Writers for railways

In a way similar to those artists who prepared sculptures or paintings for railways many authors, usually associated with great literature, deigned to  write booklets for the railway companies: some of their efforts are recorded here.

Dadd, Frank E.
See Locomotive Mag., 1932, 38, 190

Herapath, John
Born 30 May 1790; died 24 February 1868): an English physicist who gave a partial account of the kinetic theory of gases in 1820 though it was neglected by the scientific community at the time. Herapath's scientific interests started with an attempt to provide a mechanistic explanation for gravity. Motivated by his search for a mechanical explanation of gravitation, he started to consider how a system of colliding particles could give rise to action at a distance. In considering the effect of the high temperatures near the Sun on his gravific particles he was led to a relationship between temperature and particle velocity.
Founnded his Journal as the Railway Magazine of 1835, which he partly owned. He re-established the magazine as the weekly Railway and Commercial Journal, often called simply Herapath. Sometimes he figured in the paper as an outsider, writing about experiments he had himself made or observed; supporting the use of 4-wheeled against 6-wheeled locomotives, for example, and staunchly opposing atmospheric traction. He invested freely in railways himself, and his private financial interests often determined the favour shown by the Journal to one company against another. Those interests also influenced its attitude to questions of national policy: he was strongly opposed to Dalhousie and the Board of Trade in their efforts to regulate the expansion of railways during the Railway Mania. Herapath revelled in controversy, not only in the Journal but at shareholders' meetings of the London Brighton & South Coast Railway. On every railway issue he took a stand immediately, and seldom changed it. He supported the broad gauge against the standard and commended Sunday trains. On the other hand he always attacked excursion and express trains. The tone of the paper's opinions grew quieter after his death when it became less of a commentator and more of a chronicle. As such it remains particularly valuable to the student of Victorian railways. The Journal became merged into the Railway Gazette in 1914. Largely Jack Simmons in Oxford Companion plus Wikipedia

Morton, Henry Vollam
Born 26 July 1892 in Ashton-under-Lyne; died in Cape Town on 18 June 1979. Reporter on Birmingham Gazette and Express. Moved to London where he worked for Evening Standard and Daily Mail. Wrote readable travel books notably In search of... series; e.g. In search of Scotland; In search of Ireland, etc He served in the Warwickshire Yeomanry in WW1 and in the Home Guard during WW2.   In Search of H.V. Morton by Michael Bartholomew was reviewed by Max Hastings in The Telegraph and it portrays a man who held extreme right-wing views including anti-Semitism.
Work for LNER
Land of the Vikings. 1928 published for the LNER by Richard Clay & Sons of Bungay. Reviewed Locomotive Mag., 1928, 34, 272