Table of contents for Volume 40 No 1 - January 2026 in Backtrack

The editor recently received ia query from a reader asking about articulated locomotives and what the advantages and disadvantages of such types were. Soon after, on a social visit with a mutual friend, I had the pleasure of welcoming the editor on to the footplate of James Spooner for a trip up the Ffestiniog Railway. One thing followed another and here we have an ‘answer’, of sorts, to that question. Firstly, I will introduce myself and give some flavour as to why the editor sees me as equipped to respond to this query. I am the Operations Manager for the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways, having initially started as a volunteer locomotive cleaner at Boston Lodge Works in 2005. Following training and working through the grades, I qualified as a…

Background The North Staffordshire Railway (NSR) – ‘The Knotty’ – possessed two very majestic viaducts on its main ‘Pottery Line’ which was authorised by the North Staffordshire Railway (Pottery Line) Act 18461. Its main line ran between Macclesfield via Stoke-on-Trent to Colwich with an important branch from Stone to Norton Bridge. The two viaducts were both located in Cheshire between the station at North Rode which closed on 7th May 1962 and Congleton station which remains open. That stretch of the main line was opened on 18th June 1849. The Dane Viaduct2 crosses the River Dane and the Congleton Viaduct3 crosses the Dane-in-Shaw brook which is a tributary of the River Dane. Both viaducts survive and are now listed structures and carry more trains at far faster speeds than could…

The ‘Brighton Belle’ was probably the most famous electric train of all and had its origins way back in 1875 when the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway started to run Pullman cars in its express trains and in 1881 introduced the ‘Brighton Pullman Limited Express’, the very first British all-Pullman train. Initially, this consisted of four first class Pullman Drawing Room cars connected by open end balconies, there was a buffet and later ordinary coaches were added to the formation. In 1888 the Pullman vehicles were replaced by three brand-new Pullmans shipped over in kit form from the United States and assembled at Brighton: they were among the first electrically lit carriages to run in the British Isles. The cars, Prince, Princess and Albert Victor, were semipermanently coupled and…

Introduction This article is about the railway junction town of Doncaster. The article describes the railway infrastructure in the era of main interest, the 1950s/early 1960s. Content then covers observations on a typical summer Saturday in the mid1950s, details of the locomotive workings and outlines the complex nature of operations. The article then outlines the influences over planning timetables which reflected efforts by management to compete, explains the role of Doncaster in supporting that change and concludes with a reference to the transition to diesel traction. Doncaster, British Railways, Eastern Region - setting the scene By the time the 1950s came around the organisation of Britain’s railways had been subjected to radical change. Following the First World War the Railways Act of 1921 had grouped the many private companies into…

On the London Midland & Scottish Railway both Fowler and Stanier produced excellent 2-6-4 passenger tanks in the Class 4 power range, yet they followed them with a smaller Class 3 2-6-2T. Both versions proved decidedly unsatisfactory, being under-boilered for the work expected of them. These two photographs show members of the Stanier Class 3 at Worksop station on the Great Central route between Sheffield and Retford.…

1957: contracts are contracts to be fulfilled Notwithstanding the basis for the change of policy by the British Transport Commission, Metropolitan Vickers still had a contract to be fulfilled for twenty new diesel locomotives, it was still experiencing significant dissatisfaction from customer railways regarding the Crossley engines, it was busy with export orders for electrical equipment and electric locomotives, it was anticipating an order from the BTC for new ac locomotives and for the conversion of No.18100. A developing organisational concern was growing within Associated Electrical Industries as to the inability of MV and British Thomson-Houston to cooperate and avoid some, if not all, of the diesel technology problems with which AEI’s good name was being tainted. Bond and Warder developed the new diesel locomotive build programme for 1959 which…

If you have a few minutes to spare at Charing Cross station, before catching your suburban train home, stroll over to the booking office and look up beside the clock. Forgotten above the ticket machines is a tarnished and neglected plaque which reads: December 26th 1918 The President of the United States of America was welcomed at Charing Cross by King George the Fifth and His Majesty’s ministers of state at a supreme hour in human history, the war over and the future to be fashioned, the two nations significantly met. This commemorates what might have been one of the turning points in modern history, when President Woodrow Wilson, endowed with all the magic and might of the United States, came to London in the course of a triumphant European…

Monday, April 18th 1966, was a landmark day in British railway history with the inauguration of full electric working and fast eveninterval services on the West Coast main line between London Euston, Manchester and Liverpool (with Crewe the traction changeover point on the then nonelectrified continuation to Scotland) giving a day-long frequency of service unparalled in Western Europe over such a distance including the first 80mph start to stop schedules in this country while on the East Coast main line the ‘Deltic’hauled Flying Scotsman was accelerated to cover the 393 miles between Kings Cross and Edinburgh Waverley in 5hr 50mins at an average speed of just over 67mph to give the fastest ever timing between the two capitals. Not to be outdone the Western Region timed six of its Paddington–Bristol…

FROM THE PENDRAGON ARCHIVES…