Indice dei contenuti per Vol 36 No 4 - April 2022 in Backtrack

‘ABC’ ABSENTEES BY PHILIP ATKINS (Pendragon Collection) A railway era ended at midnight on Sunday 31st December 1922 when more than 100 British independent railway companies, large and small, many of them long-established, legally speaking ceased to exist. Thereafter they were grouped into four large enterprises – the so-called ‘Big Four’. Nationalisation would follow exactly 25 years later on 1st January 1948. In 1927 the London Midland & Scottish Railway reckoned a new steam locomotive had a minimum standard life for replacement purposes of 30 years. On this basis, therefore, any engine that had been built during, say, 1921-22 should later have been taken into British Railways ownership a quarter of a century later. However, on close examination it is a surprising fact that some of the very last locomotives…

TAKING THE ‘ORIENT EXPRESS’ Our article ‘Take the Train for the Boat’ in February noted “the one operation that keeps alive the classic boat train journey”. That is the ‘Venice-Simplon Orient Express’ (VSOE) with its classic itinerary between London Victoria, Paris and Venice, now run by the Belmont leisure company. RODNEY LISSENDEN sent these photographs of the British stage of the journey between London and Folkestone, as well as a couple of other day tours, and some of the variety of motive power used. As is well known, the British VSOE is formed of classic 1920s/’30s Pullman cars - and so, as the article says, the journey is certainly made in style!…

NEVER AGAIN – ‘FINALE’ BY THE MNA Following the highly acclaimed Never Again - The Complete Works, published in 2018, and Never Again - Encore in 2021, the MNA team has now completed their work on the final boxed set titled Never Again - Finale. Never Again - Finale comprises three volumes each containing 240 pages, formatted 11” x 11” on 150 gsm gloss art paper, presenting yet more stunning pictures taken by the MNA during the 1950’s and 60’s. Sections include: The Settle & Carlisle, Fife & The Central Lowlands, The Industrial North-East, Waterloo to Weymouth, The WCML Euston to Crewe, Route of ‘The Cathedrals Express’, Glenfarg, The Great Central, The North Wales Coast, York, The Midland Main Line, The Great Western in The West Midlands, Scottish Preserved Steam…

NORTHAMPTONSHIRE IRONSTONE Photographs by DAVID IDLE from the Clive Rooker Collection Captions by JOHN SCHOLES of the Industrial Railway Society Naylor Benzon & Co. originated in New York as the USA agents for Sheffield ironmasters Vickers & Co. They later diversified into iron ore imported into the UK, a continuation of supply proving problematical with the imminent start of World War II. Through a new subsidiary, The Nassington Barrowden Mining Co., they bought land in east Northamptonshire and quarrying of the underlying iron ore began in the summer of 1939. The output went via the ex-LNWR Rugby to Peterborough line. Closure of this route in 1966 gave the opportunity to develop a new quarry to the south of the old line with a small section of track retained for access.…

BY THE WATERS OF LUDDENDENFOOT The Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway equipped itself generously with water troughs – ten sets over its 600 or so miles, enabling traffic to keep moving over its busy system and reducing the need for locomotives to stop for replenishment. Its hilly Calder Valley trans-Pennine route provided a challenge in finding locations for them but c1889 advantage was taken of a level stretch at Luddendenfoot, west of Sowerby Bridge. GAVIN MORRISON took his camera there.…

SCOTTISH EXPEDITIONS Scenes from his travels around Scotland recorded by GERALD DANIELS, with caption notes by MICHAEL S. WELCH.…

IN THE WEST OF WALES The ‘Beeching cuts’ of the 1960s drastically reduced the railway map of West Wales but fortunately photographers were able to record many of the branches before the axe fell - including JOHN WHITE who sent us this selection.…

NORFOLK’S RAILWAYS STEPHEN ROBERTS SURVEYS THE COUNTY’S RAILWAY SYSTEM (T. J. Edgington/Colour-Rail.com BRE866) Looking at a map of Norfolk’s railways from a century ago is testament to how much has been lost, with a great swathe of territory between the King’s Lynn line (west), the Thetford line (south) and the Cromer line (east) being devoid of railway today. Today’s national network consists of those three lines, plus the main line from Liverpool Street, heading into Norwich, via Diss, and a clutch of lines east of Norwich (the two lines to Yarmouth, one of which continues to Lowestoft). Up on the north coast there’s also the line between Cromer and Sheringham, a fragment of a line that once looped all the way around to Norwich City. Norfolk, of course, is a…

STRIKES, OVERCROWDING, FISHWIVES AND A ZEPPELIN THE FIRST TWENTY YEARS OF THE NORTH EASTERN RAILWAY’S TYNESIDE ELECTRICS Part One BY ROB LANGHAM One of the wonders of the North Eastern Railway is the extent of its early electrification. As Newcastle’s Metro light railway transit system marked its 40th anniversary in 2020, it is worth looking back at its predecessor of electrified suburban passenger travel, the North Eastern Railway’s (NER) electrification of North Tyneside on lines spreading from Newcastle towards the coast which opened in 1904. Using contemporary newspaper reports, it is not overly surprising to see how often the electric trains are reported on in their first twenty years of service, and the reasons why. Passenger behaviour was often the cause of its appearance, and usually for reasons that would…

THE TRENT VALLEY LINE IN THE NEWS 1845-1900 BY JEFFREY WELLS (Pendragon Collection) Genesis One early notion of the Trent Valley Railway (also known as the Manchester to Birmingham Extension) was of a railway running between Stone and Rugby, a distance of 62½ miles. The Bill presented to Parliament was rejected in 1839 owing to the objections of the London & Birmingham Railway. A second scheme, known as the Stafford & Rugby Railway, was also rejected in the 1841 Session of Parliament and was regarded as a great disappointment to its main promoter Sir Robert Peel. Undaunted, a revised project was presented to Parliament, this time entitled the Trent Valley Railway (TVR). By 1845 the railway world had changed. Royal Assent was granted on 21st July 1845, with the full…

A DANGEROUS LIAISON STAMP, STANIER, GRESLEY AND THE NAZIS TIM GRAVES looks at the sometimes controversial situations which arose in Anglo-German railway relationships during the political and military tensions of the 1930s. (Ronald Hillier) History records that during the 1930s, when Adolf Hitler’s grip on Europe was tightening, Britain’s Government, led by Ramsey MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, then Neville Chamberlain, pursued a policy of appeasement in the mistaken belief that this would control the spread of Nazism and help sustain a shaky peace. With the horrors of the 1914/18 war still fresh in many minds, this policy was widely applauded, but by 1940 its disastrous consequences were only too apparent. At best the Government’s actions were seen as naïve or, at worst, an abandonment of their responsibilities. Some, like Winston Churchill,…