Backtrack

In a guest editorial this month JOHN SCHOLES, compiler of the detailed captions for our industrial railways photograph features, shares some philosophical thoughts. ‘History is bunk’ is an oft misquoted section of a 1916 lengthy interview with Henry Ford by the Chicago Tribune. The missing words ‘more or less’ changed the context, moving him ‘historically’ from hero to villain. Keen to see aspects of the past preserved, he opened a museum in his home town of Dearborn thirteen years later. Rail featured with other exhibit; he commissioned Darlington locomotive builders, Robert Stephenson & Co. to build a replica Rocket to as near original as known and used it on rails round the museum until laid up in 1949. I am not sure if it is just an age thing, but…

From the Midland Railway the London Midland & Scottish inherited at the grouping 60 0-6-0 shunting tanks. The LMS soon found these eminently suitable for its needs and had added no fewer than 422 more of them to its stock by 1931, enabling the quick scrapping of many older shunters. So keen was the LMS to do so that it contracted most of them to outside builders, five different companies being involved, with only the final fifteen being constructed in one of the railway's own workshops, at Horwich. They went about their routine business – be it yard shunting, local freight trips, station pilot work largely unnoticed and without acclaim but they toiled hard and solidly until the last withdrawals in 1967.…

Merseyside was the home of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, opened in 1830 as probably the first steam-worked passenger railway. Birkenhead, “over the water” from Liverpool on the west bank of the Mersey estuary, was also an important port and it did not take long for it to seek connection with the growing railway network. The Chester & Birkenhead Railway was authorised in 1837, with the intention of cooperation with the Chester & Crewe Railway, and opened in September 1840, by which time the C&C had been taken over by the Grand Junction Railway, which saw the C&B as a threat to its traffic to Liverpool. It therefore insisted on separate stations at Chester when it opened eight days after the C&B, with all goods and passengers having to be…

Introduction Of all the Atlantic types which ran on the railways of Britain, none faced greater challenges than did those of the North British Railway, as every line that they traversed was fraught with difficulties. The Waver ley Route was arguably the most formidable main line in the country, rising twice to summits over 900 feet above sea level in the 98½ miles between Edinburgh and Carlisle. Southbound trains had first to battle with a nine-mile climb at 1 in 70 to Falahill which was followed by ten miles of 1 in 80 (often from a standing start) at Hawick to reach Whitrope Summit. Had the Atlantic routes been planned as a test of stamina and strength for locomotives and their crews the designer could not have achieved a better…

In January 2023 it will have been 50 years since I saw the advertisement for these special offers from British Railways. How long they remained on offer is not known, but they did give me an opportunity to visit three northern cities. At the time of my first visit to Sheffield. I was recovering from an operation and was glad of a friend to come with me. 11th January 1973 saw us at Wellingborough station for the 07.59 to Derby with the return fare to Sheffield at 70 pence! Soon after arriving at Derby we noticed a cluster of railway-looking officials gathered round a locomotive. Naturally we went to see what was attracting their attention. It was, in fact, the prototype High Speed Train, (No.41.002) on a trial run. We…

Airfields, especially those used by the Armed Forces, tend to be large open spaces and are often situated somewhat away from built-up areas. Over the years each of the three Services in the UK has used flying fields although the Royal Air Force (RAF) did not exist as a separate entity until 1918. Both the Royal Navy (RN) and the Army (Royal Engineers) were pioneers in the use of aviation and formed kite balloon squadrons prior to the fixed wing aeroplane becoming a practical proposition. The intention to form a Royal Flying Corps with military and naval wings was announced in Parliament on 26th March 1912; it formally came into being on 13th May with Royal sanction. Even so the early aviators had to gain acceptance from not only their…