Railway World
Volume 25 (1964)
Key file

uploaded 16 April 2021
No. 284 (January)

Frank Mayes. Firing the A4 Pacifics. 3-6+
Fireman at Top Shed, King's Cross firing to Bill Hoole; Charlie Simmons on up Tees-Tyne Pullman on 8 June 1955 when it was inaugurating longest non-stop working at over 60 mile/h and a Times reporter was on footplate; then Ted Hailstone (when a large lump of coal jammed in the shovel plate); and Sid Tappin. Log of run on down Tees-Tyne Pullman

J.B. Snell. Railways in Finland. 9-14.
Mainly descriptive of days of steam and Soviet interference including the transit of the "Pokkala Tunnel" where trains ran with steel shutters over windows and armed guards to pass through a Soviet base.

J.M.Tolson. The St. Helens Railway—1. 15-19.
The promoters of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway had hoped to route the railway through St. Helens, but this was thwarted by landed interests and the St Helens & Runcorn Gap Railway was promoted to fill this gap: the Royal Assent was received on 29 May 1830 and parts of tthe line were being used in 1832. Formal opening took place on 21 February 1833. The railway had the Sankey Brook Navigation Canal Co. as competition, but on 21 July 1845 the two merged and John Meadows Rendel was requested to perform a survey which led to the aboltion of the inclined planes, extensions to Garston as a more suitable location for the export of coal and to Warrington. Passenger traffic was also developed.

Warren Smith. The principles of block signalling—II. 20-5
The use of detonators, working in fog, obstructions on the line, the accidental division of trains and the significance of tail lamps.

Mr. Pegler's Pacific. 8pp. (bound in centre of Issue). unpaginated

Cecil J. Allen. Half-a-century of train travel—No. 23. The Emerald Isle. 26-9.
Begins with a fast run on the GSR Limited Mail from Cork to Dublin behind 4-4-0 No. 332. Then a run on the 15.00 Dublin to Belfast behind No. 174 Carrantuohill. On the return superheated 4-4-0 No. 191hauled the train as far as Dundalk when Allen was on the footplate: between Portadown and Dundalk an avaerage of 51 mile/h was achieved and the speed seemed to be excessive. No. 170 came on at Dundalk and the onward journey to Dublin was less wild. Finally a journey behind Glover compound No. 87 Kestrel outward on the 15.15 from Amiens Street is detailed

M.L.J. Harris. A history of G.W.R. coaches, 1923—1947. Part VIII. Excursion stock 1929—1940. 30-2+.
Built in 1935 in response to competition from road coaches: all third class open coaches with large windows with Beclawat ventilators and matching kitchen cars. Includes plan, elevation and interior views in modern style

J.S. Gilks. This month's centenaries. 35.
1 January 1864: Hinckley to Leicester; Cannock Road Junction to Bushbury; Portskewett to Portskewett Pier
11 January 1864: London Bridge to Charing Cross and Waterloo.
Generatet correspomdence on p. 115 et seq from R. Maund, P. Mallaband (mainly concerning Cannock Road to Bushbury line) and H.V. Borley on Waterloo Junction.

Letters. 36-8.

The L.N.W.R. "Claughton" 4-6-0s. R.H. Mann.
The original boilers were too small and the 1928 Derby-designed boiler was a move in the right direction, but for the proposed 4-8-0 the Royal Scot boiler might have been a better starting point

The L.N.W.R. "Claughton" 4-6-0s. F. Graham Glover. 37
States Allen gave incorrect grate area for Prince of Wales class: it was not 27 ft².

The L.N.W.R. "Claughton" 4-6-0s. C.T. Taylor.
Writer worked in Drawing Office at Crewe and was told that a larger boiler had originally been envisaged for Claughton class, but was rejected on grounds of tooling cost. The class was a "joy to work" as one could stand up underneath to deal with inside motion.

Progress of team locomotive design. John F. Clay. 39
Duchess No. 6234 achieved 2511 dbhp: this was an actual figure not an equivalent one. On test at Rugby No. 46225 achieved 2660 ihp or 2260 edhp at 50 milr/h

Book reviews. 38-9

Master builders of steam. H.A.V. Bulleid. Ian Allan. Reviewed by RR
Excellently reviewed

No. 285 (February) incorrectly numbered. 286: see Editorial

J.N. Faulkner. The Shepperton branch of the Southern Region: the line that leads to the new Ian Allan Headquarters. 42-8.
The Metropolitan & Thames Valley sought to link the GWR Brentford branch with Chertsey, but negotiations with the Great Western failed and the LSWR agreed to build the section between Strawberry Hill and Shepperton. The line opened on 1 November 1864. The line was originally single track, but was doubled in 1878/9. The racecourse at Kempton Park created extra traffic and the need for single line working to enable rolling stock to be parked. Electrific services began on 30 January 1916.

J.S. Gilks. This month's centenaries. 48.
12 February 1864: Frizington to Rowrah (Whitehaven, Claetor & Egremont Joint Railway)
26 February 1864: Kilmessan to Athboy (branch off Dublin to Meath)

R.M. Arnold. N.C.C. 2-6-4 tanks. 50-4+
No. 5 was painted green in 1948 and this experimental livery lasted until March 1950. Mainly performance, both on their home territory and over the Great Northern and, very briefly, on the Bangor line. They sometimes worked to Dublin, but were not very satisfactory. The Great Northern footplate staff found them difficult to operate in contrast to their excellent performance on the Larne and Londonderry lines

J.M. Tolson. The St. Helens Railway. Part 2. 55-9.
Table lists the locomotives owned by the St, Helens Canal & Railway Co. to 1863. Information includes builder, WN (rarely listed), date of construction, LNWR number, name and withdrawal date. For instance No. 2  Trent was Sharp Roberts (WN 193/1842) and was sold to Boulton in 1864.

Norman Harvey. Some V2 and A2 runs on the East Coast Route: Locomotive Causerie. 62-5.
Log of run on northbound Flying Scotsman from Peterborough to Newcastle behind V2 No. 60869 after the scheduled A1 whicch had worked the train from King's Cross failed. The driver was Bill Hoole and not only was the loss of time due to the changeover regained, but Newcastle was reached early. Two logs of runs with Driver Arthur Davis follow. V2 No. 60821 from King's Cross to Grantham on 19 August 1961 with 12 coaches, and another by A2 No. 60526 Sugar Palm with 11 coaches on up train from Peterborough to King's Cross on 19 March 1961.

Cecil J. Allen. Half-a-century of train travel—No. 24. To the South-West by the "Atlantic Coast Express". 68-72.
Describes the many through coaches to Plymouth, Ilfracombe and Padstow, to list but some; the fast timings to Salisbury and onward to Exeter and locomotive performance in general terms, especially that  by the King Arthur class.

High Peak in late Victorian days. 73.
Photographs of the Cromford & High Peak Railway when it was operated by Ramsbottom 2-4-0T: unidentified locomotive on Hopton Incline with load of four wagons in about 1894; another on Gotham curve, and No. 1839 at Middleton Top in about 1887 in snow (photographs from C.R. Bray)

"The Ile Inspector". Brewery pilot. 75-7.
0-4-0 ordered by John Watson, a coal and coke master, from Neilson & Co., but probably as specified by William Hurst, Locomotive Superintendent of the NBR. These were WN 1309 and 1310 and RN 394-5. They were rebuilt in 1885 and 1887 under Holmes. In July 1894 they were transferred to the duplicate list and had "A" added to their numbersand became Nos. 1012-1013 in 1901, but were withdrawn in 1909 and 1911. No. 1012 worked in the Monkland district, but 1013 worked the Lochend Pilot. Dimensions tabulated.

A question of 4-8-0s. A.E. Durrant
Dr. Tuplin's command of the English language seems sadly lacking in precision. Whilst originally stating, quite unequivocally, that a 4-8-0 with 40 sq ft of grate could not be built within about 86 tons, he now wriggles and claims he really meant that a British 4-8-0 could not be made to equal a Chapelon in power and speed. Having been proved wrong on his original statement, it would be equally easy to prove his current utterance incorrect, but doubtless he would then claim that he meant something else.
Dr. Tuplin's experience of Continental 4-8-0s must presumably be limited to the confines of his armchair, as, although the Spanish examples are languid the Austrian and Hungarian locomotives certainly are not and perform with great vigour.
The Tuplin- "Claughton" 4-8-0, by coincidence featured in the same issue, shows that its patron does not understand the reasons why the Chapelon 4-8-0s were not a success, as it repeats the features which resulted in their downfall. By cramming too much power into four cylinders and plate frames, the 25 French 240Ps tore themselves to pieces in their decade of life, 1940 to 1949, and were all scrapped when the Laroche-Dijon line was electrified.
Trying to obtain an excessive output from a small narrow firebox only results in a high firing rate with consequent low boiler efficiency due to the amount of fuel unburnt. I can confirm this from a run with a 600-ton train hauled by a 240P. when by Blaisy-Bas summit the whole of the seat of my compartment was tin deep in coal dust and it took a week to get it out of my hair!

Book reviews. 78-9.

Soviet railways today. J.N. Westwood. lan Allan. 192 pp. Illustrated. H.S.
This meaty but pleasantly written, well- illustrated work is, I believe, the only recent illustrated book in a Western European language on Russian railways in general. To have produced such a treatise—for such it is, with due respect to that forbidding term—on the basis of longish visits to the U.S.S.R. in 1954 (whilst tourists were still virtually excluded), 1959-61 and -62, and of acquaintance with Russian railway- men and Russian railway books and periodicals, is a triumph. Courteous and even communica- tive (sometimes) as railwaymen in the U.S.S.R. may be, the Russian fear of imparting to foreigners information which might be thought to be in any way strategic—or of letting it be imparted by other Russians—is still strong. Between them, however, Dr. Westwood and a good many other foreign travellers have apprehended much of the truth about the U.S.S.R. railways and have managed to distinguish between the three layers of truth—in the author's words: what is intended to happen, what is said to happen and what does happen. Since other non-Russians besides Dr. Westwood have concentrated on the first and third of these, it is a pity that he has not included a brief bibliography indicating recent magazine articles, for instance, in English, French and German, some of which are well illustrated, not to mention the authoritative work on steam locomotives by H. M. Le Fleming and J. H. Price. In cavilling, I deplore also the lack at least of a sketch map to show electrification progress, though a general system map would have been helpful, not least to indicate such changes of place-name as Tbilisi (Tiflis) and Tallin (Reval). In almost every other respect the reader could hardly wish for more in the compass of such a work, bearing in mind official reluctance to enlarge on matters such as signalling installations at large centres or to allow photography, much less to supply photographs of a wide variety of instal- lations—except, it seems, familiar views of the more bedizened Moscow Metro stations. Many photographs taken by the author are excellent and well reproduced.
After a brief but highly informative chapter describing the setting of U.S.S.R. railways today, Dr. Westwood proceeds to track, structures and signalling (a hard subject on which to call official information), a really excellent chapter on electrification, another on diesel traction and then steam. The chapters on freight and passenger traffic are illuminating: one is amazed at the contrast between modernity and sheer crudity; the latter reveals a strange rigidity of the Russian mind noticed by foreign visitors to the Russian railways half-a-century and more ago. There are useful line diagrams of motive power. What Dr. Westwood has to say on electric and diesel traction, especially in regard to their utilisation, and on traffic handling, is the best part of this remarkable book, which must long remain a railway classic.

British Railways in transition. O.S. Nock. London & Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons. 193 pp. HS
Our railways are certainly in transition—into what, under the present regime, is uncertain and unpredictable; but even Acworth would admit that things are changing fast compared even with the turn of the century. Allured by the title, intending readers might well expect from so knowledgeable an author as Mr. Nock a brightly written resume of developments in almost every sphere of railway activity—which he is certainly qualified to provide. He writes well, as usual, but disappoints by riding his hobby horses of locomotive performance and of signalling.
The basis of this well-produced book is a chapter for each of various types of development illustrated by its application to a Region. The titles "North Western Electrification" and "New Great Eastern" are self-explanatory. "Modernising the North Eastern" is concerned largely with resignalling and marshalling yards and other improvements in handling freight traffic. There follows a chapter on main-line diesel locomotives (including the principal and almost only evidence of transition in the W.R. dealt with in this book—the" Warship" class diesel-hydraulics). Why, one wonders, when Mr. Nock is restricted in his space, does he devote so much of the chapter on modern express running to the performance of a Type 2 diesel on the S.R.'s Folkestone main line during the short interregnum between steam and electric traction? Indeed, the many logs of runs take up too much space altogether. The chapter on steam working in the S.R.'s S.W. Division—and that part of it now transferred to Paddington's care—is enthralling, though some readers may be puzzled by a reference to Dugald Drummond's "Carbrook" class 4-4-0s on the Caledonian. Mr. Nock says much of interest in a chapter on fast m.u. working, which makes all the more regrettable his mention of "six-car" Kent Coast electric trains—to which he refers (by implication) correctly as four-car sets in his "Metamorphosis in Kent" chapter. He is at his best when discussing signalling matters in the chapter on modern signalling practice generally. Competent essays on railcars and on the Glasgow suburban electrification are followed—inexplicably in a book of this kind—by a chapter on historic locomotives (with more logs); after which the author switches back to the Scottish Highlands as the scene of efficient diesel locomotive working. The last chapter is a farewell to steam.
One looks in vain for accounts of such important developments as the Beeching Plan, organisational changes, branch-line and station closuers, new concepts of handling bulk freight, mechanised tracklaying, Continental services and other manifestations of B.R. in transition. It is hard to agree with the choice of some of the many excellent well-produced photographs, such as the two full-page views of Carlisle marshalling yard, whose raison d'etre in any case is now debatable.

Railways of the Andes. Brian Fawcett. London: George Allen & Unwin. 329 pp. HS
The fact that the railways in the Andes include the highest summits and some of the sharpest curves and steepest gradients in the world and many feats of bridge-building, and that their operation involves hazards of railway working in mountainous countries, is widely known. 1n the circumstances it may seem strange that this excellent work is the first book in English addressed to the reader with a general interest in railways except perhaps for Watt Stewart's life of that creator of South American railways, Henry Meiggs, Yankee Pizarro (Duke University Press, 1946). Mr. Fawcett incidentally includes a useful brief bibliography. To say that he deals with every aspect of the Andean railways, from the Guayaquil & Quito in the north to the Trans-andine in the south, likely to interest the average reader with a fair general knowledge of railways is to do less than justice. Mr. Fawcett writes in an easy, graphic style. As a former operating officer of the Peruvian Central he gives dramatic and sometimes witty descriptions of incidents, grave and gay, on that gruelling undertaking. Yet he does much more. There are pertinent and valuable remarks on matters such as the relations between British railway officers overseas and the indigenous communities, the development of road and rail competition in inexperienced democracies, the effects of ill-advised placing of rolling-stock orders and the future of the Andean railways. One is proud to hear of the part played by British enterprise in South America—exemplified by the highly efficient and beneficient Antofagasta (Chili) & Bolivia Railway, whose 2-ft 6-in gauge passenger vehicles were marvels of the British carriage builder's art. All British people concerned with railways overseas should read Mr. Fawcett, and not only for pleasure and entertainment.-

The Underground story. Hugh Douglas. London: Robert Hale Ltd. 208 pp. MJ
The centenary year of the Metropolitan Railway has provided ample incentive for authors to chronicle events leading to the construction of London's first underground railways and thus fill a gap in railway literature. The resulting flood of publications devoted to the underground system produced during the last year or so (the total is so far nine, with one still to come) has, nevertheless, inevitably led to some duplication of effort, but affords an interesting comparison of the approaches adopted by the respective authors to their subject.
Hugh Douglas traces the mid-19th century social background to the protracted negotiations and wrangles arising from the first proposals for an underground railway and which continued long after construction started. From contemporary sources he describes the consequences of the compulsory acquisition by the Metropolitan of residential property, much of it in any case unfit for habitation but nevertheless providing shelter for the" down and outs". Those who could find no alternative accommodation with relatives were relegated to the workhouse, for not yet were the days of council rehousing schemes and the welfare state. More than half of the book is devoted to the planning and construction of the Metropolitan and District Railways over a period of some 30 years, and subsequent history from the latter part of the nineteenth century to the present day is somewhat sketchy by comparison. The author calls his work a social history, for constructional methods, locomotives, rolling stock and signalling are not described. From that standpoint it is outside the normal run of railway histories .
The illustrations in quantity and selection are poor. Twelve pages of photographs in a total of 208 is inadequate and more than half the illustrations are from contemporary drawings. Photographs depicting the construction of the Metropolitan and District do exist and would be far more authentic.

