Paul Atterbury - The Railway Experience

The last steam locomotive built by British Railways was Standard Class 9F, 92220, Evening Star. Here in the mid-1960s, approaching the end of its active life, and looking a bit scruffy, the locomotive has paused with its passenger train at Templecombe, and a young boy makes the most of the encounter.

In 1925 there were nationwide celebrations to mark the centenary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway. The focus then was on the great achievements of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The bicentenary in 2025 should offer an opportunity to consider the achievements of this second century and to look at the ways the railways have affected the social, economic, political and technical history of modern Britain.

Luckily, a huge number of professional and amateur photographers have also been railway enthusiasts, and so the second century is well documented. Some photographs are brilliant images by famous or well-respected names, but the majority are either anonymous or bear the names of long-forgotten amateurs who nonetheless often produced fine images. It is also fortunate that, while many took the traditional three-quarter views of passing locomotives, others were keen to record the diversity of the railway scene as a whole, including buildings and structures, day-to-day operations and, above all, people at work and play.

The photographs in this book, chosen for their quality and detail, are, with a few exceptions, in the latter category. They range in date from the late Victorian era to the early 1990s, but most record the period from the 1920s to the 1970s, decades that not only witnessed great changes in the railway world but that are also within the memory span of many people alive today. Photographs are grouped in sections, covering stations and structures, railway staff at work, train and landscape views, train and infrastructure maintenance, goods and freight, high days and holidays, and the end of the line.

STATIONS AND STRUCTURES

The Euston Arch, 1950s

When completed in 1837, the Euston Arch expressed the grandiose ambitions, the pride and the achievements of the railway in early Victorian Britain. Designed by Philip Hardwick, it celebrated the arrival in London of the London & Birmingham Railway whose terminus station, the first in the capital, had opened the previous year. It was a Doric portico, a great classical triumphal arch of which the ancient Greeks would have been proud. It immediately became a major London landmark, and was much loved as a powerful symbol of Victorian greatness for over a century, despite increasing amounts of grime and the construction of encroaching buildings.

The decision in 1961 to pull it down, along with the grand station behind it, was announced by a British Railways Board increasingly driven by a modernisation plan that was determined to remove the old-fashioned image associated with the networks Victorian heritage. The outcry that followed the announcement took BR by surprise, and it was the start of a battle, with the arch becoming an instantly recognisable symbol in the struggle against perceived corporate vandalism and greed. It was a long, hard-fought and ultimately unsuccessful campaign, with the final decision made by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. With the arch went the iron trainshed of 1837 and the magnificent Great Hall of 1849, all to be replaced by a bland and uncomfortable modern station clearly inspired by an airport terminal.

This 1950s photograph shows the arch as it was known to most Londoners, a vast and gloomy, though enduringly popular, lump of decorative architecture. With its flanking pavilions, the Euston Arch was a classic London postcard image, and thus familiar to travellers all over the world.

Victoria Station, London, July 1927

Victoria Station is Londons most memorable monument to railway rivalry. It is actually two stations built side by side by rival companies and until 1924 there was no connection between them. Anyone wanting to pass from one to the other had to go out into the street and use the main entrance. For decades this confused foreigners and others not used to the eccentric layout.

First on the site was the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (L. B, & S.C.R.), whose iron trainshed, functional but impressive, was completed on the western side in 1860, followed a year later by the grand French-style Grosvenor Hotel, which was run independently until 1899. Next, in 1862, came the London, Chatham and Dover Railway, with a much more elegant trainshed, in arched iron and glass, designed by their engineer Sir John Fowler. Separating the two stations was a solid wall. Their equally separate faades were by contrast rather inadequate, and increasingly tatty wooden structures. First to address this was the L. B & S.C.R., whose massive new nine-storey brick and stone frontage, a striking design by Sir Charles Morgan in Edwardian Baroque, was completed in 1907. A year later, the Dover company, by then renamed the South Eastern and Chatham Railway, completed their new faade, a magnificent French-style stone building designed by A.W. Blomfield. In 1923 the two rivals became part of the Southern Railway, and in due course British Railways, but, apart from opening up walkways through the dividing wall, little was done to alter the two stations until 1979 when the Brighton lines trainshed was removed and replaced by a shop and office complex above the platforms.