Table of contents for Volume 40 No 3 - March 2026 in Backtrack

At one time these were most Aresplendent passenger carriages. They were elegant and stylish with Royal Mail branding and Royal Arms and luxurious interiors; they were even used by Royals. Obsolescence arose, as was the road mail coach, as mail carrying went through unprecedented changes brought about by the railway themselves and the developments of Travelling Post Offices. From the railways’ point of view these ‘small’ carriages became expensive to maintain and, with their limited seating, uneconomic to run. Arguably the most elite of carriages of early railway history, only seating four in a compartment, they were charged at a premium and in their best-known form had an elegant chariot coupé seating only two passengers. They were for a time frequented by the lords and ladies. In 1830 the Post…

Occasionally a mineral line has been converted or upgraded, at a date long after it had originally opened, to become passenger-carrying. One such line in eastern Scotland was to be found in Fife leading to the small harbour of Charlestown on the Firth of Forth. The model or planned village of Charlestown was created in the eighteenth century by Charles, fifth Earl of Elgin, who lived nearby at Broomhall. It was laid out in a long rectangle around a green on the heights above the harbour area and work began in 1756. The simplest houses are in terraces, harled, slated and pantiled while the later ones (from 1820 onwards) were larger. The village of Limekilns is about 1km east of Charlestown and used to be the centre of limeworking, brewing,…

Originally to be entitled ‘The 10.47 Preston–Barrow’ (as will be included), the above enlargement came from a realisation that a preceding broader look would set the train in its intended context and that the lead up to it was worthy of relating in the author’s opinion; but first a few partly personal reasons for that opinion. The district of Grange-over-Sands is still much revered and loved from family holidays spent there up to 1960 and day trips throughout the period under review. We’ll see how the familiar rumble in the distance of goods trains traversing Arnside Viaduct merged in time with the frequent harsh warning horns of the Co-Bo Metrovick diesels at foot crossings between Kents Bank and Meathop. Although Cumberland passenger services north of Whitehaven lost their steam haulage…

Hamworthy Junction station was opened on 1st June 1847 as ‘Poole Junction’ on the Southampton & Dorchester Railway and absorbed into the London & South Western Railway in October 1848. This was the first standard gauge railway in the county of Dorset and was affectionately known as ‘Castleman’s Corkscrew’ after the line’s chief promoter Charles Castleman, a Wimborne solicitor, and for its circuitous route. The station was situated in the then sparely populated area of Turlin Moor and Ham Common, the village of Hamworthy being situated on the Poole–Blandford road on a peninsula about half a mile south-southeast from the station. It served primarily as an interchange point for the branch to the original Poole station, inconveniently located for the town on the west side of the channel into Poole…

Imagine for a moment that it is late 1879 and that you have just arrived in the little seaside town of Glenelg, near Adelaide in the colony of South Australia. As you stroll through its quiet residential streets you notice one street that has a railway line laid along the roadway and soon you hear what sounds like a steam locomotive approaching. However, what you see coming towards you is not a conventional train with a locomotive at its head, but a solitary vehicle that looks like a railway carriage with an open-sided marquee mounted on its roof. It clatters past and continues on its way down the street, leaving a thin trail of smoke to mark its progress. The railway is the Glenelg and South Coast Tramway and what…

Making referential comparison to a peak in the Lake District is, perhaps, rather stretching credulity but a glance at the gradient profile for this section of the ex-South Eastern Railway main line will confirm there are similarities. From the valley of the Great Stour at Ashford the line climbs for 8¼ miles to a summit just east of Westenhanger before falling back to sea level in the following twelve miles to Dover. This ‘gable’is the South Eastern’s attack on a southerly outcrop of the North Downs though the first full-scale one was facilitated by the London & Brighton Railway which had pushed its line through the dry valley south of Coulsdon, though it had had to tunnel at the highest point. Parliament had come to the seemingly logical conclusion that…

“They never bothered to build another shed after the fire of 1916. There was the engine pit there, with the loco berthed over it at night, with the water column adjacent to it… a very old coach body served as a cabin, and this was the booking on/off point for the Chalford crews until 1951…” (Walter Green, Brimscombe/Chalford fireman/engineman 1936-65) We left the Chalford Valley in Part One in the late 1920s during a time when its original railmotors on the service to Stonehouse had been replaced largely by the motors working with auto trailers to increase available passenger space, but trials across the Great Western Railway system were moving towards auto working with tank engines. This method of operation was explored using a variety of the company’s older engines,…