No. 286 (March): Numbered incorrectly as No. 287: see Editorial

Christopher Powell. Steam in Copenhagen. 84-5+
The Danish State Railways acquired the Class E Vauclain compounds with Vanderbilt tenders from the Swedish State Railways when they were electrified in the 1930s and purchased more of this type from then until 1950. Some of these locomotives were fitted with double chimneys.

G.C. Holyhead. Recollections of G.N.S. D40 4-4-0s. 86-90.
Had experience of firing the class: noted the difficulties of the Westinghouse brake and esxpecially the pump located on the fireman's side. Alos adventure of photographing No. 62277 Gordon Highlander on 19 October 1957 in failing light at Craigellachie (reproduced herein)

R.E.G. Read and Gordon Biddle. Some unusual British stations—1. 90-6.
Begins with those stations which had some form mof gap beteen the offices and the platforms: cites Gisland and other stations on the Newcastle & Carlisle line and Grimsby Docks. The raising of platform heights could disturb the visual balance of the associated buildings: Crumlin High Level is cited. Similarly, where the platforms were located in cuttings or on embankments the main entrances had to be modified to meet the conditions: examples quoted included West Grinstead, North Rode, Carbis Bay and Mytholmroyd. In many stations there was a disparity in size in the structures of the different platforms; Sheringham is cited. Some stations used pre-existing buildings (the Old Red House at Bourne and the Court House at Barnsley are quoted). Some stations incorporated the original companuy's offices as at Stoke-on-Trent (former North Staffordshire Railway headquarters). Illustrations of stations: Baldersby (staggered platforms); Mitcham (railway on embankment); Crumlin High Level (raised platform); Shifnal (entrance below railway); Barnsley Court House; Newmarket old station frontage; Moat Lane (former Mid Wales Railway offices); Ketton & Collyweston (belfry and bay window); Thatcham (umbrella roof serving both passengers and freight); Rocester (right-hand track signalled for both directions); Penrith (covered bay platforms); Broadstone Junction; Stubbins (buildings beyond platforms); Queensbury nameboards.

M.L.J. Harris. A history of G.W.R. coaches, 1923—1947. Part IX. Hawksworth stock, 1944—1951. 97-102. 6 illus., diagrams (4 side elevtions), table
63 ft long: body employed a new style with bow ends (similar to Gresley type) but with relatively straight slab sides. The steel frame was fitted with brackets to accept teak pillars. Fluorescent lighting was provided on a few vehicles.

Semi-streamlined No. 6014 King Henry VII hauling Centenary stock on Cornish Riviera Express on 9 July 1935. 100-1 (centre pages)

W.J.K. Davies. Light railway notes. 102-3. 3 illus.
Two photographs of rolling stock (hutches) with sledge brakes used on 2ft 8½ gauge railway owned by Pike Bros. at Furzebrook near Wareham

G.W. Parkin. Blackpool—August 1911. 106-7. 2 illus.
National railway strike took place during Friday/Saturday 18/19 August caused chaos with holidaymakers many of whom returned to the mill towns on foot. The mayors of Preston and Bolton provided refreshments for the weary and the Blackpool Steamship Company ran steamers to Preston

South Eastern coach variety iin the 1930s. S.A.W. Harvey. 108-9
Mainly inclusion of former LSWR or LBSCR vehicles, but photograph of O1 0-6-0 hauling set of white-roofed SECR six-wheeled coaches at Petts Wood on excursion to Sevenoaks is unusual image of Southern Railway in 1934.

Cecil J. Allen. Half-a-century of train travel—No. 25. The advent of the Gresley Pacifics. 110-14.

J.S. Gilks. This month's centenaries. 114.
1 March 1864: Brynmawr to Nantybwch; 28 March 1864 Conwil to Pencader and Wilmington to Hornsea.

Letters. 115-17

Unfair to " Flying Scotsman". A.F. Pegler  
I am quite astonished that so distinguished a contributor to your columns as Cecil J. Allen should be guilty of so many errors of fact as he managed to get into his article about the" Western Belle" (p. 451 of your December issue). His patronising comments on the performance of A3 No. 4472 are to my mind unforgivable in view of the ease with which he could have verified the validity of his criticisms. Even more strange, how can someone as experienced as he have failed to appreciate some of the difficulties involved in operating a train like the "Western Belle"? Perhaps he, like certain other distinguished people, secretly disapproves of locomotive preservation of the kind I am indulging in, or would have preferred to see the retention of No. 4472's Kylchap double chimney and blastpipe so that he could clock up a few extra m.p.h. on his stopwatch.
Mr. Allen was wrong in blaming the difference in the degree of vacuum between E.R. and W.R. for the braking trouble with the Pullman kitchen car. Eastern Region locomotives have taken over Western Region rolling stock at intermediate points on far too many occasions for there to be any difficult or obscure problems involved and he must have known this. No. 4472 "lifted the brakes" on a 12-coach train from Shrewsbury to Paddington in April, 1963 and would have lifted them on the 10-coach Pullman formation equally successfully had they been liftable. Not only did the Pullman car concerned finally fail at Salisbury with a hot box, but three days later, when being worked back on an empty stock train to London it ran another hot box! The car, which was life-expired, was then withdrawn from service.
Mr. Allen failed to mention the irritating signal check experienced be- tween Reading and Patney which reduced our speed to 25 m.p.h. He was also patronising in the extreme about the running between Bristol and Taun- ton. The facts are that we gained 4min on schedule by maintaining a steady 65-70 m.p.h. in a broadside gale force wind, and despite a 10 m.p.h. check for bridge reconstruction work; this, with a tare load of 405 tons (not 398) and on level track throughout, struck me as an excellent effort on the part of the crew, neither of whom had ever had charge of a Gresley Pacific b fore. Even a high-performance motor car can show up poorly in the hands of a driver who has never sat behind the wheel of that particular model before, but that does not mean the car is a dud or that the driver is a bad driver. So it is with No. 4472; she is an extremely lively engine and the Western Region crew were as keen as mustard, but obviously they might not get quite as much response from the engine as men who know that class intimately.
Far more complicated is the situation at night where the driver is virtually feeling his way. On the "Western Belle" run, Driver Perfect not only had an unfamiliar engine, but it was pitch dark, wet and he was running (to Salisbury) over a road he did not know at all. aturally he had a pilotman, but a pilotman shouting in your ear and telling you whether you are about to go uphill or downhill is a very different proposition from being thoroughly all fait with the road. I thought Driver Perfect did us proud to Salisbury; my reaction to Mr. Allen's remarks about the schedule being 14 minutes slower than the A.C.E. is " So what? "
At Salisbury the troublesome Pullman car had to be taken off and the delay was considerable. A Southern Region crew took over No. 4472 at this point and the driver had a lot of trouble with the engine slipping on the climb to Grateley. Naturally one could not see a thing, but the fireman told me it is a notoriously bad stretch in the kind of conditions we experienced that evening. Leaves on the rails were the problem and created a situation where sanding was useless; No. 4472 was full of steam and blowing off at frequent intervals, but every time the driver opened the regulator she slipped and had to be eased—very irritating when one is already late but only what the crew had experienced with a "Merchant Navy" on the same stretch of track earlier in the week. To dismiss the efforts of all concerned with an analogy about Roman chariots is not at all fair (nor, thank goodness, is it normally characteristic of C.J.A.). Credit was given for the subsequent 80-plus running on level track (now with a tare load of 398 tons). Mr. Allen was inaccurate, however, in saying that the schedule from Salisbury was 84min; it was 86min. So much for individual aspects of the run. But can someone like myself reasonably be expected to have his acquisition judged performance-wise with comparable main-line engines that are in regular service and in the hands of their usual crews? Personally I am delighted to have been able to preserve an A3; and to my mind an A3 in running order is a far more interesting proposition than one as a museum piece. Should anyone really worry too much about its performance? The schedule for a train of the "Western Belle's" weight was just about right to Salisbury in my view, but pointlessly ambitious thereafter—and not submitted to or agreed by me.

This month's centenaries. R. Maund
Cannock Road to Bushbury line: only used for occasional traffic, but used for Royal Trains from 17 September 1860; and standing instructions for its use. Also note on Portskewett Pier line

This month's centenaries. P. Mallaband.
Cannock Road to Bushbury line: used for inter-company traffic in both WW1 and WW2

This month's centenaries. H.V. Borley.
Regular passenger trains used this line to access London Bridge from 3 July 1865 and later Cannon Street and ran for the last time on 31 December 1867.

The St. Helens Railway. George Dow

The St. Helens Railway. J.M. Tolson

A history of G.W.R. coaching stock. J.E. Cull.  116
I have been following with interest Mr. Harris' articles on G.W.R. coaches and have been somewhat puzzled by a number of things therein. However, it is only now that I have put pen to paper to raise a few points arising (mostly) out of the January article on the Excursion sets.
Firstly, there is, I think, little doubt that the 1929 sets were formed of Lots 1411/2. For a start, the date is right; secondly, Lot 1412 appears to be the only one twelve brakes built to the 8ft 10tin profile, which the published description of the time definitely quotes for six sets. I presume Mr. Harris has his information from Swindon records, but he omits some curious things, and the difference in profile between 8ft 10i-in and 9ft Oin stock (in the 57ft types) and 9ft Oin and 9ft 3in stock (in the subsequent 60ft series) is one of them. Some Lots, incidentally, cover both types. Lot 1395, for example, has 5143, 5146, 5152 and 5154 as 9ft Oin, but numbers from 5159 to 5180 as 8ft 10tin-and none as tare 30t 4c; the 9ft 0in ones are 30t 7c and the 8ft 10tin are 30t 3c, except for the flush window examples Cl have up to 5173 as sunk window, but 5177-80 all flush window), which are 30t 9c. Lot 1398 is also flush-windowed and 8ft 100in profile-note that they are not of the later bulging side as used on 60ft stock, though the windows give a superficial resemblance, especially adjacent to the corridor partition in the compos, where the pillar is thin and the windows wide. I personally have no record of this batch (Lots 1411/12) in sets, only as general user, so I presume that they were split up early (probably in 1935 or so, when the open stock appeared). I have no record, therefore, of 9101-10 in these sets.
On the matter of the later sets, I again have little record of complete sets as new, and have had to piece together the story from part-sets. One useful one is undated, probably 1936, and shows: 4571 (401-416)-4566 (209- 272)-4565 (145-208)-9633-4567 (273- 336)-4572 (1-16), the figures in brackets being the seat numbers, which would confirm the version for the first set, when complete, as given on page 32, except that the brakes were" reversed" (i.e. 4572 was the "1-16" vehicle). However, it is in the second set that Mr. Harris goes really astray. The triplets ran as third class articulated triplets 10026/27/28 and 10034/5/6 in this set, therefore Lot 1534 can only have covered the conversion of 10026 and 10034 to third class, plus any other necessary refurbishing. The articula- teds were not in fact separated until 1936/37 and I suspect that the extra cars of Lots 1558 and the two extra kitchens in Lot 1579 were to cover the with- drawal of the articulateds for conversion. Indeed, I will go so far as to doubt whether they ever returned to excursion work as separated cars, though the ex-firsts never reverted. Incidentally, the 1935 carriage building programme, fortunately, was given in considerable detail (GWR. Magazine of February, 1935, p. 67; Locomotive January 15, 1935, p. 25) and contains, inter alia, "Third Class Dining Saloons-2". There is no unexplained blank in the 96xx series, so this can only refer to 10026/34. One odd feature of this list is that the Centenary stock is not included: all the corridor stock listed is otherwise accounted for in Lots 1526/7 /8/9/30/3 I plus "Twin Dining Car Units-4 vehicles" (presumably 9639-9642), three sleepers (9076-9078), ten passenger brake vans (and, of course, the two saloons noted above. I am also a little surprised by the reference to " straighter sides" for the 1937 Lots 1575/6/9: both are 9ft 0in wide, and a comparison of photographs of the two batches suggests no obvious difference. Perhaps the original win- dows of the 1935 type suggest a " bulgier" side, but I think it is an optical illusion. What do the official diagrams show, I wonder? The 1938 8ft llir profile is, of course, flatter.

An Extended Claughton. W.A. Tuplin. 117
Mr. Mann's letter (January issue, p 36) on this subject is of great interesl but it does not entirely line up with certain facts that may be worth noting in this connection.
(I) A locomotive can be "under-boilered" or "over-cylindered" only in relation to some defined duty.
(2) The power of a locomotive boiler of given major dimensions is not increased by raising its working pressure above about 180lb/sq in.
(3) For a given indicated horsepower, speed and nominal tractive effort, the cut-off required varies only very slightly with change in the pressure on which the N.T.E. is calculated.
(4) The Chapelon 4-8-0 boiler, a few per cent larger than that shown for the extended "Claughton", produced 48,0001b of steam per hour at 750 deg. F.

Book reviews.

A history of the Southern Railway. C.F. Dendy Marshall. Second (enlarged) edition, revised by R. W. Kidner. Vol. II. London: lan Allan. 9in by 6in. 275 pp. Reviewed by H.S.
Everybody with a serious interest in the railways of Southern England should have Dendy Marshall as a ready reference book, if not for instructive reading from cover to cover. I must aver my sympathy with those who find him hard going, for his bald style turns, in the later chapters, when he shows signs of exhaustion, into a mere catalogue of events; and I respect the authority of those who have accused him of inaccuracy. This, the second of the two volumes in which the revised edition appears, contains Parts IV (the S.E.C.R. and its constituents from the formation of the S.E.R.) and V (the S.R.). In revising the original Mr. Kidner has contented himself with a bare minimum of corrections, which many people will find insufficient. Whilst adding a few glosses on motive power. apparently his pet subject, he has sometimes not altered or explained Dendy Marshall where that author's wording is obscure—as regards the S.E.C.R's Bexhill branch, for instance, or the inception of the" Golden Arrow". Moreover. Mr. Kidner is sometimes hard to understand in the chapters which he himself has added to carry the story from 1935, where the original ended, to nationalisation in 1947: his remarks on the narrow vestibuled stock for the Tonbridge-Hastings line are not clear and he appears to be wrong. In general, however, stations and branch lines are the matters on which critics are likely to have most say. The revised work nevertheless remains an invaluable compendium of Southern history and a monument of industry-as good and as much, probably, as is ever to be contained in two

British locomotive names of the twentieth century. H.C. Casserley. Ian Allan. Reviewed by R.R.

