Table of contents for Volume 37 No 6 - June 2023 in Backtrack

From the early twentieth century the Victorian opinions in respect of not running trains at ‘church time’ began to carry less weight and many railways responded to the, sometimes very vocal, demands expressed by certain sections of Society for better travel arrangements on Sundays; not only did they introduce or increase scheduled services but they also started to run excursions to the seaside or to inland places of interest and these were largely well patronised. Excursions per se were not, of course, new ideas, having taken place from the earliest days of the railway – for those who would like to read more about day trips Away for the Day by Arthur and Elizabeth Jordan (Silverlink Publishing 1991) is recommended reading. In more recent times some excursion trains ran so…

London Victoria was the terminus established nearest the West End, though for many years it was two separate stations on the same site: the ‘Chatham’ side (London, Chatham & Dover Railway) and the ‘Brighton’ side (London, Brighton & South Coast). It was not until the Southern Railway had been established that the two were opened up to one another and a single station master appointed for Victoria as an entity. These photographs show steam in action there, not least on some of Victoria's most prestigious ‘boat trains’ for the Continental traffic.…

Henry Ford began his commercial automobile enterprise in 1903 in Dearborn, Michigan. Market leader models soon arrived at affordable prices with simple and easy to produce designs. By 1911 successful imports to the UK saw an assembly plant opened on the Trafford Park Industrial Estate adjacent to the Manchester Ship Canal. Within a decade the company was producing some 6,000 cars annually and the now cramped site was causing problems. Thirty-seven possible sites were viewed and in 1923 Ford bought 475 acres of marshland and a former rubbish tip at Dagenham, Essex. Henry's son Edsel cut the ceremonial sod on 17th May 1929, the first vehicle, a model AA 30cwt truck, rolling off the (as yet unfinished) lines at 11.16am on 1st October 1931. Construction cost some £5 million and…

The summers of the late 1950s continued to see massive holiday travel by train to the coastal resorts of the British Isles and British Railways maintained huge resources of manpower, locomotives and rolling stock, let alone the infrastructure, on routes leading to popular stretches of our coastline. Becoming more conscious as a railway follower at the time, long-distance stopping trains, or services taking a long time on the journey, tended to intrigue me and, as an example, the joy of travelling behind a pannier tank from Brecon to Newport, with over twenty stops, remains with me to this day. Pouring over the Western Region timetable for Summer 1959 (Tables 152, 187 and 189), I had alighted upon the 6.55am Wrexham General to Pwllheli, due at 12 noon – yes five…

It was in July last year that we encountered the colour work of American photographer EMERY J. GULASH who visited our shores during the mid-1960s and recorded our railway scene in the transitional years between steam and diesel traction – or even electric. Here is another selection of his findings during those ‘in between’ times. His photographs are from the COLOUR-RAIL COLLECTION.…

The January 2020 issue of Backtrack had an article on the stations at Wellingborough in Northamptonshire. In that article there was a passing reference to the branch to Higham Ferrers. This article sets out a more detailed history of the branch. First it may be of interest to look at the history of the two towns. Higham, being tthe oldest, can trace its history back to Anglo-Saxon times. In the thirteenth century the Lord of the Manor, William de Ferrers, granted various charters to the town and also decided to add his surname to the name of the town. As time passed the influence of the Lancastrians became stronger such that the Duchy of Lancaster still owns the rights of much of the town. With the advent of the Industrial…

At the heart of the National Railway Museum, a locomotive is featured on the turntable which is the centrepiece for the collection. The choice of locomotive is changed from time to time, but of course the turntable is permanent. On your next visit, make a note of its maker's name – John Boyd of Annan. This ‘supporting actor’ on the stage of the York museum was manufactured in 1954 at a small family-owned factory on a siding which was once rather more than that – a main line linking Scotland and England by what was, at one time, the longest viaduct in Europe. Annan is approximately halfway between Carlisle and Dumfries on the former Glasgow & South Western main line linking London (St. Pancras) and Glasgow (St. Enoch). In its…

FROM THE PENDRAGON ARCHIVES Single lines over which trains run in both directions require additional signalling arrangements to ensure only one train can be on a section at one time. Traditionally this has been in the form of a physical token, obtained from electrically released instruments at both ends of the section, the token then being handed to the train driver as authority to enter the section and then surrendered to the signalman at the far end of the section. These tokens would be in the form of a metal staff, key token or tablet, examples of which are seen here.…

The ancient cathedral cities of Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester had and have a great deal in common. Not least is some fine architecture – Hereford station is not, perhaps the grandest, but it's a fine piece of well proportioned mid-Victoriana. There is the Three Choirs Festival, shared in rotation between the three cathdrals. Then although covering a much shorter time span, but definitely historial, is the fact that, in the steam era each had depots where former Great Western Railway and London Midland & Scottish Railway locomotives could be found in residence. And that meant, when I first knew them in the 1950s, many designs dating back to pre-grouping days. The LMS ones were from the London & North Western, Midland and, perhaps surprisingly, Lancashire & Yorkshire Railways whilst, as…

Rocket's sisters Success at Rainhill led to the Liverpool & Manchester Railway board to award Booth and the Stephensons the ‘premium’ of £500. This premium was never paid, however, as due to the non-delivery of the second winding engine for the Wapping Tunnel (it was lost at sea) the L&M Finance Committee ordered that the £500 non-completion clause in the contract be deducted from the next bill payable to the Stephensons which, ironically, was the Rainhill Premium. However, despite this success, the ascendency of the Stephenson locomotive was not assured. The anti-Stephenson James Cropper and his ally Daniel Hodgson had been in correspondence with the Quaker engineer and scientist Goldsworthy Gurney (17931875). Gurney had developed a very successful steam road coach which presaged many of the design features of Robert…

Once the Callander & Oban Railway (C&O) had reached the west coast port in 1880, there followed decades of jockeying for position between different companies – notably the C&O and the West Highland Railway – which were keen to take a railway to Fort William and indeed up the Great Glen to Inverness. The C&O promised a railway from Connel Ferry, on the Oban line, to Ballachulish – then bridging Loch Leven to reach Fort William from the south. This proposal lost out to the West Highland's scheme to approach Fort William via Rannoch Moor and Glen Spean, but when the rival Highland Railway (based in Inverness) and North British Railway (operator of the West Highland Line) agreed not to promote any railway in the Great Glen for ten years,…

Sentinel-Cammell steam railcars were developed through the 1920s as manufacturers sought to apply revised technology. Progressive problems in working local services commercially developed from the rapid post-war spread of competitive bus services, reductions in passenger numbers as unemployment and hardship grew and were paralleled by a swingeing increase in coal prices, the basic fuel. The four groups were forced to cut costs of provision. An industry that thrived on volume movement of heavy materials did not readily adapt to lightweight vehicles removed from convention. Alley and McLellan were marine engineers supplying components to Clyde shipbuilders from 1875 and expansion led to a relocation to what became the ‘Sentinel’ works at Polmadie in Glasgow. Absorption of a boilermaker in 1906 included the rights for in-course development of high speed steam engines…