Hotel and St. Pancras staton received Grade I listed status.
The building continued its use as rail offices, until the 1980s when it failed fire safety regulations and was shut down. The exterior was restored and made structurally sound at a cost of around £10 million in the 1990s. Planning permission was granted in 2004 for the building to be redeveloped into a new hotel. The main public rooms of the old Midland Grand were restored, along with some of the bedrooms. The former driveway for taxis entering St. Pancras station, passing under the main tower of the building, was converted into the hotel’s lobby. In order to cater for the more modern expectations of guests, a new bedroom wing was constructed on the western side of the Barlow train shed. As redeveloped the hotel contains 244 bedrooms, 2 restaurants, 2 bars, a health and leisure centre, a ballroom, and 20 meeting and function rooms. At the same time, the upper floors of the original building were redeveloped as 68 apartments by the Manhattan Loft Corporation. The Guide was given free to hotel guests, and includes comprehensive details of all the tourist sights, and how to reach them. It can be dated from internal evidence to the early part of the London “Season”, 1883 and may well have been issued annually for a time, because a particularly interesting feature is a section detailing “What’s On” at the leading London Theatres, complete with times of performance, full cast lists and prices. At the Gaiety in the Strand, Sarah Bernhardt appears nightly in “French Plays”, while the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, presents Arthur Wing Pinero, Forbes Robertson and Squire Bancroft in “The Rivals”. Henry Irving stars, with a young Ellen Terry in “Much Ado About Nothing” at the Lyceum, and Rutland Barrington appears with George Grossmith in “Princess Ida” at the Savoy.

The War Office at War, by Sir Sam Fay, 2nd edition, 1937, Hutchinson [ebook] £3.25
Hard cover book, blue cloth binding, 5.75”x 8.75”, pp.288, 16 B&W Illustrations.
Visitor in Whitehall to policeman “Excuse me constable, could you tell me which side the War Office is on? Policeman “Oh my God! Ours, I hope!
An old joke, but as Fay’s memoir of his years “on loan” to the Government during the Great War show, with more than a grain of truth in it. Long before it became obvious even to the optimists that it would not be “over by Christmas”, it became apparent that the British systems for running the war, from the Ordnance Factories and the Royal Aircraft Establishment, through the Civil Service and the Adjutant General’s Department to even the Admiralty, which had started out rather well were “NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE”. The one major success of the early months of the war, had been the assembly from all over Britain of the British Expeditionary Force at Southampton, its embarkation and shlpping to France,ad unloading without a single casualty to humans or animals and absence of any loss or damage to guns or stores. This remarkable feat was the result of two year’s planning, with constant revisions, by the Railway Executive Committee, in conjunction with Army Experts. The REC was composed of the General Managers from eight or nine leading British railway companies, supported as required by their staff, and charged with running the railways on behalf of the Government, and providing services for military traffic as a priority over civilian services. It would be difficult to find a more talented group of men sitting around the same table anywhere in the Kingdom. They included engineers and lawyers, but the majority were “Operators”, typically joining the industry as boys in their mid teens and acquiring some further education through evening classes. Beginning at small stations and depots, they attracted the attention of superiors by sheer hard work and ability, perhaps enjoying a small measure of patronage for an important first promotion to Head Office, where they daily came under the notice of senior managers who could appreciate their qualities, and further the young men’s careers, arranging their appointments to a wide variety of posts of increasing responsibility. It was a bit of hit and miss system perhaps, but coupled with a willingness to learn from American methods, it produced potential General Managers of wide experience and outstanding talent.

Just such a man was Sam Fay.
 In 1916 Fay took over as Director of Movements at the War Office, with the honorary rank of Major General, although he refused to wear military uniform, or to shave off his beard. In March 1918 he succeeded Sir Guy Granet the Midland Railway GM as Director-General of Movements and Railways, with a seat on the Army Council.
Throughout this period, Fay slept at his Club, Sunday to Friday, to be available in emergencies. Work load and weather permitting he played a round of golf on Saturday afternoon, before going home to Gerrards Cross, spending Sunday dealing with Great Central business with his assistant E.A. Clear.
“The War Office at War” is very well written, with some humorous moments, but it also graphically describes the tensions caused by shortage of ships, military reverses and half baked political ideas about moving large bodies of troops from one theatre of operations to another, with no consideration as to how they are to be supplied. Fay viewed the campaign waged waged by Sir John French to undermine Sir Douglas Haig, whom Fay admired and was in frequent contact with. Fay clearly disliked Lloyd George, and distrusted Churchill, but was on good terms with Lord Derby. As for our “Gallant Allies” the French, they are largely portrayed as duplicitous, incompetent and unreliable.  Perhaps it is not surprising that “The War Office at War was not published until 1938!