North Western steam. W.A. Tuplin. George Allen & Unwin. Reviewed by J.T.
This volume consists of some 250 pages: it is ,well illustrated with 38 photographic reproductions and some 30 line drawings and diagrams. the whole wrapped in a striking dust-cover depicting the "Claughtonised" 4-8-0 design by the Author which recently formed a feature in Railway World.
This is not just another catalogue of the various locomotives of a great railway. accom- parried by dimensions, variations and performance out on the road: rather is it a living flashback to the times about which the author is writing. Coming from the pen of so notable an authority as Dr. Tuplin one approaches it with due reverence and, perhaps, some apprehension. Fear not, reader! there are few pages which you will not enjoy nor which you will turn without having become a little wiser, for it is a different approach to this form of locomotive literature.
Whilst the various affairs which went on behind and beyond the erstwhile Doric Arch, and upstairs beyond the Great Hall, may not be everyone's cup of tea, there can be few serious students of the locomotive who are not intrigued by the vagaries of the Webb compounds. Dr. Tuplin has much to say about these lamentable machines—and that chapter alone would make the book a worthwhile addition to the home library. One gathers, however, that the author is no lover of compounds, Webbwise or otherwise, and one could imagine many Continental eyebrows rising at the statement that "broadly speaking, locomotive compounding shows to its best advantage where full power is required at slow and moderate speeds but at high speed, the engine would do better without low-pressure cylinders". Now, just what would MM. de Glehn, Vallentin, and Chapelon say to that?
The opening chapters of the book deal more or less with the technical aspects of a locomotive and its appurtenances, but in such a manner that the veriest non-technical tyro can follow, aided by the diagrams. Of particular interest is the diagram of a cab interior complete with all its fittings numbered and their uses and functions explained: valve gears and brakes are also dealt with. After this prelude there follow brief descriptions of the output of Ramsbottom, Webb, Whale, Bowen Cooke and Beames, with interesting commentary on every design, including, in many cases, suggestions for the over-coming of certain inherent defects in the design immediately under notice. In this department are three line drawings for revised designs of the "Georges ", "Princes" and "Claughtons" (all of which will ubdoubtedly send the Premier Line purist dizzy!). Thereafter, general topics are discussed, such as tenders, water pick-ups, wheels, brakes and the like, all with entertaining and instructive comment. However, one notable feature of North Western engines has escaped mention—i.e. their propensity to "drop their motion"; those who had any part in the actual working of the line in those days will still remember only too well the recurrent crises arising from this cause.
The concluding part of the book, and a quite enthralling one, is entitled "Some Engines in Service" and portrays the actual working of locomotives from the angle of the men on the footplate on runs from Euston to Liverpool, Liverpool to Hull and back, and Crewe to Carlisle on the night Glasgow sleeper, to the accompaniment of gradient profiles of the lines involved. I hazard a guess that anyone who starts this chapter will not put the book down until he is through. The book winds up with a comprehensive series of Appendices, one of which is a table giving the principal data of all the locomotives reviewed: there is also an unusually complete sectionalised index.
The illustrations are mainly broadside views of the various types discussed and appear to be mainly L.N.W. photographs of the period, as will be recognised by anyone who still happens to possess any of the sets of picture postcards which were issued by the company over the years. An altogether admirable book both as an object of interest and as a work of reference, not the least of its pleasures being the delightful turn of phrase produced by the author at the unexpected moment.

The North Devon & Cornwall Junction Light Railway. C.F.D. Whetmath and Douglas Stuckey. Oakwood Press. Reviewed by HS
Converted into standard gauge branch line from a narrow gauge railway serving china clay pits and operated by Southern Railway: long review.

Railway progress 1909-1959: Vo!. II of Stephenson Locomotive Society Jubilee Year Publication. Reviewed by HS
This booklet purports, with the former volume, to show "what was the zenith of railway development and its later phase" during the first half-century of the S.L.S.' existence. Its pages are numbered (141-224) to follow on Vol. I, and its contents are complementary. The subjects treated include signalling; steam locomotives overseas; diesel development in U.S.A.; and British railways' rolling stock; Pullman and other passenger services; operating matters; steamers; road services; superheating; and permanent way. An apparent labour of love, it is, unfortunately, unreliable as a sourcre of information except for the experienced, who can discount the errors in reminding themselves of facts. Inaccuracies occur in the passages we have studied, notably regarding British rolling stock and foreign motive power, and no doubt are detectable elsewhere. One cannot recommend this gallimaufry to the younger reader seeking a reliable account of the 50 eventful years.

The Mid-Suffolk Light Railway. N.A. Comfort. Oakwood Press. Reviewed by HS
"After barely 60 years it is sad to read of uncertainties in the information as to locomotives and rolling stock-a warning to all railway archivists and historians of the ephemerality of material. I should have liked to hear more about single-line working with the" split staff", and of the sources of previous experience of the M.S.L.R. senior employees".

Railway history and the local historian. E.H. Fowkes. York: East Yorkshire Local History Society. Reviewed by HS
In this 40-page booklet the author, who is Assistant to the Archivist, British Railways Board, and was recently Keeper of Records at N .E. R. headquarters, York, illustrates the extent and value of B.R. archives to all who are interes- ted from any aspect in the history of the railway age. His work is of the utmost value, more particularly to railway historians and local historians generally and indeed to all undergoing training, or already trained, in reading, writing and interpreting modern British history, for which reason it should be read in universities. Includes locomotive records.

No. 287 (April 1964)

The Editor's diary. 121-2
Ends with note: Regrettably the issue numbers of the February and March copies of Railway World were misprinted. They were respectively Nos. 285 and 286, not 286 and 287 as printed.

Norman Harvey. The Bournemouth road: Locomotive Causerie. 122-7.
Tables of runs by rebuilt West Country No. 34046 Braunton on down Bournemouth Belle in 1963 with Driver Varney and behind Schools class No. 30932 Blundells on an Ian Allan special on 25 April 1954. Up trains from Southampton with Merchant Navy class Nos. 35021, 35005 (two runs one on Bornemouth Belle and one with Lord Nelson No, 30864)

Warren Smith. Pigeon train to Frome: a night's special work at Wolverhampton Low Level. 127-9.
Racing pigeon specials used to involve long trains of vestibuled, heated and lit bogie vans plus corridor coaches for the convoyers whofed,  watered and loaded and unloaded the pigeons. Three federations were involved: Wolverhampton, Midland and Worcester. The pigeons were conveyed in baskets.

A siding distant. William J. Skillern. 127
GWR sinal with siding ring on semaphore arm located at Newport Mill Street on 4 August 1962: located about half mile from level crossing approached on descent of 1 in 44.

North-Western eight-coupled then and now. 128-9.
Black & white photo-feature: Webb four-cylinder compound 2-8-0 No. 1017 (nicknamed Johnny Douglas see letter from J.M. Dunn on p. 230 who states should have been Johnny Dougan, after alleged similarity between front profile of this type and face of Driver Dougan's wife) on Catlethorpe troughs with down freight on 12 August 1916 (L.J. Thompson); four-cylinder compound 0-8-0 on up freight south of Tamworth in 1909 (W.R. Harley); two 0-8-0s pass north of Northchurch Tunnel in June 1947; No. 1487 hauling long coal train past Dunton West signalbox with Northampton behind on 9 July 1921; No. 49407 passing Sutton Park in December 1963.

I.S. Carr. Durhams Miners' Gala traffic.  132-7+. map
Durham Elvet ceased to be used for Galaa traffic on 18 July 1963 and there was a tradition of working special trains from lines like the Lanchester and Waterhouses branch which had lost regular passenger trains. Mainly concerned with relatively recent traffic. Photographs of special Edmondson tickets for Gala traffic from Pallion and Waterhouses.

W.J.K. Davies. Light railway notes. 117-18
Système Crochaat for Tramway de Pithiviers á Toury in 1921: single-ended Aster petrol engine with electric transmission railcar or autorail vehicle. Original was four-wheeel, but later versions had bogies.

Mallard: a "Railway World" and the Museum of British Transport Supplement. viii pp. (centre pages of April Issue)
No. 60022 near end of service (photograph Eric Oldham)
No. 4468 with dynamometer car and part of Coronation set on test run (painting by V.K. Welch)
Cecil J. Allen. World record-holder for speed with steam. ii-viii.
Includes other LNER Pacific records and dynamometer and detailed log of 3 July 1938 record run driven by J. Duddington and fired by T.H. Bray.
See also letters from Lionel Bennett and A.E. Durrant.

R.E.G. Read and Gordon Biddle. Some unusual British stations—II. 143-6.
Wolferton is both described and illustrated. Brocklesby, Trentham, Castle Howard and Redmile are merely described, as is Clarence Yard from whence Queen Victoria took ship to Osborne. Letter from P.W.B. Semmens (p. 230) noted policy adopted of pushing short trains into Whitby Bay at Scarborough.

J.S. Gilks. This month's centenaries. 147.
New Beckenham to Addiscombe Road 1 April; Liffey Junction to North Wall (Dublin); Savernake to Marlborough 15 April and Quaker's Yard Junction to Duffryn Junction 18 April with photograph of Crumlin Viaduct.

Grahame Boyes. The G.N. suburan electrification plan of 1903. 148-51. map
Limits set at Enfield, New Barnet, High Barnet, Edgware and Alexandra Palace: this proposal was not mentioned in Jackson and Croome's Rails through the clay. Proposals were submitted to the Great Northern's Board (by Dick Kerr, British Thomas Houston and British Westinghouse) and all suggested 600V d.c. three or four rail systems. The GNR was eager to retain their four-wheel rolling stock sandwiched between motor coaches, but Westinghouse considered that all-bogie multiple units would be more efficient. The Board shelved the proposal, evaluated more powerful locomotives: the American 2-6-0s were tried and Ivatt built his not very satisfactory 0-8-2T engines and so it went on until the late 1930s when the High Barnet line became part of the Tube system and the 1970s when the Great Northern lines were electrified. See also latter from A.M. Lawrence on p. 230.

E.C. Cheesman. To school by G.N.R. steam in 1910. 51-2.
Lived near Bowes Park and went to school in the City. Home garden backed onto railway where he saw Baldwin 2-6-0 on Enfield suburban service and later Ivatt 0-8-2Ts. School journeys were behind Stirling 0-4-4Ts or Ivatt 4-4-2Ts. Also memories of smole filled Snow Hill station

The Wotton Tramway. E.J.S. Gadsden. 
Further to the correspondence :m February issue regarding my article on the Wotton Tramway, may I add a few points of interest to anyone intending to visit the remains of the line today? It is still possible to walk almost the whole length of the tramway, although, as it was lightly laid, its course has become obscured more quickly than that of many other lines. As a result, the route is not too clear on the 1-in O.S. map and reference to the 2½-in edition will help.
The layout at Quainton is still much the same and the branch curves away from the platform to a bufferstop where the line formerly commenced to follow the roadside. No traces remain of Waddesdon Road and beyond here the line becomes a very overgrown footpath to Westcott, where the station building survives intact as a garden shed, complete with ladder still hanging on the back. The pair of staff cottages will be noted here, and at Wotton and Brill, and permission to view the booking office and waiting room should be sought from the owner. The line now disappears through the Westcott Rocket Establishment, but an alternative route is signposted to reach Wotton station, where a somewhat derelict building of early vintage survives. At the junction with Church Siding, there is still a grating, set in concrete, where the water tower stood and some chairs may be found buried in the grass. I doubt if the track referred to by a correspondent still exists at Wotton village, but the formation of the siding is still obvious from the Kingswood Lane, where it terminated. At Wood Siding, the separate tramway bridge still remains and in the hedgerow here is a post formed by a section of the original bridge rail. A point lever and a length of track can be seen where the brickworks siding crossed the road and two parallel ruts will be noted in the tarmac. Near to Brill station some earth works are evident and the site itself is marked by a very bumpy field, approached through a wide entrance from the road, and a pair of gates. The post box inscribed "Brill Station", and "Tramway Farm" opposite, confirm matters. Beyond will be seen the hill ridge, which was to have presented the main problem in constructing the extension to Oxford. For anyone who enjoys following the course of disused lines, the walk from Quainton to Brill provides a pleasant variation—and indeed, one can appreciate why it was termed a tramway.

The St. Helens' Railway. A.J. Gosden  and F.C. Brailsford. 
We would like to comment on J.M. Tolson's recent article on the St Helens Railway. Old Mill Lane signal box, on the Rainford branch, controls the sidings to the Sand Washing Plant of Pilkington Brothers Ltd., not the Sand Quarry as stated. The sand is brought by lorry from various sandfields and is washed and then despatched by rail to the company's three works in St Helens. On the Ravenhead branch, the line branches again about half a mile from Ravenhead Junction, at a point just past Marsh's Crossing signalbox. The left-hand branch serves the Ravenhead works of Pilkington Brothers and United Glass Ltd. The right-hand branch originally ran to Gillars Green Colliery. Today, the line terminates at the Triplex Safety Glass Co. works at Eccleston. Shortly after branching from the Ravenhead line,' the Eccleston branch runs through a short tunnel, this being the only one on the St Helens railway. Soon after the tunnel are sidings to a power station and St. Helens Co-operative coal depot, before the line continues to Triplex works. At the lower end of the Ravenhead branch, nearer to Ravenhead Junction, are the extensive sidings of Ravenhead Colliery, the Sheet Works of Pilkington Brothers Ltd. and the Sherdley Works of United Glass Ltd. Such is the volume of traffic over the branch that two diesel sliunters work three shifts a day from Monday to Saturday throughout the year. Curiously, a steam locomotive works the Eccleston line, this usually being a Fowler standard Class 4F 0-6-0.

Errata A.E. Durrant
May I correct a number of mistakes which have been made in your February issue?
A.C.E. locomotives The Urie NI5 4-6-0 had a 28in stroke, not 26in as quoted twice by Allen, the second time in such a way as to preclude the possibility of its being a misprint.
Saxon Meyers. Davies seems under a number of misapprehensions concerning these. A Meyer is not mounted on two spherical bearings (otherwise it would topple over), only the leading truck being so mounted. The trailing end rests on two flat guides, one at each side. The Saxon locos came into the Reichbahn in 1920 (not "the 1930s") and there are also similar but linger locos, numbered in the 98.0xx series, for standard gauge lokalbahnen. Further dimensions certainly are available, were one to consult L. Wiener's well-known book Articulated Locomotives (in English) to say nothing of various German publications.

MacDermot Redivivus
Of all the great railway histories Macdermot's authoritative account of the Great Western, produced under official auspices, must surely be the most famous. But even Jove nods and the boundaries of historical knowledge widen; a new generation of transport students will welcome the news that that most meticulous of railway chroniclers, Charles Clinker, has revised MacDermot. The first volume is now published by Ian Allan at 63s. The second will follow later in the year; a third and entirely original work by Clinker will bring the story from where MacDermot left off up to the end of the G.W.R. in 1947.

Number 288 (May)

J.S. Gilks. This month's centenaries. 160
1 May 1864: Ashchurch to Evesham
16 May 1864: Tewkesbury to Great Malvern

W.A. Tuplin. Double chimneys. 161-3.
Argued that only low pressure boilers needed multiple blastpipes; only gave an advantage at higher speeds (over 60 mile/h) to minimise back pressure. Cited Goss.

