Introduction
 Britain reshaped the world not by building a great empire, but by opening up the continents through the steam railway. Invented by Cornish mining engineer Richard Trevithick, it appeared with a whimper rather than a bang, and it was left to others to develop and hone to as near perfection as possible. Yet Britain did not invent the railway. The concept of using rails to guide trucks on wheels had been around for more than two millennia.
It is conjectured that railways and drama had a common beginning, back in ancient Greece, when some enterprising producer discovered that it was easy to move large sections of scenery if it was built on trolleys that ran on grooves carved into the stage floor.
In that halcyon age of drama and philosophy, the great Greek thinker Plato came up with his theory of forms. Somewhere up in the heavens, there is an ideal form of every object that manifests itself on earth.
For instance, in Plato’s celestial consciousness there is the perfect table: we cannot see it or know exactly what it looks like, but can merely guess, and so the concept ‘table’ is produced in an infinite series of shapes, styles and sizes.
The same theory may be applied to every other object on the plant – including the railway.
When someone mentions railway engines, what is the first image that comes to mind? The world’s most famous locomotive, Flying Scotsman, resplendent in LNER apple green? A streamlined A4 Pacific like Mallard, which holds the world railway steam speed record? A Great Western Railway 4-6-0 like Lode Star in the painting? A little blue tank engine with a plastic face and No 1 on its side? Or maybe just a bog standard black steam locomotive, either with a tender or side tanks, laden with coal and emitting large clouds of black smoke.
Others more in tune with the ‘modern’ railway than its heritage past the might immediately think of a Class 125 High Speed Train, a Eurostar unit or a suburban diesel multiple unit.
The fact is – as with Plato’s table, there is no definitive or ideal version of exactly what a railway locomotive, or indeed a railway, should look like...
Robin Jones, November 2009.
Contents
8 BIG MAN, BIG LOCOMOTIVES,
BIGGEST GAUGE
Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great
Western Railway broad gauge was
faster than the rest – but was he too
big for his boots?
14 A TRULY
ATMOSPHERIC RAILWAY
Brunel’s short-lived but futuristic ‘vacuum cleaner’ railway – and its
beautiful but precarious seaside
route over which main line trains still
run today.
18 THE FABULOUS FAIRLIES
The famous double-ended articulated
locomotives immortalised by the
Ffestiniog Railway and which were
once sold all over the world.
24 THE BRIO LINE THAT BUILT
LONDON BRIDGE
Horse traction’s last stand: a Dartmoor
railway made from granite blocks
which was the ultimate in 1820s ‘green’ transport.
30 A COG IN THE SYSTEM
The Snowdon Mountain Railway,
which saw its new £8.5-million summit
station opened in 2009, remains
Britain’s only rack-and-pinion line.
36 TUNNELLING
THROUGH FAIRYLAND
The secret railway through the
romantic Cornish island of St
Michael’s Mount.
40 THE WORLD’S
FIRST TRUNK RAILWAY
The Steam Elephant which Beamish
Museum did not forget!
43 JUST BRILL!
The Wotton Tramway, the furthest
outpost of London Underground
began life by using steam
locomotives which were more
akin to traction engines.
46 CUT DOWN TO SIZE
The break dancing of steam locomotive
engineering! A collection of
locomotives that were built to squashed
proportions to avoid low bridges.
50 THE SEASIDE LINE THAT
SPARKED A TRANSPORT
REVOLUTION
Brighton’s Volk's Electric Railway, the
oldest in the world still running today.
54 SEEING DOUBLE:
THE STEAM CAMELS
The bizarre and unmistakeable doublesided
steam locomotives of the
Listowel & Balllybunion Railway.
Images
It looks every inch a ‘normal’ railway scene, but appearances can be so deceptive: Great Western Railway 4-6-0 No 4003 Lode Star running along Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s famous Dawlish sea wall in the early 1930s as depicted in an oil painting by Mike Jeffries from 2004. Not only was this line built for one of Britain’s weirdest railways, the South Devon Atmospheric Railway, which was akin to a giant vacuum cleaner, but because Brunel pushed engineering capability to the limits to build it at the bottom of cliffs just feet above the waves, it is now the most expensive part of the national network to maintain and faces an uncertain future with global warming. The locomotive is now an exhibit in the National Railway Museum at York. NATIONAL RAILWAY MUSEUM
London’s ‘other’ underground was a miniature tube railway designed to carry tons of letters and parcels quickly and conveniently below the city’s congested streets – until the Post Office decided it was cheaper to use the road after all!
Who needs wheels? Britain’s only hovertrain, the RTV31, is preserved at Railworld.
One of a kind: the 0-2-0 steam Monoloco in action at its owner’s private site in Blaenau Ffestiniog on 22 August 2009. JOHN STRETTON
We have all heard of the phrase ‘iron horse'. As we have seen, Beamish Museum has recreated a Steam Elephant. And yes, there was also a steam camel... Hunslet makers’ photograph of an original Listowel & Ballybunion locomotive.
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