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The Railway Gazette (TRG) furnished a wealth of reportage of the Great Western Railway In 1930. This year was a pivotal one: it separated the ‘Roaring Twenties’ – a decade of ubiquitous industrial unrest, the British Empire Exhibition (1924/5), the General Strike (1926) and the Wall Street Crash (1929) – from the ‘Hungry Thirties’, a decade of high unemployment, the dole, the means test, the Jarrow March (1936) and the outbreak of war in September 1939. The advent of a troubled decade it may have been, yet there were sparks of innovation and moves towards modernity on the GWR. There were also periods of misfortune. The purpose of this article is to selectively record the manifold news reports concerning the Great Western Railway in 1930. These are supplemented, where possible,…

The great port of Southampton owes much of its development to the railway ownership of its docks. Traffic through the Central station reflected its importance on the London & South Western main line and its destination for boat train passengers heading for liner sailings or holiday travellers en route to the South Coast. GAVIN MORRISON was there on 11th and 12th September 1964 to record the steam motive power scene.…

FROM THE PENDRAGON ARCHIVES…

The Settle to Carlisle line must be, in all probability, the most researched, written about, photographed of all the lines in the country. The history of how the Midland Railway was forced into building it, stories of the people who worked on its construction, maintain it and numerous accounts of the life of the various stations along the route, all have been written about over the years. There appears to be only a passing reference to the unique situation at Selside, where at some time during World War II the signal box was staffed (one cannot say manned) by three ladies. I found the first reference to them in Houghton and Foster’s history, first published in 1948, together with a photograph of one of the ladies. Peter Baughan’s in-depth history…

In the historic city of Chester, its General station was a notable coming-together of railway routes. Dominant was the Crewe–Holyhead main line of the London & North Western Railway serving a range of resorts along the North Wales coast. Coming in from the south was the Great Western Railway’s main line from Shrewsbury and, back at the beginning, London Paddington, while the Birkenhead Joint Line (LNWR/ GWR) extended to that port and to Warrington, delivering trains from Manchester and further afield. Here are a few examples of the motive power to be seen.…

As already has been ascertained from Part One of this feature (March), the yard at Langley Green served as a useful gathering point for various locally generated commodities and another of these was scrap metal from Handsworth (there may well have been scrap from Messrs. Cox & Danks at some point, too). Such traffic during the 1970s was often conveyed using MCO and MCV 16-tonners, and used the traditional wagonload network for trunk-hauling to steelproducing regions such as South Wales and South Yorkshire. However, such movements were later catered for by the Speedlink wagonload network launched in September 1977 Scrap from Coopers Metals at Handsworth was Speedlink-hauled using purpose-built airbraked wagons, which were tripped to Bescot. Regular destinations were Aldwarke and Stockbridge, in South Yorkshire, using POA wagons (later coded…

The idea of the railway coming to Annfield Plain in County Durham in 1893 may seem unusual as the railway, in the form of the Stanhope & Tyne, had already come to Annfield Plain 59 years earlier as it made its inclined plane-ridden journey from Stanhope to South Shields. Indeed, this railway gave the town its name – it was originally Annfield (from ‘Anne’s Field), gaining ‘Plane’ (later ‘Plain’) in recognition of the engine-worked inclined planes which ran up one side and down the other of Loud Bank, passing through the town on its north side. However, with regards to this article, ‘the coming of the railway to Annfield Plain’ and elsewhere along the stations served by the Annfield Plain branch of the North Eastern Railway, which for the most…

This small and apparently very early sepia print was recently found at a collectors’ fair, but although it is seemingly of railway origin, both the subject and location have so far defied any positive identification. The vehicle is what might be loosely termed a rail-velocipede and such machines were very much in vogue during the latter part of the nineteenth century, with many railway companies using them for line inspection purposes, most being threewheelers based on a simple bicycle running on one of the rails with a third wheel on an extended frame providing stability on the other. There were variations, but in general they were made to a standard design and obviously derived from basic bicycle origins, one example being the ‘light inspection car’ patented in 1898 by one…

The mainstream press in Britain have always had something of an ambivalent attitude towards the railway system in this country, one minute lauding some achievement and the next saying how awful the railway companies/trains/officials are. In their eyes the railway companies ought to be able to provide additional facilities at the drop of a hat yet should keep their costs and fares at rock bottom prices. Therefore when bad weather strikes they should be able to make additional trains appear to take disgruntled commuters/ holidaymakers away home ‘just like that’. One example of this attitude occurred when a Bank Holiday Monday began with brilliant sunshine which brought the day trippers out in their thousands but suddenly, in the middle of the afternoon, a thunderstorm drenched much of the North West…

The term ‘second station’ needs definition. It is readily explained by reference to two useful books. The first is R. V. J. Butt’s The Directory of Railway Stations in which the term is frequently used. For example, under the reference to Mirfield, we are informed that the first station was opened by the Manchester & Leeds Railway in April 1846. It closed on 5th March 1866 and was replaced by a second station 185m due east by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway opening on the same date. The second book, M. H. Cobb’s The Railways of Great Britain – A Historical Atlas, presents less specific dates, but compensates by showing the disposition of all stations, first and second, in relation to the railway network in a particular area. The term…

Queen Adelaide (1792-1849) first used a railway carriage at the end of 1839 and in so doing was the first member of the Royal Family to ride on a train.1 The former Queen-Consort used a type of carriage called a ‘railway mail coach’ between 1839 and 1844. This was the highest praised type of carriage at the opening of the London & Birmingham Railway. Euston was particularly convenient for her being a short ride from her London home of Marlborough House (between The Mall and Pall Mall). The railway also made her journeys to a number of temporary country residences, generally for reasons of her health, much easier. In response to this period of royal patronage, and presumably at a time that her original carriage was getting worn out, the…