Theodore Horn. The railways of Whitby face closure this year. 164-74.
Whitby to Pickering opened 26 May 1836.

R.E.G. Read and Gordon Biddle. Some unusual British stations—III. 174-5+
Twin stations owned by different companies as at Wrexham Exchange (owned GCR) and General (GWR), Evesham (MR and GWR); Leamington Spa (LNWR and GWR); Sandy (GNR and LNWR), Batley (GNR and LNWR), Oldham (Clegg Street and Central) and many more. High and Low Level stations (Willesden Junction managed three levels). Eastwood near Todmordon was notable for its eccentricity.

Cecil J. Allen. Half-a-century of train travel—No. 26. The lively Great Western "Halls". 178-81.
Modified Halls were reckoned to be superior in terms of performance. A couple of short high speed runs behind Manor class also included.

P.F. Winding. Bowaters' narrow-gauge railways. 184-8.

W.J.K. Davies. Light railway notes. 189-90.

A.G. Dunbar. The McIntosh 918 class 4-6-0s of the Caledonian. 191-2.
Inside cylinder design with short life after the Grouping. Notes that in 1916, Nos. 918 and 919 were repaired by Robert Stephenson and Co. and repainted a much darker shade of blue than was customary.

Letters. 192-3

Some unusual British stations. Robert Keys.
Re Read & Biddle's article the use of the up platform at Rocester (N.S.R.) by Ashbourne branch trains in both directions was only brought about after the cessation of regular passenger services on the branch, on 1 November 1954. The original layout had a normal double-track junction at the northern end of the station, but it was often troublesome, in that the points for the down branch had to be situated on the level crossing with a rather sharp turnout to bring up and down branch tracks together to go forward to Clifton as single track. The Ashbourne branch was the first N.S.R. passenger branch to be opened and regular services were operated over it at different periods by Midland, L.N.W., and M.S.&L. companies. When the L.N.W.R. began running through Buxton-Euston trains over it at the turn of the century, there was a plan to double the track over the whole branch, but in the event only the section between Clifton and Ashbourne was converted.  The example of Stubbins, illustrated in the article, is paralllelled by Kidsgrove (Liverpool Road) on the N.S.R., where the station building is on a plot of land away from the tracks. In this case there was much discussion as to the arrangement of the nearby junction with the main line and I imagine the station building was erected on what was then thought to be going to be the alignment of the railway. Something similar happens at Luxulyan, Cornwall, where the passengers have to cross the track on the level to get from the booking office to the platform.

Some unusual British stations. G. 1. BIDDLE

R.E.G. Read
We are grateful to Dr J. R. Hollick for correcting our statement regarding Rocester in our article in the March issue. Dr Hollick also points out that Bettws-y-Coed originally had only one long platform, with a crossover in the middle, and that the southend of this platform still exists, though overgrown. The station in this form was until fairly recently depicted in a large L.N.W.R. photograph in the waiting room. Two small errors arose from changes in the captions. Baldersby should have been referred to as having "typical North Eastern Railway staggered platforms." The station itself is not typical, otherwise it would not have been mentioned in the article. Unfortunately, when amending the original manuscript in order to question the use of the main building at Llanidloes as offices of the Mid Wales Railway, we omitted to alter the caption to the illustration.

The St. Helen's Railway. Frank D. Smith. 193
With reference to J.M. Tolson's article on the St Helen's Railway, Part 11, page 75, he mentions three locomo- tives as ordered from the Horsleyfields Coal & Iron Co. of Bury. According to the copy I have of the minutes of this company, the Minute of March 28, 1832 states that they were ordered from the Horseley Coal & Iron Co. of Tipton, near Birmingham. I am inclined to think this the more likely address.

Northern Irish locomotives. A.V. Campbell.
I wish to dispute Messrs. Allen's and Arnold's remarks concerning train working on the G.N.R.(I) and the N.C.C. It seems to me that Mr Alien favours Glover's engines to Clifford's engines. The Glover compounds may have been good in the 1930s, but today they are not, whereas the Clifford engines that are still operational can still hit record runs. There were two members of my family who were drivers on the G.N.R. and they never had anything good to say about the Glover engines. They always main- tained that Clifford's engines were the stallions and work horses of the com- pany and the Glovers the showy type, but they were very hard on fuel and on the crews.
The N.C.C. tanks are all right for passenger and main-line goods traffic, but when they are tried on some of the local goods yards at shunting, that is another story. They won't go into some of the stores, they cannot traverse some of the crossovers and extreme care has to be maintained in their use in shunting. I have seen wagons of coal being shaken all over the place in the shunting yard where I work many a time. I must admit that Mr Arnold is right in his statement that our drivers cannot handle them too well.

Book reviews. 193-4

The Londonderry & Lough Swilly Railway. E.M. Patterson. Dawlish: David & Charles and London: Macdonald. 189 pp.  Reviewed by H.S.
In this, the second part of A History of (he Narrow-Gauge Railways of North-West Ireland, Dr. Panerson maintains the high level of the first part, The County Donegal Railways (David & Charles, 2nd ed. 1963). Whereas his earlier work is concerned with an undertaking that was efficient for much of its life and very good (in adverse circumstances) in its last days, he now deals with a very bad railway indeed-although, as he shows, its sins could seldom be laid to any one man's charge. To the railway lover the Lough Swilly's worst fault was the failure to give its fine 3ft-gauge engines chances to. show their capabilities. The reasons for this are admirably described by the author. The later narrow-gauge locomotives were all handsome machines and some were magnificent, like the Hudswell Clarke 4-8-4Ts, whilst all, especially the 4-8-0 tender engines, had an exotic if thoroughly British built-for-export look. If the Lough Swilly was not unique in its derailments caused by high winds, Joseph Tatlow's report of 1917 was a snorter unrivalled, probably, among railway reports until some recent strictures on one of the British Commonwealth's smaller railways. Tatlow referred to the Londonderry passenger terminus as "a rough, uncouth structure .... malodorous and unpleasant. ... calculated to retard rather than to encourage passenger traffic .... ". Things there did not seem to have changed much In 1941, shortly before temporary, wartime restoration of full passsenger services between Londonderry and Buncrana; when your reviewer inquired the way to the Graving Dock station he met with incomprehension until someone asked: "Is it the Swilly caubeen you'll be after ?". The temporary passenger service proved very popular, with petrol scarce and money plentiful; in 1945, over 8 per cent of tickets sold were first-class, although first-class seats formed less than 6 per cent of accommodation available.
Like many Irish railways, the Lough Swil1y suffered during the "Troubles" and was the subject of anecdotes and topical verse, though the elegy on the derailment by the wind on Owencarrow viaduct in 1925 has a taint of McGonigal not found in most Irish compositions. Unlike any other railway, it had a well- authenticated ghost train and a stationrnaster who not only opened his own refreshment room to compete with that of the official concessionnaire, but also—in the late 1880s—lit his station electrically (the first in Ireland to be so lit) by means of a generator driven by a windmill, and supplemented his free-issue uniform cap with a uniform provided at his own expense. Dr Patterson makes a real contribution to railway history and indeed to Irish history generally in his excellent accounts of the earlier standard-gauge lines, of the Lough Swilly marine services and of the steps taken by the Congested Districts Board (one of John Bull's unappreciated efforts to succour his Other Island) to open up impoverished Donegal by the Letterkenny & Burtonport Extension Railway. The last L.L.S. train ran in 1953, but the company's road venture is adequately dealt with. As the author remarks, seen in present-day perspective, "the wisdom of the .... rail to-road policy cannot be doubted. The company have continued as an efficient, profit-making [bus and haulage] concern in a countryside that would seem, to cross-Channel operators, decidedly unpromising". The many informatively captioned illustrations, including a frontispiece painting by C. Hamilton Ellis of a train hauled by a 4-8-4T in its final green livery, and the appendices enhance the value of this excellent history.

Ace enginemen. Norman McKillop. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd. 117pp. 194
This volume, consisting of  117 pages and 60 illustrations is, as the title suggests, very much a matter of Personalia. It is largely built around a series of exceedingly detailed logs of some notable runs, several by diesels believe it or not, on the various Regions. Details of these runs are examined by the author in conversation with the individual enginemen in the course of footplate trips on the Regions involved. These conversations bring out interesting sidelines on the why and wherefore of certain features of the runs, and peculiarities of certain types of locomotives, together with an insight into the character and outlook of the enginemen immediately under notice. In this last connection, it would seem that, in common with so many railway enthusiasts, musical interest goes hand in hand with the arts of railroading. As might be expected, the chapter covering the author's experiences amongst the Western Region men has its amusing moments—the impact of a super-staunch "Gresleyite" up against the Swindon Alpha and Omega atmosphere could scarcely fail to yield a dividend in this respect. I find the book a curious mixture of the interesting and the tedious. To the wholehearted devotee of "logging" and to those to whom the locomotive, its handling and its performance are the be-all and end-all of the railway scene, to whom also the names of many of the drivers interviewed are household words, the book will be of absorbing interest and entertainment: the general reader, to whom the names of these Aces mean nothing, will find many of the pages tedious. Some of the footplate jargon is apt to pall after a while and I, for one, take a hearty dislike to the misuse of that word "timing" to indicate the art of running a train according to schedule. "Timing" a train is the process of mapping out and laying down its schedule and/or, at a pinch, the recording of its running.
There appear to me to be some misstatements: surely some of these should have been corrected in the proof stage? It is, for instance, surprising to learn that "If you carry on to Thurso you can go to the most northerly station in Britain and travel by rail on the old Great North of Scotland Railway south to Aberdeen." Similarly I was surprised to learn that the "Bens"— presumably the Highland engines of that ilk—"were bred on the G.N. of S." and of the wonders they did on that company's line! Come now, Toram, on your very own doorstep! But there, I believe you are an Edinburgh man and in my experience, many a Sassenach is more familiar with the remoter regions of Scotia than the denizens of Glasgow and Edinburgh.
All in all, this appeals to me more as a specialist's book, particularly in the matter of the illustrations which are naturally of the dramatis personae.

No. 289 (June 1964)

Cecil J. Allen. Half-a-century of train travel—No. 28. "The  Queen of Scots". 199-204.
How the LNER attempted to find new markets for the former Great Eastern Railway's Pullman cars with services to Sheffield, Leeds and Harrogate. The services to and from Edinburgh, routed via Harrogate, initially ran non-stop to and from King's Cross via Knottingley and Church Fenton and these were hauled by former Great Central four-cylinder 4-6-0s Nos. 1165 Valour and 1126 Earl Haig and by the Director class.. From 1928 the service was given the name Queen of Scots, extended to Glasgow and routed via Harrogate and Leeds and took 9½ hours to reach Glasgow: by 1939 this had come down to 8 hours 53 minutes.

A.E. Durrant. Modern Czechoslovakian steam locomotives. 205-10.

E. Tuddenham. The M. & G.N. route to Cromer. 211-15.
Competition increased in 1906 when the Great Eastern Railway was able to run through services to Sheringham serving en route the Gleneagles of North Norfolk with its Links Hotel at West Runton. The Great Northern responded by running more through services including a restaurant car train in each direction at lunch time and one at 16.45 from King's Cross on Fridays. Illustrations include 4-4-2T No. 9 leaving West Runton station with train for King's Cross (new concrete fencing in place); Yarmouth train in Sheringham station hauled by 4-4-0 No. 32 in April 1936; B1 No. 61399 climbing Weybourne bank with a long freight for Norwich City in July 1959; B12/3 No. 61568 leaving  Cromer with up Norfolkman on 7 August 1956; and Runton West Junction with signalman presenting tablet to footplate crew of Brush Type 2 diesel. See also p. 311 letter from S. Cane on possible through carriages from Gloucester during 1930s..

Norman Harvey. London Midland steam. Locomotive Causerie. 216-21.

C.R. Harley. Memories of the Bristol-Birmingham main line 60 years ago. 222-5.
Observations made from Somerset Road station in the 1900s when the majority of the trains were passenger services hauled by Johnson singles, Belpaire 4-4-0s with 2-4-0s acting as pilots to Blackwell. Journeys were sometimes made on these services to the west, but the main theme is the variety in the through coaches carried on Midland Railway expresses with portions from Bournemouth being added or detached at Mangotsfield and from Southampton at Cheltenham as well as being worked forward by the Great Western from Bristol and northwards from Birmingham to Scotland and York.

Henry Butter. A Swiss tank takes a bathe. 225-6.
A scrap tank locomotive assisted with the launching of a tourist submarine, Jacques Piccard's Mesoscaphe, into Lake Geneva.

E.M. Patterson. The County Down Railway and the Tourist Trophy Race. 226-7+
From 1928 until 1936 the Royal Automobile Club organised the International Tourist Trophy Race for motor cars in County Down. It was known as the TT. One extraordinary faeture of the road race was that the railway level crossing was closed by statute during the race and passengers journeying to Donaghadee had to break their journey at Glassmoss Crossing, cross the road by a temporary footbridge  and board another train. In spite of the inconvenience to some passengers the railway gained by carrying many spectators. The race was ended by an severe accident in 1936 where the road passed under the railway at Newtownards.

W.J.K. Davies. Light railway notes. 228-9.

Letters. 229-30.

"Mallard". Lionel Bennett.
In the Mallard special supplement, Cecil J. Allen states that successive increases in boiler pressure in the Gresley Pacifies were accompanied by higher maximum speeds. This is undoubtedly true, but it does not tell us why the 250lb A4s were faster than their 180lb predecessors. When Gresley increased the valve lap of Centenary to 15/8 in the speed range giving the best valve performance (i.e. the most efficient steam flow) was raised from 25-50 m.p.h. to 33-66 m.p.h. This was barely satisfactory for an express passenger locomotive and so Gresley's next move was to reduce the cylinder diameter from 20in to 19in following the lining-up of Lemberg's cylinders to 18¼in. Reducing the cylinder diameter has the same effect on steam flow as does an increase in valve lap, so that the best valve performance speed range of Felstead (the first standard A3) was therefore raised still further to 37-74 m.p.h. But the reduction in cylinder diameter to 19in would have brought down the nominal tractive effort to about 27,000lb, had Gresley let the boiler pressure stay at 1801b. By raising it to 220lb the nominal tractive effort of the A3s became 33,000lb and this gave a better grate area/nominal tractive effort ratio. This ratio was improved still further in 1935, when the 250lb boilers fitted to the A4s more than compensated for the further reduction in cylinder diameter to 18½in. The smaller cylinders and the use of 9in piston valves gave the A4s a best valve performance speed range of 43-86 m.p.h. and a nominal speed (i.e. free exhaust limit) of 143 m.p.h. On its record-breaking run, Mallard's top speed came within 88 per cent of this figure, a feat equalled by Papyrus at 108 m.p.h. (nominal speed 123 m.p.h.) but bettered by the Al Flying Scotsman at 100 m.p.h. (nominal speed 110 m.p.h.). The various stages in the development of the Gresley Pacifies, culminating in the A4 design, had been made possible by employing higher boiler pressures as a technical necessity and not because of some indefinable intrinsic advantage. Earlier in the same article, Allen talks of the Castles with Churchward valve setting and 225lb pressure as making better times than the 180lb Gresley engines. A more pertinent comment would have been that the Great Western Castles with Churchward valve setting and 30sq ft firegrates proved that they could make better times than the Gresley engines with 41 sq ft grates. The figures of 180 and 225 have no inherent significance and serve only to mislead. Letter derided by A.E. Durrant

Great Western coaching stock.  P. Radford. 229-30
See M.L.J. Harris series, especially Part 4. Considered that Harris was incorrct to state that all Collett type B composites built between 1929 and 1935 had three third class and four first compartments: writer states that he had seen one with opposite ratio. Also criticies failure to differentiate between left-hand and right-hand brakes: see also letter from J.E. Cull on pages 311-12.

