THE PRICE OF UNORTHODOXY - By E. M. Williams
STATION SURVEY - Church Fenton - By John Hooper
MOTIVE POWER TRAINEE - By Brian Penney
War Report - D Day - By Brian Macdermott
FURTHER LIGHT - By Keith Miles
A ROYAL PROGRESS - Part Two - By R. Fareham 
A Reader Writes

Welcome to British Railways Illustrated Vol.3 No.9. Pride of Place goes to War Report in this anniversary month, fifty years on, of the Invasion of Europe. A modest piece but an appropriate one, presented with a warming touch of human experience. Every now and again an article turns up which draws the editorial nose not only for its whiff of originality and the pungency of its hard thought and reasoning but wrinkles that same nose with the sharp sniff of heresy. The Price of Unorthodoxy might even' get a few eyes watering. An honest stab (ringing phrases like 'damning indictment, etc.) at a minor mystery. Suitable fates for the author on a postcard please...

In Motive Power Trainee we have a fascinating look at the structure of the job as viewed at the time, the unchanging routine of the steam age interlaced with youthful pleasure in tasks obviously well loved. Brian Penney, now in honourable retirement from BR, introduces us to a now long vanished system of working. As New Boy, he was expected to report fully on the training organised for him and this article, gleaned very closely from his contemporaneous notes, contains much 'from the horse's mouth' of those days - leavened by the New Boy's sense of wonder and enthusiasm.

Station Survey returns in grand style with a peculiar place, Church Fenton - wide and lengthy platforms, generous buildings and a joyous vista of main line with trains to match. All plonked down in splendid isolation in the middle of fields. The way this magazine is arranged, one issue goes to press within a day or so of the previous one beginning to come on sale. So it is that letters cannot be related directly to the preceding issue; a communication (cry of rage, purr of pleasure, or what) regarding a point in say, BRILL 3.8 cannot be published until BRILL 3.10 at the earliest. Hence no response so far to the demise last time out of the centre fold; as promised its absence would only be occasional and it returns with a flurry for Church Fenton. Though an isolated, poorly patronised station (in the middle of nowhere, as observed above) it possessed glorious trackwork, a breathtaking showcase for all manner of LM and East Coast locos and trains. A3s followed by Garratts... A good story and lovely pictures.

Thirties File this month concludes Ron Fareham's 'How To' guide to Princess Pacifies. 'Vanished' really is a word which keeps finding its way into these pages and no disappearance was more absolute than steam loco building. The second and concluding part of a two part sequence from the peak of British steam building - the first LMS Pacifies at Crewe in 1933.

Further Light carries the tradition evolved in BRILL of following up subjects wherever possible (see the steam cleaner in A Reader Writes) and Keith Miles gives us the LMS side" of things, rounding off the lighting feature in BRILL 3.6. This, readers will recall, described the peculiar Light Tunnels of the LNER; extraordinarily, a day or so before these words went off for printing, one of the many little packets addressed to 'The Editor, BRILL' and opened with expectation and anticipation (keep them coming) revealed a recent print of - the Whitemoor Light Tunnel. Shabby, derelict, even, but still there, slowly rotting into the earth and hidden in what is now a young forest. Can it be saved or has it been finally demolished, as we speak?