Review of British Transport Treasures
Dad’s briefcase formed my introduction to railway literature. The two most regular items were the orange-covered and rather dull Railway Gazette and the slightly less dull Modern Transport. Both contained occasional items of interest. Hidden in odd corners of the case there might be more exciting items like the publicity material prepared for the LNER streamlined trains and one especially memorable item from the LMS a frontal view of a streamlined Pacific with doors which opened to reveal the smokebox, or was it text? It was the opening doors which impressed.
Remarkably some of these items still form part of a chaotic personal collection: these include all of George Dow’s histories, On Either Side and the Nock booklets to “celebrate” Thompson’s standard classes. On Either Side contains a remarkable map of the LNER’s main lines to Scotland, Manchester and East Anglia: the last terminating in Yarmouth with Norwich being served by a network of branch lines.
On Either Side has recently been reprinted, but many of these items are now available to download from the British Transport Treasures website for modest cost. They range from single page publicity items to quite substantial books: and prices range from about 50 pence to £5. The latter include most of Dow’s histories published by the LNER: these must have been a difficult task to scan as extensive use was made of flimsy folded pages for diagrams and tabulations. A few quite substantial books with hard covers are also available notably Bird’s Locomotives of the Great Northern Railway, Chapman’s Twixt rail and sea (a Great Western publication) and Burtt’s classic The Locomotives of the London Brighton and South Coast Railway of 1903.
Limited sampling is provided; and there are the usual basket and check-out facilities. A percentage of the takings is given to Help for Heroes. It appears to be an excellent method of building up a collection of railway literature without the problems of physical storage. The collection is always growing; and its creator, Stuart Rankine, a retired railway officer, is a frequent contributor of e-mails, most recently about bloomers committed by Hamilton Ellis on his carriage panel painting of a Bloomer. He has now scanned Pettigrew's Manual of locomotive engineering. 3rd edition. London: Griffin. 1909. 356pp with many illustrations and it deserves to be added to many collections.
Recent additions include Sekon's excellent late Victorian history of the stream locomotive (an excellent counter-balance to Stretton's questionable history published a little later and the beautiful book of LMS posters which includes the work of Norman Wilkinson published before the Company imposed an austerity regime.

The Transport Ticket Society.
The Transport Ticket Society marks its creation 50 years ago by offering 2014 membership at a discounted rate of £12.50 (UK), £22.50 (overseas), representing a cut of about 50% on its previous rates. The Society, formed in 1964 through the amalgamation of two similar societies, has a long history of researching and studying tickets and fare collection systems. Today the development of electronic forms of ticket issue for many forms of transport presents different challenges and opportunities to operators and enthusiasts alike. The Society provides members with an extensively illustrated, monthly Journal, which includes wide-ranging news of ticket matters for all modes of transport in the UK and abroad, along with historical articles relating to tickets and issuing systems from times past. Monthly distributions of road, rail and other tickets are offered to members and twice-yearly postal auctions of historic tickets are held. Meetings take place regularly in Manchester and Brighton together with other venues from time to time. For further information and an application form, visit the Society's website www.transport-ticket.org.uk or contact the Membership Secretary at 6 Breckbank, Forest Town, Mansfield NG19 OPZ (stephenskeavington@msn.com).

Preserved railways/Heritage railways

Amberley Museum Avon Valley Railway (near Bristol) Bala Lake Railway Bluebell Railway Bo'ness & Kinneall Railway Colne Valley Railway, Essex Dean Forest Railway, Gloucestershire Didcot Railway Centre Festiniog & Welsh Highland Railways Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway East Anglian Railway Museum, Essex East Lancashire Railway East Somerset Railway Elsecar Heritage Railway, South Yorkshire

Exbury Steam Railway, Hampshire Fairbourne Railway, Gwynedd Foxfield Railway, Staffordshire Great Central Railway, Leicestershire Gwili Railway, Carmarthen Isle of Wight Steam Railway Keighley & Worth Valley Railway Llangollen Steam Railway

Middleton Railway Trust Nene Valley Railway North Norfolk Railway North Yorkshire Moors Railway Plym Valley Railway Scottish Railway Preservation Society Strathspey Railway Severn Valley Raiway More informative site about SVR Talyllyn Railway Towcester SMJ West Somerset Railway Company Watercress Line

Preservation groups

Breakdown Crane Association
Cumbrian Railways Association
Caledonian Railway Association
Electric Railway Society
important source for other minor grouups like Scottish Transport Group
Glasgow & South Western Railway Association
Great North of Scotland Railway: managers
Just one part of a magnificent website
Highland Railway Society
North British Railway Study Group checked 30 January 2015: still excellent site
Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Association
Great Eastern Railway Society
Gresley Trust
Historical Model Railway Society (HMRS)
Contains many further references to sources of information: checked 1 February 2015.
Industrial Railway Society
Well conceived site: in bibliographical terms this is a paradigm for what a properly organized historical organization should do as all its out-of-print journal material is available online together with sufficient details to order in-print material.
Irish Railway Preservation Society
Kidderminster Railway Museum
LMS Society: checked 30 January 2015: still excellent site
The Locomotive Club of Great Britain is self-evident in its aims
London & North Western Railway Society
London & South Western Railway
Midland Railway Association
Midland Railway Centre [Buutterley] website
Norfolk Railway Society
North Eastern Railway Association
Contains a considerable amount of bibliographical information, which may be accessed in EXCEL or HTML.
Railway & Canal Historical Society: DOES NOT RECIPROCATE LINK
Railway Correspondence & Travel Society (RCTS) is one of the main enthusiast bodies in Great Britain
Signalling Record Society
Southern Railway Group
Stephenson Locomotive Society is the oldest (established 1909) enthusiast society
Vintage Carriages Trust & Museum
Warwickshire railways

Societies
A1 Steam Locomotive Society
Advanced Steam Traction Group
Clan Line preservation group
Cock o' the North recreation group
Railmotor No. 93
Cornwall Railway Society
George V Prince Henry
Old permanent way group

More links