The G.N. suburban electrification plan of 1903. A.M. Lawrence.
Photograph of tube stock on ramp between Great Northern & City between Drayton Park and Great Northern main line.

Some unusual stations. P.W.B. Semmens.
Notes on where pushing passenger trains at Scarborough (2 coach limit); between Whitby Town and Prospect Hill and at Guisborough where five coach trains were propelled

The "Johnny Dougans". J.M. Dunn. 
Caption states Johnny Douglas as nickname for Webb's 2-8-0 four-cylinder compounds, but her stated should have been Johnny Dougan, after alleged similarity between front profile of this type and face of Driver Dougan's wife

J.S. Gilks. This month's centenaries. 231/3
1 June 1864: Barnham to Bognor; Elephant & Castle to Blackfriars; Garson to Liverpool Brunswick; Invergordon to Meikle Ferry; Uffington to Faringdon; Swadlincote Junction to Swadlincote; Milton Junction to Congleton Upper Junction; Nenagh to Birdhill
3 June 1864 Pencader to Llandyssil
11 June 1864 Scots Gap to Knowes Gate
13 June 1864 Westbourne Park to Hammersmith
23 June 1864 Borth to Aberystwyth
Clifton Maybank spur Yeovil
Letters on page 312 from R. Maund on most of the lines; A.T. Newham on Bognor station; and H.B. Oliver on Biddulph Valley line.

History of the Great Western Railway. Volume 1, 1833-1863.  E.T. MacDermot, revised by C.R. Clinker. 490 pp. Reviewed by R.R.
The announcement that Clinker had been engaged on a revision of MacDermot's important classic on the G.W.R. was acclaimed with interest by many. Those who were expecting great things from this erudite combination of names will not be disappointed by the first volume. The original volume was divided into two parts, but the new edition has been brought within the compass of a single book MacDermot's history has always been regarded with respect by competent historians. There was little enough to criticise in his original work, but a few amendments authenticated by MacDermot himself have now been incorporated in the text. Since this work was first published in 1927 new sources of reference have become available and in recent years there has been a considerable awakening of interest in railway history. To a large extent Clinker himself fostered and encouraged this renewed interest and although it has been suggested that he was an austere historian he was nevertheless a most conscientious and reliable one. It is of interest to note that nearly 40 years ago, as a relatively junior employee of the GWR, Clinker was given the task of helping MacDermot in sorting through some of the many documents that had to be studied before the original work was written. One feels, therefore, that MacDermot would have approved of his appointment to revise the history. Clinker has approached the task with his usual thoroughness and has followed MacDermot's standard "that nothing unsupported by authority is asserted". The result is extremely commendable. The standard of production is very high indeed and those of the illustrations and plans for the original work that are included are for the most part reproduced in larger size, thus enhancing their value. There is an impressive list of names of present-day railway historians, acknowledged experts in their own field, who have been consulted in the revision of the text. One feels sure that they will be well satisfied with the new edition. The present volume deals with the early years of the GWR from its inception to the close of 1863, by which time the greater part of its eventual network of main lines had been opened. Apart from the authorisation, construction and operation of these lines, all aspects of the system up to that date have been considered. There are, for example, comprehensive chapters on signalling, train services, personalities, locomotives and rolling stock. Useful appendices detail the opening dates, mileage and gauge of all lines up to 1863 and a I ist of broad-gauge locomo- tives from 1837 to 1866. Later this year it is intended to publish the second revised volume, which completes MacDerrnot's work and brings the story to the year 1921. A third volume, the sole work of Clinker, is now in course of preparation and will deal with the years 1922-47. The appearance of these further volumes will be awaited with considerable interest.

Light railways: their rise and decline. W.J.K. Davies. Ian Allan.  Reviewed by HS
The last two general treatises on light railways to be published in the English language, in the eastern hemisphere at least, appeared nearly two-thirds of a century ago, and each was written with an axe to grind—the gauge of the variety of light railway advocated. An authoritative work is, therefore, long overdue. Many students of transport in general must be grateful to Davies for his brave and largely successful attempt to deal with a subject of great complexity, and particularly hard to discuss because of the diversity, in many lands, of applications of the principles and criteria which qualify an undertaking as a light railway.
Students of railway practice and history will delight in the author's descriptions of light railways in some countries of Western Europe, including lreland. As regards France and Belgium Davies is very well informed indeed. I could have wished, however, that he had enlarged on the fascinating systems of Holland. He remarks, rightly enough, that freedom from competition and over-modernisation "have taken most Swiss secondary lines out of the true light railway category altogether ", but one would be glad to know how these two factors have affected Switzerland's multiplicity of minor railways. More should have been said about Spain, where, Davies admits, light railways are still favoured and "are being rapidly modernised with diesel locomotives and railcars". And why is there such cavalier treatment of Italy, where new light railways have been constructed quite recently? In a chapter on Austria, in which the author refers to the earlier undertakings in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he should have discussed the strategic considerations that influenced, if they did not actually cause, the building of light railways in Bosnia and other far-flung territories of the Hapsburg dominions, and the role of tourism, which influenced railway construction. in Austria to a greater extent than is often realised. The Scandinavian countries do not figure at all. Nevertheless, despite apparently restricted reading, the author does succeed in making many important points and in illustrating them in their applications in Ireland, France and Belgium.
Davies is less successful in treating of light railways which he calls (" for the sake of simplicity") by the reviled—in this day and age—term "colonial". I very much doubt in any case whether the smaller railways of India, South Africa and Australia have enough in common to be lumped together. In the territories of Africa and Asia which have been ruled or controlled by European powers in the railway age there are certainly many light railway undertakings which have a good deal in common. It is a pity that Davies has not examined those of Egypt and Indonesia, for instance, on which there is plenty of material available in London and the Hague. His chapter on India is unsatisfactory because he has not really determined the criterion, in the light of the Indian gauge situation and of the Indian environment generally, of what constitutes a light railway in that sub-continent; nor is his know- ledge sufficient. It is a pity that he chose to discuss at length the Darjeeling- Himalayan, whose main line from Siliguri to Darjeeling was built primarily as a narrow-gauge extension of an at first partly broad and partly metre- gauge main line linking Calcutta with the Bengal summer capital, and not primarily to open up the tea-growing area served; the narrow gauge was necessary because at that time construction of a metre-gauge line up the Himalayas was physically or financially impossible. Davies should have dealt with the adjacent Bengal Dooars Light Railway.
I cite this example of the author's failure to deal satisfactorily with subjects of which his knowledge and reading are insufficient. Would that he had confined himself to Western Europe. I must also carp—as will many others—at the misspellings of foreign words that occur throughout the book. That is not to deny that it is a work of considerable value and interest, and his views on part played by light railways in today's setting are worth studying. The many illustrations are well reproduced and of the greatest interest where they depict European practice.

The Springburn story: the history of the Scottish railway metropolis. John Thomas. Dawlish: David & Charles (Publishers) Ltd. and London: Macdonald & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. 260 pp. IReviewed by HS.
The Springburn area of Glasgow was a railway metropolis because it contained at one time the C.R's St. Rollox and the N.B.R's Cowlairs Works, the Hyde Park Works of Neilson Reid & Co. and the Atlas Works of Sharp Stewart & Co. To say that Mr. Thomas, a Springburn man born and bred within sight and sound of locomotives, tells the story of this concentration of locomotive building and locomotive builders and their families is an understatement. The author has distilled the very essence of the spirit which permeated Scottish locomotive design, construction (whether for home or export), running (including Caley and North British rivalry) and the men who made drove and fired Springburn products- and indeed the whole Springburn community. His easy style and graphic descriptions make pleasurable reading even for those unacquainted with Conner 8ft singles, "Dunalastairs" (both for home consumption and the Ostend-Brussels-Arlon services), Cardean, W.P. Reid Atlantics, the (Hugh) Reid-Ramsay "electro-turbo-loco " (as it used to be called), "WGs" for India, "Grampian Corridor" sets, 12-wheel non corridor coaches, 50-ton wagons and much else.
In view of the enormous variety of topics discussed in a small compass the index is inadequate. Perhaps it was a mistake to try to deal with so much in so tantalisingly small a volume: Mr. Thomas should follow on with more. Today, with the Atlas and Hyde Park works almost derelict, it is hard to believe that only in 1953, its jubilee year, did the North British Locomotive Co., formed in 1903 by amalgamation of Neilson Reid, Dübs and Sharp Stewart, consider its record as "more of a stimulus to the future than a nostalgic glory of the past". The human aspect is treated with skill. There is, for instance, a masterly account of the St. Rollox Works excursion to Carlisle (why Carlisle?) of 1899, when 14 Dunalastairs worked fourteen specials there and back—at a profitable fare of one shilling a head; and Mr. Thomas tells footplate stories well. The problems of the British locomotive builders' export markets half-a-century, as expounded by Mr. Thomas, ago are not entirely of academic interest today. This variety makes the book excellent reading. The production generally is inferior to that of the publishers' previous products. The photographs, however, including some taken 80 years ago by an N.B.R. driver, are (to most readers) new and well captioned. I now look forward to Mr. Thomas' next book on these subjects.

Bulleid, last giant of steam.  Sean Day-Lewis. George Allen & Unwin Ltd. 299 pp. Reviewed by HS.
The "Merchant Navy", "West Country" and "Battle of Britain" Pacifies, even after rebuilding, and the Ql Austerity 0-6-0s alone would put their designer in a class by himself as a locomotive engineer. Add to these the Leader, C.I.E.'s turf- burning CC-I, and the Southern Railway's Co-Co electric locomotives, besides many developments in carriage and wagon design, and the chain-driven valve gear of the S.R. Pacifies and other contrivances devised (in Mr. Day- Lewis' words) "scientifically .... to increase the availability of the steam engine, not simply by improving the existing practice but by building into it as many as possible of the advantages of the internal combustion engine, diesel and electric traction". It is then easy to see why many informed people, railway operators as well as engineers, regard O.V.S. Bulleid as the greatest British locomotive engineer—perhaps the only outstanding British locomotive engineer—since Gresley. With this desire for intensive development of steam power, including both success and splendid failure (the latter due largely to wartime and postwar shortages of material and to the Government's coal-burning policy which deprived the Leader of one of its best potential assets) Bulleid has shown himself realistic in acceptance of inevitable electrification and dieselisation, His success as a rationaliser of maintenance and workshop practice deserves a book to itself—though it is strange that he has been accused of a liking for costly materials for carriages.
For all seriously interested in railways the author has done a valuable service in enumerating and assessing Bulleid's achievements and in sketching as much of his personality and character as is necessary for apprehending his purposes, methods, failures and triumphs through- out his working life at Doncaster and afterwards. Mr. Day-Lewis will un- doubtedly be criticised for failure to deal more fully with the rebuilding of the " Merchant Navies'" it would be interesting to hear more 'Of the precise reasons which impelled the B.T.C. and, apparently, the Regional management, to embark on this costly work, and of the subsequent performances and econo- mies which have led to official belief that the job has been worthwhile—and why Bulleid would not agree. If all things concerning the successful experi- ments with the Giesl Ejector on Pacific No. 34064 Fighter Command were not wrapped in official mystery, one would like to know why it has been " imposible to persuade Dr. Beeching's headquarters that any more money should be spent on steam improvements"; B.R. is not the only major system in the throes of dieselisation and electrification—indeed it has more steam engines than most which it is bound to keep in good order for a Few more years—and managements in several continents find that it pays to invest comparatively little in prolonging the life of their steam fleets. Where he digresses from locomotive, carriage and wagon design and maintenance, the author flags. Hisremarks on the Southern Railway's pre-Grouping constituents, such as the statements that the L.S.W.R. "conveyed passengers comfortably and slowly to Plymouth, Exeter, Weymouth, Bournemouth, Southampton .... " and that by 1923, "only the [S.E.C.] boat trains reached the standards of expresses in other parts of the country" show deplorable ignorance; Mr. Day-Lewis might try reading Cecil J. Allen. ln view of the often far-reaching effects or a railwayman's development of military service in railway units, it is a pity ths one cannot learn here just what Bulleid did in the Great War of 1914-18; and what the author says about Bulleid': honours does not make much sense. Having made these criticisms, I must aver that Mr. Day-Lewis' book wil cause a great many people as much pleasure and interest (not unmixed with wholesome irritation) as it has caused, me. Its value to those in senior positions on railways is dubious, for, like high office to Bulleid, it has come to late.

London Railway Preservation Society . 235
Successful with its efforts in saving Metropolitan Railway 0-4-4T No. L44 and Beattie well-tank No. 30585.

No. 290 (July 1964)

Premier Line passenger. 338.
Photographs: Claughton 4-6-0 Mo. 1914 Patriot near Blisworth on 2 October 1920.

Kenneth C. Davis. 270
[Double chimneys question] see Tuplin response

Book reviews. 273-4.

The Garstang & Knott End Railway. R.W. Rush, and M.R.C. Price, Oakwood Press. 274

Newham, A.T. The Schull and Skibbereen Tramway and Light Railway. [Lingfield (Surrey)], 1964. 274

No. 291 (August)

William Jones. The Penarth Dock and Railway. 279-87. map
Opened by the Taff Vale Railway in 1862 for the export of coal. The line was extended to Penarth Town in 1878 and eventually to Barry.

A quaint combination. S. Rickard. 287
Former Taff Vale A Class 0-6-2T No. 305 coupled to Great Eastern coach E63688E at Cardiff General on 08.25 ex-Merthyr on 19 July 1951.

P.F. Winding. The Festiniog Railway, 1964. 288-91
Plans for deviation

W.A. Tuplin. The Great Eastern "Decapod". 293-5.
Called it "an extremely expensive experiment", but did not cite Skeat's seminal Newcomen Society paper above. On the other hand he recognised the outstanding achievement of constructing such a powerful locomotive and suggests that the designed accelation was only attained by increasing the boiler pressure to about 250 psi.

Cecil J. Allen. B.R. steam sings a swan song on railway enthusiast specials. 298-301
No, 60023 Golden Eagle from Carlisle to Tebay on 30 June 1963; No. 46251 City of Nottingham from Carlisle to Preson on 5 October 1963 

M.L.J. Harris. A history of G.W.R. coaches, 1923—1947. Part X. Compartment stock 1924-1933. 304-8. illus., diagrams (elevations) and tables.
Includes the articulated sets of 1921 built to the Metropolitan Railway loading gauge and which remained in service until 1957 and 1960; the B sets built between 1924 and 1933 and sundry suburban coaches built between 1924 and 1932: this included the construction of close-coupled with bow ends which feated seating which conformed to the bowed ends.

100 years of London Transport's first branch line —the Hammersmith & City. 309-10.
Opened from Green Lane Junction (near where Westbourne Park station was situated to Hammersmith on 1 July 1964. It was a Great Western and Metropolitan Joint Railway and was mixed broad and standard gauge.. Photograph of Metropolitan Railway 4-4-0T No. 4 at Hammersmith on  mixed guage track in 1860s

Letters. 310-13. 

