Innehållsförteckning för Volume 39 No 2 - February 2025 från Backtrack

The post-war years With the end of hostilities in 1945, the railway companies could start restoring the railway to something approaching pre-war standards. It was recognised recovery would take time and be a protracted affair. There was a huge maintenance backlog, war damage to be repaired and worn-out locomotives and rolling stock to be either overhauled or replaced. The difficult economic situation in the immediate post-war period would further limit progress. There was change at the top of Associated Electrical Industries (AEI). Aged 68, Sir Felix Pole was thought too old to lead AEI in the expected post-war boom in the supply of electrical equipment. AEI’s major shareholder, General Electric of America, approved the choice selected by Lord Bicester, the senior partner at Morgan Grenfell, of the former Conservative Cabinet…

Origins Back in the mid-1930s a small group of Manchester-based enthusiasts would meet regularly on the platforms of the city’s main line stations. There, they would exchange notes and observations of the various train and locomotive workings - and, indeed, there were plenty of those. The city was a veritable honeypot of railway activity in those years leading up to World War I. Four major stations - London Road, Central, Victoria and Exchange along with six major locomotive depots - Agecroft, Gorton, Newton Heath, Patricroft, Trafford Park and Longsight, as well as the smaller Belle Vue depot. Feeling that none of the national societies - the Railway Correspondence & Travel Society and Stephenson Locomotive Society - catered for their needs, heads were put together and a decision was made to…

Until the South Eastern Railway Company decided to relocate its locomotive repair shops from New Cross Gate to a new 185-acre site in Ashford, Kent, in 1847, Ashford had been no more than a small village serving the local farming communities. By 1850 more than 130 houses had been built for employees of the new railway works and this community was, and still is, referred to as ‘New Town’. By the end of the nineteenth century a second site of 32 acres had been acquired on which to build and maintain coaches and wagons and around 1,300 people were employed in total, making this the largest and most important industrial operation in East Kent. By the time of World War II the works had become part of the Southern Railway…

Sir Kenneth Grange, who died on 21st July 2024, was a name, I suspect, unknown to many people. A prolific designer, his designs covered a whole range of subjects, many of which would become household names. He designed the first parking meter, the angle poise lamp and the well-known Morphy Richards iron (of which the writer repaired dozens during his first job). However, the railway historian will know that this was the man who, at his second attempt, designed the iconic front end of what would become known as the High Speed Train - the HST Intercity 125 train sets. Reading of his death and works reminded me of a memorable morning in 2001, when with a friend we had travelled up to St. Pancras in order to do some…

FROM THE PENDRAGON ARCHIVES…

The Metropolitan Railway had begun running cheap workmen’s trains in 1864 which had actually been a condition of being granted the powers (in 1861) to extend its line through to Moorgate as well as doubling its tracks (to four) between King’s Cross and Farringdon. It was the Metropolitan’s extension to Moorgate that really began the company’s creep around London whilst a House of Lords committee of 1863 had concluded that connecting up the main line termini would be best achieved by extending east from Moorgate and west from Paddington. Opened as Moorgate Street in 1865 by the Metropolitan Railway, today’s Moorgate station takes its name from the old Moorgate, one of the gates in the City of London’s defensive wall. The first written references to Moorgate date from the earlyfifteenth…

An unusual title perhaps but when you read on all will hopefully become clear for this is the story of how two different railways were proposed to open up a fairly remote part of western Scotland but, for very different reasons, neither actually came to fruition. It is fairly common knowledge that many early railways had their proposed route altered because of opposition by wealthy landowners, while in other cases the surveyors had to work in secrecy, sometimes at night, to avoid being assaulted or shot at by landowners or their employees. Nevertheless as time went on such opposition dwindled as the benefits of having a railway line became more obvious. So it may come as something of a surprise that even in Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee year an aristocrat…

My, how we loathed them! We spotters vowed “this was it - no more standing on platforms in the cold just to see diesels and only the occasional steam loco.” All this, in spite of our rather negative comments about the (by then) filthy, leaking J15 0-6-0 steam engines and the two ancient carriages these new imposters replaced on our rural branch line in Essex overnight one day in July 1958. There was extensive press coverage before the arrival of their replacements but I recall that the demise of the steam-hauled service was given greater newspaper space. The replacements - diesel railbuses - hailed as the ‘saviours of rural branch lines throughout the country’, were certainly different. Despite our condemnations, we had to try them out as soon as we…