Welcome to British Railways Illustrated No.6. Something of a cry went up upon the temporary suspension of some of our 'perennials' last issue. Nocturne and War Report and others, however, make (as promised) a speedy return and 'the grab bag quality if I may call it that' as one indomitable reader put it, has hopefully been fully restored. The content of BRILL is arrived at through a tortuous process of sifting and weighing, long term measured analysis and last minute scrambling improvisation. It begins every two months in a kind of perfect democracy and ends the night before going to press in totalitarianism. 'While every effort is made' (borrow ing a common commercial disclaimer) to arrive at a perfect mix and balance of subjects, absolutely complementing each other in both geography and period setting, somehow little of this seems readily apparent at the end. Each issue seems in some way to acquire a subtle emphasis of its own. In this issue there certainly seems to be a backwatery feel and even a good few pages devoted to the dark satanic doings of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway fail to dispel this air of birdsong and meadows.
It is difficult (estate agents have similar problems) to arrive time after time at a truly original description of many railway subjects. Unfortunately it is almost always the case that the subject is 'long vanished', 'long gone'. Tost forever' and so on. Certainly the sort of work which went on at Irwell Street goods depot in Salford seems now (though it limped on well into the 1960s) impossibly archaic. A glance at the plan, something of a heroic effort in its own right, will reveal impossible curves and angles. Views of goods yards are difficult to come by; people hardly ever visited them compared to stations which were invariably accessible, or say, engine sheds, which were usually open to those who knew how. The goods and produce within were valuable and prone to pilfering, and entrance was usually firmly barred. So any photographic record of an urban goods yard is a welcome change. We hope you will agree.
Station Survey is unashamedly bucolic this time round, a Sussex byway with its very own public school, served by a succession of Brighton. Chatham and LSWR tanks - steam more or less until the end amid the gentle fields and trees of Sussex.
Modelling Moment provides a useful display of bridge work one of the few railway features, come to think of it, which is preserved in any widespread way. In contrast a new 'occasional', On Track, is devoted to something which must have changed utterly and in every conceivable way since steam days - the very sleepers and track and the whole wonderful gallimaufry of the lineside.
Diesel Dawn is truly in the dawn of the oil engine in this issue, a pre-War story of diesel experimentation so obscure as to prompt blinks of puzzlement on the part, even, of hardened specialists of long standing. A peculiar tale, it describes a vehicle built to vivify a British export drive, including that now common institution, the Joint European Venture and its decline to bathos - sold off to rural oblivion in Ireland.
Mike Hitches stands in for Geoffrey Symms, recalling the Penmaenmawr collision of 1950 and there are further pages from Wales in Dowlais to Dowlais. This is a most intriguing tale, almost hilarious in parts, a confrontation between an obviously mad enthusiast and a local stalwart. The Will Hay spirit was alive and well in South Wales in 1959 and this issue finds itself again on the languid country railway, a long mourned institution and - vanished forever (see above).