The Northampton-Peterborough Line. J.M.B. Edwards. 311.
WW2 journey made on 9 August 1943 from Peterborough East was worked by Southern Railway F1 class 4-4-0 No. 1084

Through trains to Cromer. S. Cane
Possible through carriages from Gloucester during 1930s to North Norfolk and Norwich.

Great Western coaching stock. J.E. Cull. 311-12
Differentiation between left-hand and right-hand brakes and other stock, notably composites

This month's centenaries. R. Maund. 312
Detailed comments on several of the lines, but mainly on those in Swadincote area.

This month's centenaries. A.T. Newham
Further information on Bognor station

This month's centenaries. H.B. Oliver
Further information on Biddulph Valley line to Congleton

"Mallard". A.E. Durrant
Bennett's letter in your June issue was full of statements which, to say the least, are doubtful. Firstly, how on earth can he claim to calculate a locomotive's optimum speed range down to the nearest m.p.h.? The steam lap could perhaps be expressed as a function of the piston stroke, but certainly bears no relationship to the cylinder diameter. By Mr. Bennett's method, the way to increase a locomotive's speed is to simply reduce the cylinder diameter, a plainly ridiculous idea. What exactly is a " nominal speed ", and how can it possibly have any bearing upon the freedom of exhaust? Mr. Bennett accuses Mr. Alien of being misleading, but this seems very much a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

"Jinty", "Valance" and all that. A.G. Crawshaw.
Permit me to express my horror at the use, in a pleasant journal like Railway World, of that word "Jinty"—and applied to the North London of all lines. Since the occurence was in the Editorial. may I take it that it happened while Jove was nodding? Fowler's standard goods tanks were not known as "Jintys" all over the LMS; the engines had various nicknames in different areas of thai railway, and "Jinty"—as far as I can remember—was a GSWR effort The" Jinty" of universal application is decidedly an amateurism. I was privileged to be friendly with a few NLR. drivers at the time when thr 0-6-0 tanks were replacing the Nortl London's own 4-4-0T, and the change was looked upon as an insult, as standardisation gone made. The only nickname I ever heard of on the North London was" Gadgets". And what has Mallard done to deserve a "valance"? Try that on a driver and see the stare you get! I know that some knowledgeable amateurs have used the word, but that does not make it right, or railway-like—the proper name is "footplate angle iron" (and in the special case of Mallard and the A4 class perhap "motion shield "), with alternatives of "footplate angle" or "footplate edging".

J.S. Gilks. This month's centenaries. 313
1 August 1864: Winwick Junction to Golborne Junction; Woodburn Junction to Meadowhill.
9 August 1864: Pembroke to Pembroke Dock
13 August 1864: Tenbury to Bewdley
16 August 1864:  Brixham Road to Kingswear
23 August 1864: Ryde to Shanklin

Book reviews. 314.

William Stanier. A Locomotive Biography. O.S. Nock. London: lan Allan Ltd. Reviewed by J.T..
This volume, consisting of 190 pages and 71 illustrations, is rather more than a biography, as its subtitle suggests, for we learn as much about the Stanier products as about the man himself. The author traces, step by step, Stanier's notable career from its commencement It Swindon to his retirement from the L.M.S. in 1944 and subsequent activities thereafter, during which he received .ome of the highest honours the engineering profession can confer.
Stanier came of railway stock, for his father, W. H. Stanier, served at Wolverhampton under Joseph Arrnstrong and later became confidential assistant to William Dean at Swindon. It was here that his famous son was born, brought up and joined the Great Western in the last year of the broad gauge. One wonders just how many an admirer of the superb L.M.S. "Duchesses", as he has stood beside one, has realised that the designer started his career amongst those strange ungainly machines of the broad-gauge era?
And so we follow his progress through the Great Western scene from his first appearance in Swindon works to ultimate high office very near the throne, with interesting sidelights on the general development of the G.W. locomotive stud and works practice. An entertaining couple of pages are devoted to the 1925 G.W./L.N.E. locomotive exchange, and a rare collector's piece is the chapter on the visit to the U.S.A. in 1927 of the G.W. locomotive King George for the Cenenary celebrations of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad at Baltimore, over which tour Stanier presided: equally rare must be the detailed logs quoted of some runs made by No. 6000 over B. & O. metals after the exhibition.
The 1923 Grouping had not greatly affected the Great Western, but the picture elsewhere was another story. In particular, the L.M.S. had never comfortably survived the birthpangs of this upheaval and some five years later was faced with a considerable locomotive policy problem. The large miscellany of locomotive types on hand the operating problems then pending and the still persisting internecine strife between members of the chief constituents, suggested that the only hope for a satisfactory solution on the locomotive side would be the appointment of an outsider to the chief seat. At this time Collett was firmly enthroned at Swindon and it seemed that Stanier's progress was thus blocked for some time to come on the G.W.R.; the ins and outs of how he came to be appointed CM.E. of the L.M.S. provide a diverting chapter. Of his assumption of the reins, and all that followed—the introduction of a limited number of new but highly efficient standardised types embodying all that was best of the Swindon practice which he brought with him, and the various modifications of these until the best results had been achieved-let the book speak for itself. A special chapter is devoted to the "Duchesses" as representing the apotheosis of Stanier's genius, but many readers may regard the "Black 5s." as his outstanding contribution to a far-flung empire which afforded almost every kind of locomotive work imaginable. That a single type of machine could have been produced to meet such widely vaying demands so successfully is, perhaps, an even greater measure of the designer's genius: the "Black 5s" have their chapter, too.
Stanier's fame, however, spread far beyond the confines of the G.W.R. and L.M.S., for he came to be regarded as one of the most outstanding locomotive engineers of our time with world-wide acclaim. In 1936 he was seconded to a Committee which was appointed to examine the whole of the affairs of the State-owned railways of India, and he was away from the L.M.S. for four months. Scarcely had this Committee made its report when a serious accident to an Indian passenger train caused yet another Committee to be convened, which he was invited to join, the enquiry this time being directed to the standard Pacific locomotives then in use: this involved yet another visit to India, all of which provides material for a particularly interesting chapter. During the war years he was appointed as one of three Scientific Advisers to the Ministry of Production and subsequently his services were sought on behalf of various other non-railway undertakings: in 1943 a knighthood was conferred upon him by King George Vl, to be followed by many other honours, including some of the highest that can be awarded by the engineering profession, both before and after his retirement from the L.M.S. in 1944, all of which are duly recounted. Needless to say, the book is interspersed with a number of logs of runs with various types of locomotives, but some of these which deal with special tests will be found of interest. A feature which is only once mentioned, and even then obliquely, is that of rolling stock: this seems a pity, for it was during the Stanier regime that the L.M.S. passenger stock acquired quite a new look. Lest it be thought that all this sounds like heavy going, let it be said that the book is emeninently readable and Mr. Nock has greatly enlivened the proceedings with many an anecdote concerning not only the subject of his biography but a number of other well-known personalia in the locomotive and railway hierarchy of this country. The book is to be highly commended both for its biographical content and for the insight which is given into the locomotive developments of both the Great Western and L.M.S.

Handbook for railway steam locomotive enginemen. London: British Railways Board. 200 pp. Reviewed by M.N.
The hastening supersession of steam by diesel and electric traction on British Railways led to the British Railways Board, having a surplus stock of this handbook, which for the past few years has been issued to steam drivers, firemen and maintenance staff, and as result they have put a real bargain on the market for steam enthusiasts. For the price, no one has since before the war offered such a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the steam locomotive and its handling, or one so usefully illustrated with diagrams, of which there are 89, including 30 in full colour to show clearly the content of specific pipes and passages—saturated, superheated or exhaust steam, high or low pressure compressed air, vacuum, oil, water and so on.
The handbook begins by outlining a steam engine crew's duties, then describes the whole process of transforming solid fuel into a steam locomotive's power. Further chapters deal in meticulous detail with the boiler and boiler mountings, valves and pistons, valve gears, lubrication, brake systems and A.T.C Each chapter is concluded by a series of questions and answers which often summarise usefully potential causes of failure and the action to be taken.

Number 292 (September 1964)

Norman Harvey. Return to the Somerset & Dorset: Locomotive Causerie.319-26.
Locomotive performance logs: Bath to Evercreech Junction with BR Class 5 4-6-0 No. 73049 with four coaches on 30 April 1964; two 2P 4-4-0 Nos. 40698 and 40601 with eight coaches on 25 May 1954 and 2P 4-4-0 No. 40568 and 7F 2-8-0 No. 53810 with 11 coaches on 22 August 1953; Evercreech Junction to Bath with BR Class 5 4-6-0 No. 73068 with four coaches plus three tank wagons on 27 April 1964; 7F 2-8-0 No. 53801 with six carriages on 22 August 1953; Blandford Forum to Boornemouth West with double chimney 9F 2-10-0 No. 92233 with 12 carriages; and Merchant Navy No. 35030 from Templecombe to Andover Junction with ten cars, but there is no note of whether unrebuilt or rebuilt, only on the massive regain of lost time

F.P. Saunders. A bridge with two names. 326
Watford Lodge Bridge between Rugby and Long Buckby. Illustrations show pulpits or armchairs.

Campbell Highet. A shedmaster's day. 327-9.
Examines running foreman's logbook, then mechanical foreman reports on any problems, then daily coference which may involve telephone calls to sub-sheds, then mail, medical reports especial attention given to problems of eye-sight; examination of locomotives including those requiring to be shopped; state of stores including overalls, coaling plant or stage, routine cleaning and maintenace. Illustrations attractive (interior of York shed taken by Eric Treacy), but not relevant to London Midland Region manager.

G.M. Kitchenside. The "Coronation Scot" train sets of the L.M.S. 329-35.
Brief text which sets out Sir Josiah Stamp's announcement to the shareholders; the special blue and silver livery, the streamlined Pacifics and the virtually standard rolling stock; the special train built fot the tour to the USA and the new red and gold livery and the residual use of the rolling stock. Illustrations: plans of the 1937 sets, the Anerican tour set and the projected 1940 articulated sets; No. 6220 Coronation on demonstration trip of 29 June 1937 leaving London; exterior of open first No.7507; interiors of open third and open first; compartments of brake third and corridor first; Pacific arriving at Baltimore for American tour; set with sleeping car for American tour; Baltimore & Ohio Pacific hauling set; LMS Pacific and train in Washington Union station; corridor of club saloon; first class compartment with telephone and everbody smoking cigarettes; first class loung loooking towards bar and reverse viw; club car and open first with meal being served; US army officers using bar car in Jacksonville during WW2 and club car in use as M823M in North Wales Land Cruise set

Cecil J. Allen. Half-a-century of train travel—No. 31. The L.M.S. "Royal Scots". 338-41.
Eather disappointing: better to go straight to Cox paper and Allen's British locomotive practice and perforamnce articles in Railway Mag

E.J.S. Gadsden. Decline on the Great Central. 342-6.
The slaughter of the train service on what would have been a uuseful alternative to HS2

W.J.K. Davies. Lighr railway notes. 346
Isle of Man, Festiniog, Talyllyn, France & Germang: a few words on each

C.B. Harley. Memories of a G.C. station in the Pennines. 347-8
Hazlehead..

J. Spencer Gilks. This month's centenaries. 348-9
1 September  1864 Eccles to Wigan; Tyldesley to Pennington; Petersfleld to Midhurst; Hay to Three Cocks. 21 September Llanidloes to Talyllyn Junction. 22 September Ruthin to Corwen. Illustration: former L.S.W.R. station at Midhurst on 20 August 1957 with Class C2X 0-6-0 No. 32526 shunting wagons over the line connecting the L.S.W.R. and L.B.S.C.R. premises.

Letters. 349

Salute to the Great Western. W. Young
In the July issue Cecil J. Alien wrote of the "enthusiastic support given by all concerned on the W.R. from the General Manager downwards". I am sure Mr Allen's "all concerned" was intended to include those not actually seen by the travellers on your special train on 9 May, so I would like to mention a small and possibly isolated case.
At 11.20 four seconday school-boys, under my " leadership", eagerly waited at Long Sutton. The special, due to pass Castle Cary at 11.14, was — according to the boys' deductions from information received some days earlier — to be headed by No. 4079 Pendennis Castle. By 11.30 the prestige of Ian AlIan and Western Region (not to mention my own) had suffered a severe blow, which was not eased when from Somerton tunnel the special eventually emerged headed and heralded by "Only an old 'Hall', Sir! "
In an attempt to restore the I.A/W.R . reputation, a belated dash was made for the nearest rural telephone kiosk, to call W.R. Taunton" All other (than passenger) Depts.", seeking news of the Diamond Jubilee Special. Why late? Why a "Hall"? Some delay was to be expected while the appropriate branch was contacted, but reaction was immediate: engine failure; "Hall" from Westbury; "Castle" from Taunton. Then followed animated conversation, bringing forth a flood of information — stages, engine numbers and times. Enthusiasm could be felt over the wires; answers were spontaneous, supplied, it seemed, by two persons, yet without apparent confusion.
The keenness of my informants made me inquire as to their names and jobs — high-ups of the operating staff, surely. Then came astonishment; they were operators all right — on the telephone switchboard! (Only then did I realise that I had not been put through to any department.) On apologising for hindering extremely busy persons I was told they were enjoying a lull following the "Special" storm, when they had been literally in the thick of it, their wires fairly sizzling shortly after the message from the train at Edington IB signal.
That lull was well-earned, even if spoiled by my butting-in. Perhaps those switchboard men told me — at my msistence more than I was entitled to know, but I wouldn't want to get them on the carpet for giving me not only the sought-after facts but also unsolicited evidence of that enthusiastic support noted by Mr Alien, though well behind the scenes in this instance. At about  17.50 the same day I asked the young signalman at Cogload why he had "the boards off" for a train to cross to the Bristol line, when the special should be due in about a quarter of an hour. With some excitement he replied: "This is for the Special; we are treating it like a Royal Train! " Congratulations to the lan Allan organisers of the Diamond Jubilee Special.

Double chimneys. W.A. Tuplin. 349-50
In reply to a question (p. 270) by Kenneth C. Davis I suggest that the simplicity of the plain double blast-pipe makes it less expensive, initially and in maintenance, than the Kylchap exhaust, and that, on that account, it is to be preferred.
In reply to C.R. Weaver, I have to say that I have used no "mathematical computations" in this subject. The basis of the estimates is derived from test-figures from a variety of locomotives and its results are within the range of "scatter" of such figures. It estimates about 390 h.p. as the frictional loss in a "Castle" at 90 m.p.h. and Mr. Weaver asks whether it is excessive. Figures obtained during the controlled testing of "King" No. 6001 in 1953 (Journal I. Loco.E. Vol 43, Part No. 5)  [KPJ: assume this is Ell paper and not to Tuplin!] show 800 h.p. lost in the locomotive and tender at 70 m.p.h, Assuming the "vehicle resistance" of the 135-ton engine and tender to be that given by the Johansen formula for coaches of that weight, it absorbed 350 h.p., leaving 450 h.p. for friction in the mechanism at 70 m.p.h. On this evidence, 390 h.p. for a " Castle" at 90 m.p.h. is certainly not too high.
The Johansen formula was developed for design purposes and is therefore an over-estimate for average running conditions. It is nevertheless useful as a basis of comparison between different performances and as a means of estimating (for example the result of a small change in available power, but it has never been claimed to predict exactly what power any train will take or to be a substitute for a dynamometer car in deciding what any locomotive did. I think that Weaver's estimate of 2,200 i.h.p. for a "Castle" pulling 260 tons on the level at 93 m.p.h. in neutral running conditions is probably on the high side, but only indicator diagrams could have disproved it. I do not know the origin of the "conclusion" mentioned in Weaver's last paragraph and I have not "predicted" a. few per cent for anything. I have pointed out that no amount of ingenuity or ironmongery can possibly beat the best practicable single blast-pipe by more than the few per cent of output power that it requires to maintain normal rates of combustion.

