Table of contents for Volume 38 No 12 - December 2024 in Backtrack

In 1922 Charles Collett, who had recently taken over from George Jackson Churchward as Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Western Railway, was faced with the task of preparing a design for a larger and more powerful express passenger locomotive. This was necessitated, firstly, by the increasing weights of trains due to the rising demand for travel. Secondly, there was the desire to reduce journey times to stave off competition, both from rival railway companies such as the London & South Western and the London & North Western, and from other modes of transport. The current front-line GWR express passenger locomotives were the four-cylinder 4-6-0s, the ‘Star’ Class, which had been introduced by Churchward in 1906, when demands on locomotive horsepower were not so onerous. In his book The Great…

The Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway (EGR) had opened its branch line from Ratho to Kirkliston and Dalmeny on 1st March 1866 and this had been extended to the southern shore of the Firth of Forth at Queensferry on 1st June 1868 (at this time the descriptor of South was not generally used in railway circles). A further extension of less than a mile had been constructed and opened under the auspices of the North British Railway (NBR), which had by then absorbed the EGR, for goods traffic on 5th December 1868. Only goods services ran initially for many years until, in accordance with the establishment of an additional ferry service across the Forth from North Queensferry to Port Edgar to create a faster route from Dunfermline to Edinburgh, a passenger…

The Industrial Revolution's growth and success was due, in no small part, to the power that was provided from coal. Coal there was in plentiful amounts, but no matter how efficient the methods of mining it and bringing it to the surface, unless there was a quick and reliable method of transporting it from the pit head to the homes, factories and ports, little would have been achieved. The Midlands sat on vast reserves of coal. The burgeoning railways were the answer to the transport problem, hence the proliferation of different railway companies all competing to get their share of the business. If one wanted an illustration of this one could do no better than to read The Railways of South Yorkshire from 1880.1 There were some exceptions to the…

Historical background A couple of miles to the north east of Chester's city outskirts lies an unsung convergence of two main lines. The busiest of these was, and still is, the Chester to Warrington main line once part of the London & North Western Railway/ Great Western Railway Birkenhead Joint (BJ) line. This line runs from Chester General in a north easterly route directly to Warrington skirting Cheshire's sandstone ridge outcrop at Helsby. The other line, originally built as the Chester & West Cheshire Junction in 1865, approached from Mouldsworth Junction in the east and was from 1866 until nationalisation in 1948 the main Cheshire Lines Committee (CLC) route from Manchester Central to Chester's Northgate station. The CLC oomprised the Great Central, Great Northern and Midland Railways, so in essence…

In the nineteenth century British railway companies held half-yearly meetings. Those of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Company were usually held at the head offices at Manchester Victoria station, starting at noon. There were also general meetings and special meetings held at the same venue when considered necessary. They are a comprehensive source of material for the researcher. The half-year meeting of the ‘Business Line’ on 12th February 1890 was chaired by George J. Armytage and, not unusually, dwelt heavily upon traffic and finance, from the cost of tickets to the capital costs of improvements to stations, repairs and general maintenance. The Chairman addressed a full house of directors and shareholders and gave a rundown of the principal works in hand during the past six months and for the rest…

It is always dangerous in the early railways period to claim a “first” – when we think of the “first” public railway it is often the Stockton & Darlington Railway of 1825 which comes to mind – or, after a little bit of thought, the Surrey Iron Railway which opened in July 1803. The claim that the Surrey Iron Railway was the “first” is largely based on a misreading of John Farey”s article in Rees’ Cyclopaedia of 1806 which states it was: “the first public rail-way constructed near the metropolis” (author's emphasis). Thanks to the misreading of this source, and perhaps London-centric historians, by 1861 the Surrey Iron Railway is described by the Manual of Modern Geography as “the first Railway in England intended for public use”. However, this is…

Stoke was the centre of the Staffordshire Potteries and the headquarters of the North Staffordshire Railway. Opened in stages from 1848 to 1852, the NSR, or as it became known locally ‘The Knotty’, was a compact system centred on North Staffordshire, serving its pottery, coal and iron industries. Perhaps uniquely it operated railways of three gauges: standard: the 3ft 6in gauge Cauldon Low system and the 2ft 6in Leek & Manifold Light Railway. The NSR began building its own carriages at Stoke in the later 1840s and commenced locomotive building in 1868, under the guidance of James Johnson, the father of Samuel Waite Johnson of Midland Railway fame. Thomas Weatherburn Dodds succeeded Johnson in 1870. Dodds was the son of Isaac Dodds who was apprenticed to his uncle Ralph, Killingworth…

The London & South Western Railway's improved West of England main line ran from Basingstoke to Exeter via Andover Junction and Salisbury. From Andover Junction the former Andover & Redbridge Railway (aka the ‘Sprat & Winkle’) ran south to Kimbridge Junction on the LSWR Salisbury to Romsey line. This became part of the railway route from Andover to Southampton docks (which were very much an LSWR-promoted enterprise). The ‘Sprat & Winkle’ was joined at Fullerton Junction by the Longparish branch running from Hurstbourne Junction which was situated on the London to Exeter line about six miles north east of Andover. Background In some ways the Andover–Kimbridge Junction line and, to an even greater extent, the Hurstbourne to Fullerton Junction line, formed a side show to the much wider drama of…