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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 cases 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 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).
Links to other relevant websites
AVAILABLE LAST MONTH FROM BRITISH TRANSPORT TREASURES
Review of British Transport Treasures
York Conference
Per Rail (Great Central Railway)
This very scarce publication describes, and illustrates in detail, how an Edwardian railway handled all classes of freight traffic, from coal to fresh fish – locomotives, rolling stock, depots, warehouses, docks, cranes, shunting, manually and by capstan, staff and uniforms, also road collection and delivery services.
Even the cautious Ottley (5771) was forced into noting its luxurious format.
A “must read” for anyone interested in the history of the Great Central, or for railway modellers seeking to accurately represent the working of a pre-Great War railway.
It was in part a celebration. Just over a decade earlier, financially exhausted by the cost of extending the line to London, few would have predicted that the Great Central would provide fast express sevices, using carriages amongst the most comfortable in the Kingdom, through trains between the NE and SW parts of the country, run 60 mph fish trains with automatic brakes, build a vast marshalling yard at Wath-upon-Dearne, and a new port on the Humber.
“Per Rail” is probably the most sumptuous publication ever issued by as British railway to promote its services. Every aspect is of the highest quality – paper, type setting, presentation of illustrations, layout design and binding. It was in part a celebration. Just over a decade earlier, financially exhausted by the cost of extending the line to London, few would have predicted that the Great Central would provide comfortable passenger services, including, through trains between the NE and SW parts of the country, would run 60 mph fish trains with automatic brakes, build Wath-upon-Dearne marshalling yard for the efficient handling handling of millions of tons of coal traffic to London, or for export; the exports went through a large modern port, which the GCR had built at Immingham, complete with coal bunkering equipment, graving docks and a passenger station for steamer services to the Continent. The GCR was also in the fore front of other technical developments, including power operated and colour light signalling.
Although the GCR was still unable to pay a dividend on its ordinary shares, it was a remarkable achievement, by a first class team of officers and managers, led by Chairman Sir Alexander Henderson and newly knighted (at the opening of Immingham Docks) General Manager, Sir Sam Fay. Henderson, a brilliant financier and businessman, with extensive interests in South America, steered the GCR through some very shallow financial waters, while Fay, one of the outstanding railway managers of the age, provided the ideas and the flair. One imagines being a fly on the wall
at a GCR board meeting. Fay has just announced his latest scheme, and a quiet plaintive voice from an elderly Director is heard “But where is the money to come from?”
There is a murmur from the others, studiously avoiding the Chairman’s eye. Sir Alexander has worked miracles before… hopefully he will do so again!
“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.
The Construction of the Modern Locomotive, by George Hughes.
Assistant in the Chief Mechanical Engineers Dept., Lancashire and Yorkshire
Railway. E. & F. N. Spon, 1894
Price: £4.55
Hard back book, maroon cloth, gilt embossed title, 9in. x
5.75in., 261pp., plus adverts, Large folding steel engraving of
Aspinall 0-6-0 No. 1026. Large cross section engraving of same. There are
310 figures of tools, components and partly completed locos in the text.
Tipped in frontispiece portrait of author.
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.
GWR Centenary
Paper covered magazine supplement,13”x 10”, pp. 64,numerous illutrations,maps, plans and Art Deco adverts by suppliers and contractors to the GWR.
There were three main ”Railway Centenaries” celebrated between the two World Wars. In 1925, the London & North Eastern Railway held the “The Railway Centenary” celebrating the opening of the Stockton & Darligton in 1825, which it claimed as its ancestor (albeit by “marriage” in 1863) and implying that it was the “First Railway In The World” which it was not. There were some 1500 miles of primitive railway, some even using iron rail, in Britain by1800, but not of course worked by locomotives. These were basically private lines limited to one user – coal mine, quarry, etc. The first railway for public use, the Surrey Iron Railway for goods traffic, obtained its Act of Parliament in 1801, while the first successful long term use of steam locomotives began on the Middleton Colliery Railway near Leeds, in 1812.
The first passenger trains were not steam hauled on the S&D until the 1830s, this innovation began on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in when it opened in1830, As a descendant, also by amalgamation, this centenary was marked by the London Midland & Scottish Railway in 1930 as “The Centenary of Railways” just as misleading a title.
The Great Western was sometimes rather ambivalent about its heritage. In 1921, with nationalisation, or takeover by another company possible threats, it commissioned and published a monumental two-volume history from an accomplished writer, E. T. MacDermot. Yet in 1906, it had calmly scrapped two priceless broad gauge locomotive relics,”North Star” of 1837and “Lord of the Isles” of 1851. because the vast Swindon Works was “short of space”. It was also reticent about where the sudden excess of surplus cash arose in Bristol, which went a long way towards funding the first stages of the railway. It came in fact from the cash compensation paid by the government to Bristol owners of slave worked estates in the Carribean,when slavery was finally abolished in the colonies.
Following the success of the first International
Early Main Line Railways Conference in 2014, the
organising committee has arranged a second
conference to explore further the origin and
development of main line railways between
1830 and c1870.
This reflects the all-important
years when railways first developed routes
and networks and became major contributors
to economic growth around the world,
made possible by rapid advances in civil and
mechanical engineering techniques.
This second conference has attracted papers
from authors studying subjects in several parts
of the world, in addition to the United Kingdom.
They cover subjects related to economic and
political progress and business incentive and
practice, as well as developments in structural,
architectural and building techniques and
practice and advancements in materials.
The conference is sponsored by: The
Institution of Civil Engineers, The Newcomen
Society, The Institute of Railway Studies and
Transport History in York, The Railway and Canal
Historical Society.
The Conference will be held in
York —
major railway junction, created in the 1840s by
George Hudson. Fast trains
from London King's Cross take under two hours.
The conference sessions will take place in
the National Railway Museum.
It will commence on Thursday evening, 21
June, with a public lecture by Andrew Savage,
Executive Director of the Railway Heritage
Trust. Conference papers will be presented
during Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday
morning until lunchtime. They will present new
and previously unpublished research, and the
timetable will allow generous time for questions
and discussion.
Rooms have been reserved at the Park Inn,
York.Arrangements are being made for a
chartered trip on the preserved North Yorkshire
Moors Railway, with supper served on board. On
Saturday evening a formal conference dinner
will take place in the Station Hall of the National
Railway Museum.
The conference website and facility for on-
line bookings is http://www.rchs.org.uk/early-
main-line-railways-conference/
Enquiries or queries specific to booking and
payment should be sent to emlc2bookings@
rchs.org.uk (or to the above address). Queries
about the conference itself should be sent to
emir 2.2018@gmail.com
John New, Transport Historian