Double chimneys. D.H. Landau. 350
The letters in your July issue raise some interesting points which touch on much of the mystery that still surrounds the steam locomotive. For instance, why was the steam raising capacity of No. 71000 so inferior to that of a "Merchant Navy"? The boilers of these two engines are virtually identical, and so also were the degrees of vacuum from tube exit to ashpan. I am aware that the "Duke" differed in lacking thermic syphons, but experiments revealed these to have no bearing on steaming capacity. The problem is further complicated by the "Britannia" bettering the "Duke's" output with a smaller grate and the reputation of the single chimney "Merchant Navy" of burning less coal!
C. R. Weaver's queries on locomotive resistances may be assisted by the following table:-

These somewhat surprising results, derived from B.R. test bulletins, indicate that Tuplin's formula discards detail design too lightly.
Finally, A. E. Durrant, in his article on Czechoslovakian locomotives, is wide of the mark in suggesting that 2,500 d.b.h.p. is required to haul a 3,000-ton freight at 30 m.p.h. on the level. Tests have shown loaded mineral wagons to have a specific resistance of 6lb/ton at this speed; thus the train mentioned would require only about 1,450 d.b.h.p., well within the capacity of a B.R. Class 9F. It is unfortunate that more evidence was not forthcoming to support the claim that Czech locomo- tives "are undoubtedly the finest that Europe has ever seen "

Double chimneys. K.C. Davis
Thank you for publishing my letter in the July issue. I think I should point out a printing error in the third paragraph; in my letter I made reference to "a comparative test with No. 861 Lord Anson" As published this reads: "No. 853 Lord Nelson".

York, Clapham & Swindon Museums. J. Blissard Barnes 
The information on this subject contained in your July issue was most disturbing. I think I should let you know that I myself took up this matter with my local Member of Parliament and he has now sent me Dr Beeching's reply to my letter. In this Dr Beeching states definitely that the press reports on the closing of the Museums are unfounded. He further states that, although he is seeking a solution of the problem as to who should be responsible for the financial burden of maintaining the Museums, no hasty action will be taken which might result in the relics being lost. It seems therefore that the position is not so grim as it appeared to be.

The Railways of Whitby. Theodore Horn. 350
I am most grateful to your corre- spondents for drawing attention to certain points in my article. I note now that someone (and it can't be my friend Ken Hoole) gives the driving wheels of Class 124 the improbable diameter of "4in 7¾ft!" Of course Prospect Hill runs north and south. So approximately does Whitby Town, so that a train describes a complete letter U between the two.
I am glad to be corrected about the Sunday services. The incorrect date I gave for the opening of the Scarborough & Whitby Railway was due to a careless confusion in my notes of two dates; 31 October 1884, when a locomotive first crossed the Whitby viaduct; and July 16, 1885, when the line was opened.
I am interested to hear of Classes M and Q appearing in these parts. They seem, with their 7ft lotin wheels, most unsuitable, but I recollect that Fletcher 901 Class and Tennants regularly worked over Stainmore, and anyhow most North Eastern engines could go anywhere and do anything. A Great Northern Atlantic at Whitby must have been no ordinary sight. Was it photographed there?
I did not know that some of the "Willies" were rebuilt as early as 1914. My date was based on a paragraph in the Locomotive Magazine for 1919, which described the rebuilding and gave a diagram. I don't know whether all the "Willies" were shedded in the Whitby district. I have a record of Nos. 686, 688, 689, 691 and 693 working there. Some were no doubt displaced when Class I> became available. There was at least one Class D on the coast line in 1918, and, during the last years of the North Eastern, coast line trains were worked impartially by Class D, Class O, and the Willies. At least one Willie was still at Whitby in 1947, No. 9792, formerly 688. In the same way I imagine the BTP Class were speedily withdrawn as soon as Class O became available, from 1849 [KPJ ? 1949] onwards.
There were thirty six 45ft clerestory coaches with four different arrangements of compartments and van, all built in 1898/9. It is reasonable to suppose these shorter vehicles were built for and used on the more sinuous lines, such as the Whitby & Pickering, from the start. My recollection is that the summit gradient post at Ravenscar, at the down end of the station, reads 1 in 1571 falling through the station towards Scarborough, and 1 in 39 down towards Robin Hoods Bay. I used to have a photograph of it, but cannot lay hands on it now. Needless to say, the 1 in 1571 does not continue very far.
The quarries at Sandsend to which Mr Semmens refers were, I believe, alum workings. There used also to be alum workings between Fyling Hall and Ravenscar, served by sidings with no signals but a lever frame, presumably controlled by a key.
There are in the Whitby Museum a number of photographs taken during the construction of the coast lines. I wish these could be published, as they are of extraordinary interest. I under- stand the negatives are still extant. But to deal with all the points of interest on the fascinating railways of this district would require a book. I omitted more than a dozen items for reasons of space.
My hope that the Whitby & Pockering may be preserved is, I admit, partly sentimental. But on reflection I can see a case for keeping the Scarborough line, if one has to go. Incidentally a road from Grosmont to Goathland would avoid the terrors of the present road up Blue Bank. But this would also appeal to me sentimentally, for my first railway journey was made from Robin Hoods Bay to Whitby, I may perhaps be forgiven for not recording the engine or details of the run, as I was only two months old at the time.

Speed restrictions on the W.R. Nigel S. Forster. 351
Madeley is perfectly correct in pointing out that the Didcot East Junction crossovers' maximum permitted speed is 40 m.p.h. Nominally the rule on former G.W.R. lines is a fixed distant for junctions and crossovers restricted to a maximum of less than 40 m.p.h. However, there are a number of junctions and crossovers on ex-G.W. lines with maximum permitted speeds of less than 40 m.p.h, which, in fact, have splitting distant signals. To give three examples in the Birmingham Division alone, we have: Soho & Winson Green Up Main to Up ReJief—20 m.p.h.; Birmingham Moor Street Up Main to Up Relief—25 m.p.h.; and Bearley West Junction Up Main to Branch (Hatton}—35 m.p.h. These have motored lower arm distants for Hockley North, Bordesley North and Bearley East respectively.
I was most interested to read Dr Patterson's and Mr Bowman's articles on the East Fife Line. Mr Bowman's memory serves him correctly. There was a Fifeshire Coast Express which ran during the summer months, leaving Crail at 07.05 with portions for Glasgow Queen Street and Edinburgh Waverley. The return from Glasgow was at 16.06 and from Edinburgh at 16.50, The up train to which Mr Bowman refers was the 15.00 Dundee to Edinburgh via Crail, booked away from Pittenweern at 16.06. This train was not named Fifeshire Coast Express according to a 1939 Bradshaw I have in my possession.

The Garstang & Knott End Railway. J.P. Bardsley
Re review of this book in the July issue and particularly pleased by your reference to G. E. Worthington, whom I knew well, As you have pointed out, certain errors occur—one rather obvious one being the impression conveyed that the headquarters of the railway were at Garstang, whereas actually-in the latter years, anyhow—they were at Knott End. On the subject of liveries Knott End I am sure was green and I think Blackpool was black; I do not seem to remember any red locomotives.
About 1908 or 1909 I remember that an L.N.W.R. Webb 0-6-0 saddletank was working on the line. Years after, I spoke to Worthington about this and he said he would look it up in the records but there, I am afraid, the matter was left. 1 think, too, that mention might have been made of the circular tours from Preston-to Blackpool by rail, thence to Fleetwood by the cars (many of them open-sided) of the Blackpool & Fleetwood Trarnroad (long since taken by by Blackpool Corporation); thence by the Ferry to Knott End; and thence back again to Preston by rail. It was quite a popular trip at one time.
An interesting might have been railway was the Garstang & Blackpool Railway—a map of which hung, at one time, in the bar of the Royal Oak at Garstang. I can remember seeing some surveyors at work somewhere about St Michaels or Churchtown as a small boy and my father telling me it was in connection with a proposed railway. I have never been able to find out where the map disappeared to, except that it was removed and "put away somewhere" in the course of alterations many years ago. I have often wished that some historian would throw some light on the scheme, which would have originated 60 odd years ago. It would, given the distinctly doubtful support of the L.N.W. and L. & Y. Railways (whom it would, as an independent concern, have short-circuited) have been a great boon to travellers from Lancaster and the North to Blackpool. Maybe it was the opposition of these two railways that prevented it ever becoming more than a map on the wall of a bar!

East German Light Railways. D. Fielding
The notes recently compiled by W.J.K. Davies on East German narrow gauge were most interesting, but I should like to point out that the Mecklenburg-Pommersche Schmallspurbahnen is about 95 miles north of Berlin, and the photo of the 0-8-0 tender locomotive was taken at Wegezin-Dennin, not Dennin-Wegerin.

The East Fife Line. James Birrell Duff. 351 
Letter used line between Pittenweem and Dundee regularly four times a week. Over the hill section between St. Andrews and Crail, the climb to Mount Melville is at 1 in 206/63/49, the last bring the ruling gradient on the bank. There is an easing to 1 in 260 through Mount Melville station, and then the climb continuedd at 1 in 50/170 before levelling out for half a mile in preparation for the final ascent at 1 in 660/132/50 to the summit near Stravithie. Half a mile at 1 in 660 down, through Stravi- thie station, precedes a two-mile descent at 1 in 53/660/59/50, flattening to 1 in 300 through Boarhills. From the Kenly viaduct there is a slight rise at 1 in 173, followed by a short level stretch through Kilduncan crossing. Thereafter, the gradients are 1 in 87 up, 1 in 330 down (through Kingsbarus station), and up again at 1 in 60, down to the Kippo Burn at 1 in 100, and up at] in 106/550 to near rnilepost 24, and down at 1 in 66 for the last mile into Crail.
In Mr Bowman's article on "The East Fife Line since 1935 " there are a few points which do not fit in exactly with the facts. In 24 years' travelling by train between St Andrews and Dundee I have never known of the existence of a turntable at St Andrews. Mr Docherty, station foreman there for many years, and whose connections with St Andrews station go back to 1903, confirms this. He relates that, short of going to Dundee, locomotives used to turn on the triangle at St Fort, prior to 1924. The turntable at An- strut her is still in use. A few years ago, the rails were extended beyond the table for 2ft on either side, in order to accommodate B 1 4-6-0s, but it cannot take Stanier Class 5 4-6-0s.
Mr Bowman states that the Fife Coast Express was almost invariably hauled by an Eastfield B1, but this is not correct, as the vast majority of the workings were from the Dundee end, and Tay Bridge motive power depot usually supplied the locomotive for the Fife Coast Express. Bl No. 61263 was a frequent performer on the train. There was a nameless down express that ran from Glasgow to Leven only during the winter, as Cecil J. Allen notes in Titled Trains of Great Britain, and this may have been hauled almost invariably by an Eastfield B1 In an article on the East Fife Line in the October 1952 number of Trains Illustrated, I mentioned several unusual workings of the train at the beginning of the summer season of that year, when Glasgow took over the working of the train for one week, and produced locomotives from Eastfield, Corkerhill, and Perth sheds.
Except for its first few days of life, in September 1949, the Fife Coast Express" had always been formed of an articulated twin and an articulated triplet of ex-Silver Jubilee stock, liveried in crimson and cream, and later in maroon, with extra vehicles of ordinary corridor stock at busy weekends. The streamlined vehicles, incidentally, were numbered in the Scottish Region series, viz., SC 1581/2E, and SC 1586/7/8E. I never saw, at any time, an observation car on the Fife Coast Express and it was almost a daily routine of mine to observe the down train passing Pittenweem at 18.18, and not infrequently the up train at 07.46.
My final point relates to the single-line Lochty branch. Contrary to what Mr Bowman stated about its having been disused for many years, the line to Lochty is still open to goods traffic. Of the four stations on the line, Montrave, Largsward and Lochty are designated" Unstaffed Public Sidings ", Kennoway alone being graced with the title "Goods Station". My friend, Mr Walker, stationmaster in charge of Anstruther, Pittenweem, St Morrance, and Crail stations, and who has had many years experience with the Lochty line, tells me that the branch was used only during the summer months for the storage of wagons and was open for traffic during the winter months. Notice of closure has now been served on the branch, and this was effective on and from Monday, August 10, 1964.
[A correction from Mr Bowman, who is now resident in Canada, unfortunately reached us too late to delete his reference to a non-exsistant turntable at St Andrews before the July issue went to press-ED.]

Book reviews. 353

The Great Western Railway in the 20th century. O.S. Nock. London: Ian Allan Ltd. 212 pp. Reviewed by JT
As a companion to the author's previous book The Great Western Railway in the 19th Century one would expect this volume to follow more or less the same pattern-and so it does. If it seems to be a series of miscellaneous and at times somewhat disjointed essays, it could hardly be otherwise, with the extensive changes and develop- ments of the last half-century of the Great Western's corporate existence, to say nothing of the impact of two World Wars and a national depression crisis.
In his preface Nock unashamedly admits his admiration for the Great Western, but it would be a perverse reader who would not grant that a fair picture has been presented: no attempt has been made to draw a veil over the many idiosyncracies of "Mother" (as the G.W.R. was known to many of an earlier generation of enthusiasts), most of which are exposed in the course of these pages. Even in official circles these were well known—how often, for example, did the minutes of a Railway Clearing House meeting end with the words "The Great Western Company dissented"? He also pokes fun gently at the leisureliness of the G.W.R., particularly in the matter of time spent by trains at stations: alas, fun can still be poked at this habit.
The start of the century found the G.W. busy with the equivalent of a "Modernisation" plan affecting many of the principal departments, of which the various developments are examined: new lines and cut-offs, station rebuildings, new locomotive programmes and train service improvements, all come in for attention. In the last-named sector some space is devoted to the competition with the L. & S.W.R. for the London-Exeter traffic and also the Plymouth-London Ocean Mails races (curiously the Salisbury disaster is not mentioned in connection with the latter, although the Preston one is in a reference to the similar races to the North).
Of unusual interest are the revelations of the domestic politics of some of the chief officers, certain of whom reported direct to the Board independently of the General Manager, this latter title being accordingly somewhat of a misnomer; although Sir James Inglis prepared a scheme to rectify this by means of a new organisation, it was not until the dynamic Felix Pole assumed the chair that matters were tidied up. As might be expected in a book coming from the authoritative pen of Nock, we are regaled with an appreciable dose of locomotive matters and logs great and small. To many readers whose interests in railroading are of a general nature, the frequent interruptions in the narrative by these may be found tiresome; nevertheless some of them serve to illustrate a point immediately under notice.
Some readers will part company with Mr. Nock in certain of his enthusiasms. Your reviewer, for one, would quarrel with his eulogies of the 70ft stock built for express services at the turn of the century. Having often ridden in it in those early days he would unhesitatingly say that the G.W.R. appeared to be competing with the L. & Y.R."as to which could give the unfortunate .third-class passenger the least to sit on! A journey in a G.W.R. 70-footer or an L. & Y.R. Colne-London through coach found one perched on little better than a padded ledge—seat would be an optimistic word for it in both instances. And whilst on the rolling stock subject one must contradict the statement that the Centenary stock (9ft 7in wide) was the widest in use in Great Britain: it was not—those L. & Y.R. Liverpool-Southport electric 10-footers were still running at the time.
Nock has interesting things to say about signals and of the G.W.R.'s successful pioneering in the A.W.S. field; here, too, he exposes another G.W. waywardness, to wit the blind refusal to countenance the upper quadrant semaphore, an obtuseness persisting even to this day in the Western Region of B.R. In bygone days when the Metropolitan used upper-quadrants, the line north of Baker Street provided a convincing proof of the advantage of this method of display on the stretch where it parallelled the Great Central: the Metropolitan upper "off" display was far more quickly discernible than the G.C. lower, but all this was lost on Paddington. Even the G.W.R.'s initial colour-light installation in the London area vitiated the essential advantages of the system by sticking to the equivalent of the semaphore indications in its display. Amongst interesting topics about which one would like to have heard more are the Taunton-Penzance electrification project, the absorption of the small Welsh companies and wartime affairs, particularly the London evacuation arrangements.
The book contains an excellent coloured frontispiece, some 73 well- reproduced illustrations, many of which are unfamiliar, and 26 diagrams, the latter including interesting plans of the layout at Newton Abbot and Bristol Temple Meads before and after rebuilding. On all subjects Nock writes entertainingly and the book should appeal to the general reader quite as much as to the locomotive enthusiast.

