Difficult to find items
Pleasant acquaintance with Margaret Drabble's Pattern in the carpet (London: Atlantic Books, 2009) was the inspiration for this page. This book is a joyous meander through jigsaw puzzles, and their development, other childhood games, notably Belisha, her Aunt Phyl, Long Bennington (on the Great North Road), and her own childhood. A chance encounter with a fiendish 500 piece double-sided jigsaw (acquired at a Sheringham charity shop to amuse a visitor it required several to reach completion) reminded KPJ that the literature on some topics is difficult to find. The Drabble book lacks an index and this made it difficult to rediscover items like Belisha (there was a similar railway game: it included a card with a golden coloured A4 which has always made KPJ wonder if a Golden streamliner was enviasged to be worked by No. 4496 Golden Shuttle). Therefore this page includes "difficult to find items"
Jigsaws
Taylor, Nicola. Playing with
trains. Steam Wld, 1993,
(78) 19-20.
Jigsaw puzzles originated in 1762 by John Spilsbury, an engraver and
a railway scene was depicted on a c1830 puzzle which showed the
Northumbrian locomotive on a Liverpool & Birmingham train, and
were taken up by the Great Western Railway as publicity material (a picture
of No. 4073 Caerphilly Castle was sold on the Company's stand at the
British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924). Card games included a game
called Express which is illustrated and was marketed in the 1940s
(KPJ was this the game with a golden A4?). Board games included Edward Wallis's
New Railway Game or Tour through England and Wales which involved
a race from Rochester to London; a GWR game called Race to the Ocean
Coast and a disastrous Snakes & Ladders game which involved a train
crash at 89 and a long descent down the snale to 9 where bandages are seen
applied. Sadly an A4 featured in this game which KPJ trasured.
Wright, Ian and Cocks, John Somers. Puzzles for publicity.
Rly Mag., 1985, 131,
7-9.
43 jigsaw puzzles were issued by the GWR issue between 1924 and 1939.
These are listed and in some cases notes sales. Cites Roger Burdett
Wilson's Go Great Western (Ottley 10998) and notes errors in
it..
Women
Wojtczak, Helena. Railwaywomen:
exploitation, betrayal and triumph in the workplace. Hastings:
Hastings Press, 2005. 375pp.
During WW1 and WW2 women were employed as engine cleaners, and to
a limited extent within railway workshops. It was only recently that lady
drivers became accepted by London Underground and by most of the Balkanized
"train operating companies". On preserved railways they even fire and drive
steam trains.