Table of contents for Volume 37 No 12 - December 2023 in Backtrack

Travelling on railtours was an experience that many enthusiasts enjoyed, or on occasions when things did not go to plan, endured, but like most things in life they have changed immeasurably over the years with most modern tours being over long distances and more recently in carriages where leaning out of a window, or even having one open, in order to hear the sounds of motive power in action, is impossible. Some also delighted in arriving at remote locations on freightonly lines and getting on and off the train by jumping to the ground and then struggling to reboard having taken photographs strung out across the track and hanging from every vantage point. In that respect our risk-averse culture and the odd person who would insist on suing the organiser…

The Great Central Railway was rightly described as ‘The Last Main Line’ when it opened in 1898 and after that only a handful of branches and a linking section of the Southern Railway's ‘Withered Arm’ were constructed. One such short branch was opened in 1899 to serve what was at that time one of the Army's most important barracks in Scotland – Fort George. Fort George lies on a promontory on the southern shore of the Moray Firth and is the finest example of eighteenth century military engineering in the British Isles. Although an army base, it has never been attacked or indeed fired a shot in anger. Its origins lie in the Jacobite Rising of 1745-46 when the Stuart dynasty's hopes were finally dashed and defeated during the brief…

In 1919 my father, Herbert Smith, then sixteen years old and freshly arrived in London from his upbringing in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, applied for a position on the Metropolitan Railway. We still have in the family his application form and examination paper and it is interesting to see what the ‘Met’ required of its job applicants. First there is a section headed ‘Letter of Application to the Director’, to which has been added in handwriting ‘Junior Clerk’. Herbert had completed this in the impeccable script which was to last for the whole of his life. “Dear Sir” he wrote “having just left school, I wish to become a junior clerk in one of your offices. I am 16 years of age and have very good references. Trusting you will accept my…

Framlingham is a small market town in the northern part of Suffolk, some seven miles from the nearest railway, the present East Suffolk Line, at Wickham Market. As early as 1846 a railway was proposed from Ipswich to run northwards with a branch to Framlingham but, as with so many schemes during the ‘Railway Mania’, it did not happen. A decade or so later it had been intended that the East Suffolk Railway (ESR) would run via Framlingham but the Duke of Hamilton objected to it passing through his estate at Easton so the town lost out, the promoters not feeling sufficiently strong to challenge this view during the Parliamentary approval process. Therefore the ESR went to the east with a branch line to Framlingham. A shareholders’ meeting heard, on…

From the fantasy world of ‘what might have been’ we now return to the harsh realities of railway operation after World War II, though only two countries persisted with the pulverised coal concept. One was the Victoria State Railway in Australia and the other the Deutsche Reichsbahn (DR) of East Germany. The first was a by-product of a much larger project undertaken by the State Electricity Commission of Victoria into using brown coals in power plants. In 1952 one of its executive engineers, H. Herman, wrote a comprehensive book on the whole subject, in which chapter 6 includes a useful summary of the previous attempts to apply pulverised coal to firing locomotives, from which I have already quoted several sources.1 He goes on to describe how, as a result of…

It is often said that the local station master was the ‘first citizen’ in his local community and George Wakefield (1822-1889), station master at Blythe Bridge 1873-1889, certainly lived up to the ideal. George was born in Uttoxeter in August 1821, the son of George Wakefield, a joiner, and his wife Margaret. He had a twin sister, Hannah. According to the 1841 Census George Wakefield was an ‘apprentice shoemaker, living with his parents in Carter Street, Stafford. In 1844 he married Sarah Ann Kidd at Marchington and gave his occupation as a cordwainer, ie shoemaker. George also became active in the Chartist Movement during 1842 and would continue to hold reforming political and religious beliefs until his death, no doubt further shaped by being a Wesleyan Methodist. Ten years later,…

Whenever railways are discussed – by enthusiasts, journalists, or even the general public – the chances are that someone will soon mention Richard Beeching and his Report The Reshaping of British Railways. Today this is usually remembered in negative terms, but in reality the document, published on 27th March 1963, was the culmination of repeated attempts to reform the railways, with the aim of settling their finances and returning them to economic stability. For almost 40 years successive governments had grappled with the thorny question of ‘how to make the railways pay’. It was clear that, if such an outcome proved impossible, then ever-increasing public support would be required, in competition with other national needs. In that broader context the Report was almost universally welcomed in newspapers and railway periodicals.…

I cannot tell a lie and claim that my two years serving Her Majesty in the Royal Air Force, starting as an Aircraftsman 2nd class and rising to the dizzying heights of Senior Aircraftsman, was all unalloyed delight, but one of the positives was that it enabled me to make journeys by train quite regularly I would not have otherwise done; one within five days of donning RAF battle dress blue on three branch lines now gone for ever; plus, later more which I could easily have experienced, but didn't. I was summoned to take up arms in January 1956 and, having made my way by Southern Electric and the London Underground from my home at Thornton Heath to St. Pancras, there I boarded a Derbybound train, alighting at Bedford.…

FROM THE PENDRAGON AECHIVES…