Railway holiday in France. George Behrend. Dawlish: David & Charles; London: Macdonald. 189pp. Reviewed by HS
As a detailed description, for enthusiasts, of the author's route through tracts of French railway territory not previously written up (and rightly chosen for that reason), this is an excellent book. The itinerary is from Cherbourg and St. Malo via Nantes to Bordeaux, thence to Toulouse. Then follows a digression through the Eastern Pyrenees and over the electrified La Tour de Carol to Villefranche section, followed by a detour to the frontier at Cerbere. From this southernmost corner of France Behrend takes us through Languedoc (with a trip on the Montpellier-Palavas line of the Reseau d'Herault) and on to Nimes, thence to Avignon and over a stretch of the (to me, slightly mysterious) Rhone right bank line to Le Teil, over an even more remote ex-P.L.M. branch to Ales, and via the Ligne des Cevennes to Clermont Ferrand. There follows a trip round branch lines in the northern Massif Central to St. Germain des Fosses, and so by the Ligne du Bourbonnais and Paris back to Calais.
Apart from the wealth of excellent, unfamiliar and well-captioned photographs, and the superb maps from H. Lartilleux' Geographie Universelle des Transports, the best features are the descriptions of train working at many stations and of changing Transfesa fruit van axles at Cerbère. Mr Behrend also sheds light on modern S.N.C.F. practice in several spheres. From dealings with French operating staff in peace and war, however, I have doubts as to intentionally slow starts from platforms (the demarrage of the "Mistral ", for instance, is often spectacularly fast) and to the early attachment of train engines before a start; and the Louis Philippe practice of locking up platforms between trains is still widespread. He makes some excellent points, such as the deterrent effect on rail travel of the absence of station porters and the motive power crisis on the Lyons-Marseilles main line due to traffic increase and failure to electrify the alternative right-bank route. Some of his history is unsound. The principal exchange of territory between what were then the Etat and the Paris-Orleans took place many years after 1909. Raoul Dautry may have augmented the Etat's Paris-Bordeaux passenger service, but Etat-P.O. competition dates back to many years—and its result, France's almost only troughs, to several years before Dautry. The reference to new lines in the Vichy-Gannat area is obscure and seems wrong. The allusion to 4-6-0s working the light trains-de-luxe of the pre-1914 Nord must shock devotees.
On non-railway matters Mr Behrend inclines to platitudes and to generalisations—on French tea, for instance, whose availability and quality outside tourist resorts have for 70 years or so waxed and waned with anglomania. (Soon le Scotch may be scarce and unfashionable again.) The enthusiasts for whom he writes he apparently deems highly unsophisticated. What is more to the point, since many of them are young and impecunious, he might have suggested ways of obtaining youth hostel and other cheap lodging (such as rooms over cafes), besides citing the Michelin and Club des Sans Club guides, which tend to begin where many railway lovers' purses end. Despite a dated allusion to O.A.S. bombs, the descriptions are up-to-date; thus he takes cognisance of the R.E.N.F.E. electrifi- cation to Cerbere, In view of the many words which the author leaves in French, printers and proof readers have been moderately successful. Since Mr Behrend includes in his bibliography, besides some less useful works in English, the monumental work of Monsieur Lartilleux, he might have cited issues of Chemins de Fer and of La Vie du Rail, whose highly critical and knowledgeable readers cannot fail to find pleasure in Behrend's entertaining book..

The Giant's Causeway Tramway. J.H. McGuigan. Lingfield, Surrey: Oakwood Press. 109 pp. Reviewed by HS. 354
The fact that the Giant's Causeway Electric Tramway was the first railway in the world to be run on hydro-electric power and the first public electric railway in the British Isles makes it overdue for full Oakwood treatment. Apart from its several motive power peculiarities, it was an interesting little tourist line. McGuigan succeeds very well indeed in dealing with the traction and other aspects comprehensively, informatively and entertainingly in a compact volume. Space does not allow your reviewer to dwell on the many things of merit and interest in this admirable treatise. Many readers know something about the motive power: steam, and siderail and subsequently overhead electric, and about Walkmills hydro-electric power station. They must, however, read this book to learn the true facts and gain a perspective of a remarkable transport enterprise. They will appreciate the author's dry humour, as for instance in his description of the a posteriori proof by W.A. Traill (who for many years was the Giant's Causeway Tramway) of the harmlessness, even to a beggar with torn trousers or a Highlandrnan, of sitting on the live rail.
One of the many matters mentioned is the attitude to the Tramway of the Belfast & Northern Counties and of its successors, the Midland and the L.M.S. The B. & N.C. over 60 years ago ran restaurant car excursions ("Holden Trains") to Portrush in conjunction with Messrs. Holden of Lame, and these presumably benefitted the tramway also. The Midland and L.M.S. were on the whole helpful—short of buying the Tramway when, inevitably, it fell on evil days. I note with interest that the Board even expected to be able to buy a new steam tramway engine as late as 1905, and that the wooden teeth in the gear wheels at Walkmills were replaced in 1925 at a cost of over £100. Even stranger than the struggle between the Tramway company and angling interests for water at Walkmills in times of drought was the naval engagement off the Causeway in 1916, when a splinter from a shell fired by a surfaced German submarine slightly damaged the Tramway's overhead equipment. But readers must learn all this for themselves. Like its companion volumes, this book lacks both an index and a chronological list of events-sad deficiencies in a definitive work. The many illustrations are well chosen and reproduced, though I should have enjoyed more views of trains on sections of open line, showing the scenery.

The Railway King. Richard S. Lambert. London: George Alien & Unwin Ltd. Second impression. 320 pp. Reviewed by HS. 354
Railway historians may be able to learn something new of purely railway interest in this painstaking "study of George Hudson" (as the sub-title states) " and the business morals of his time", and younger readers must welcome re-issue of a work first pub- lished in 1934 and long since out of print. Its main interests, however, are sociological and human. The railway history appears to a layman to be well told, from Hudson's early slogan " Make all t'railways come t'York " to the York & North Midland suits against him in 1851.

Number 294 (November 1964)

D. Bertram and A.M. West. The railways of Hull and their traffic—:Part II. 398-402.
Long distance trains: LNWR stationed locomotives at Dairycoates from 1893 to provide through workings to Liverpool: not stated when arrangement ended. On 7 January 1961 Inter-City diesel multiple units took over. "The Hull-London services have long been hampered by their detour via Doncaster. Had the proposed Humber Bridge been built in the 1870s when it was first proposed as a rail bridge, this service might have been faster".

Cecil J. Allen. Half-a-century of train travel—No. 33. From Stirling to the "Schools". 403-7.
Assortment of motive power on the former South Eastern lines to Dover and Thanet.

Letters. 408-9.

Some unusual British stations. R.E.G. Read and Gordon Biddle.
Response to letter from Keys (May): ] May we thank the correspondents, both public and private, who have shown interest in our article in the March to May issues, and reply to some of the points raised?
Although not strictly relevant to our subject, we should, perhaps, correct Mr. Keys' statement in the May number that the M.S. & L. ran regular services over the N.S.R. to Ashbourne. On the authority of Dr. J. R. Hollick we under- stand that these were merely summer excursions, the myth that they were " regular" having arisen from the derailment of an M.S. & L. engine at Ashbourne on one occasion. Our comments were of necessity brief on so wide a ranging subject, and local knowledge such as that profferred by Mr. Sernmens of Scarborough in June is a useful corollary to that which we obtained from the Appendix to the Working Timetables, although his amplification naturally was somewhat beyond our scope in the space available.
As for Bala Junction, referred to in the July issue, perhaps Mr. Bowen has visited it more recently than one of the authors who, last year, could not see a sign and was certainly unable to find the path!
Mr. G. Webb has kindly pointed out that the cottage orne buildings of Leicester & Hitchin days at Kettering have gone, and that the down platform at Henlow was not shorn of its rails when the line was singled but at a later date when it was necessary to lengthen a platform for troop trains, for which the up platform was more suitable. He thinks it was probably during the 1914- 18 war when Henlow Camp was established.
Finally, we must correct the reference to the G.N.R. branch from Hitchin to Dunstable, in the second instalment, which should of course have read Hatfield to Dunstable, an error for which we apologise and can only ascribe to a slip of the pen.

Power loss in locomotives. W.A. Tuplin. 409
No real use can be made of any figures such as those given (p. 350) by Mr. Landau, without some statement of their range of uncertainty. From the fact that these suggest much higher power loss in the" King" than in the larger " Duchess" I believe that they are doubtful to the extent of at least 25 per cent up and down. Would that everything published were so reliable as this!

Power loss in locomotives. John F. Clay.
It would appear that the h.p. figures for the Duchess and No. 71000 have become transposed in Mr. Laundau's table. The excellent ratio of draw-bar to indicated h.p. shown by No. 71000 redeemed, to some extent, its disappointing boiler performance. In con- junction with the corresponding figures for the Britannia and the B.R. Class 5 the test results are a tribute to the effect of roller bearings. It would appear that, at high speeds, roller bearings are at least as beneficial as double chimneys.
The high resistance figures for the G.W.R. Kings and the marginal effects of a double chimney suggest that some of the more sensational claims of very high speeds, at unlikely locations, by G.W. Kings in the mid 1950's, should be approached with reserve.

Through trains to Cromer. E. Tuddenham
The following details of through cross-country trains between Gloucester and Cromer Beach via Birmingham, Leicester and the M. & G.N. line may be of interest to Mr. Cane (Letters, August issue).
The L.M.S. and L.N.E.R. Summer public timetables for 1939 advertise through carriages on weekdays in each direction between Cromer Beach and Birmingham, departing from Cromer at 9.40 a.m. and from Birmingham at 2.0 p.m. but the M. & G.N. carriage working diagrams for the same period show the coaches as running to Gloucester SX and Birmingham SO; in the reverse direction they are shown to leave Gloucester at 11.32 a.m. SX and 11.57 a.m. SO. Six years earlier, the L.M.S. public timetable for 1933 in its list of through carriage workings shows a departure from Gloucester to Cromer at 11.31 a.m. with an arrival at 7.14 p.m.; in the opposite direction the 9.40 a.m. from Cromer is shown to terminate at Worcester. An M. & G.N. local public timetable for the period July I l-Septernber 24, 1927, advertises a Restaurant Car express from Gloucester due in Cromer at 7.10 p.m., while the up train is only shown as a Restaurant Car express to Birmingham. During the Summer of 1906 the Midland Railway was running through carriages from Gloucester at 8.20 a.m. to Cromer due 2.40 p.m. and in the reverse direction they departed from Cromer at 3.20 p.m. reaching Gloucester at 10.25 p.m. It would be interesting to know if one set of coaches was used for the return journey.
There could well be other dates of which I am unaware when, what in Norfolk has been called the Leicester Express, actually made its western terminus at Gloucester. Like Mr. Cane I should like to hear of other instances besides those I have listed. Through carriages to and from Gloucester also served the other sections of the former M. & G.N. line to Yarmouth Beach, Lowestoft Central and Norwich City.

Through trains to Cromer. D.L. Preston
Mr. Cane's mention of a through service from Gloucester to Cromer in the 1930s is quite correct. The October, 1931, Bradshaw, shows this as leaving Gloucester at 11.30 a.m., through coaches going to Cromer, Norwich, Yarmouth and Lowestoft. The train stopped at all stations except Cleeve and Fernhill Heath between Gloucester and Barnt Green, and did not arrive in Birmingham until 1.39 p.m. It then stopped only at principal stations, and over the M. & G.N. section was dignified with the title of " Express ", taking 73min for the 36,f miles to Bourne. It reached Cromer at 7.15 p.m., Norwich at 7.10, Yarmouth at 7.56 and Lowestoft at 8.35. There was no through return working but a service operated as far as Leicester, leaving Cromer at 9.40 a.m., and conveying through coaches from Norwich, Yarmouth and Lowestoft. This reached Leicester at 1.19 p.m. By changing at Leicester and Birmingham, Gloucester could be reached at 5.3 p.m., which was 22min faster than the through services.

Railway Songs. S. Alasdair Munns
While it is true that the railways of Britain have contributed less to folk song than those of the United States, Mr. J. E. Kitching would be well advised to obtain Ewan MacColI's long-playing record Shuttle and Cage (Topic 10Tl3). This includes two versions of "Poor Paddy Works on the Railway", probably the best known of the songs sung by the Irish navvies, "Moses of the Mail ", Moses being a popular Lancashire &Yorkshire engine driver, and, in lighter vein, "Cosher Bailey's Engine ", a Taff Yale Railway version of the famous Welsh song "Y Mochyn Du".

[A.J. Powell] 45671, Slogging over the Peak. 410-14.
Freight working from Rowsley: load limits and methods of working over steep gradients, sometimes with bankers. Observations on passenger working between Manchester and Derby with Class 5 No. 45279, Royal Scot No. 46142 and two type 2 diesels D5704 and D5705 with six coaches!

5 Pause 5 Pause 5. Pre-grouping signal boxes. 419-23
Company characteristics: LNWR, Midland Railway, North Staffordshire, Lancashire & Yorkshire, North Eastern, Great Central, Great Northern, Great Eastern, Great Western, LSWR, LBSCR, SECR, GSWR, Caledonian and North British.

C.S. Heaps. The Helston Railway 1887-1964. 424-8.
Act passed on 9 July 1880; line inspected by Colonel Rich on 6 May 1887 and opened on 9 May 1887. Worked by GWR. The Great Blizzard of March 1891 blocked the line for almost a week. The line was amalgamated from 1 July 1898. Closure to passengers was effected on 3 November 1962, and freight services followed soon after. The junction station at Gwinear Road closed after this article was published.

J.S. Gilks. This month's centenaries. 429
1 November 1864: Strawberry Hill to Shepperton; Whitacre to Midland Junction (Nuneaton); Penrith to Cockermouth; Lightmoor to Buildwas

Book reviews. 432

Nineteenth century locomotive engravings. William Fenton. Hugh Evelyn. 28pp. Reviewed by MJ