Railways in the Great War
PWI South & West Wales Section meeting (Hybrid)
12 February 2024
My career in South Wales um most of the faces around the table are quite familiar um perhaps I’ll just touch on briefly what I’ve done in the last 31 years since I moved out of Newport um as as you know I went to Watford as divisional
Engineer um as as a result of which I became um eventually the engineering and safety sorry yes engineering safety director of Killian rail which did bring me back here a bit for a while um and then moved on to the rail acent investigation Branch as Deputy Chief
Inspector and I did that for five years until I was coming up to retirement age not quite up to it but I was about two years off civil service retirement age uh and Jim Cornell which is a name that the older ones of you will remember uh
Decided that he wanted to stand down as executive director of the Railway Heritage Trust so the job was advertised um and I put in for it um the interviewing panel was Bill McAlpine who was a trustee of the festin Jim called out who was normally one of my
Referees so I got the job um and did 12 years as the executive director I retired from that two years ago um in the meantime Bill McAlpine of course had passed away uh Jim had taken over his chairman he made it very clear that was on a temporary basis uh because Jim
Himself is well into his 80s now believe it he still plays tennis every day um but anyway when I said that I was retiring Jim said basically no you’re not I’m retired you’re becoming chairman so I’m now doing that right how do we get this to actually show what is
On the screen because I not AG you go to your you might have to drag it onto the screen yeah that they need to share on teams we need to share on team now we need to share in teams as well yeah right so I don’t need
To do anything else with that now we got to share on teams as well yeah that’s it excellent really we’re ready it I’ve now lost so I touch that right see what look at that rather than looking at the screen so going to talk about Railways and the
Great War I’m going to go back a bit further than that um and start on the 15th of September 1830 um which is the date when really the railways involvement the military began because that was the day the U Liverpool in Manchester opened um I got
To talk through the 19th century some of the issues of Railways more leading up to how the railways got ready for the Great War um because they were preparing for war for a long time before it actually even became a threat and then look at what happened in the
Mobilization at the start of the war in the early days how the railways helped to move around the United Kingdom um what the railway did in terms of production for the war how it delivered things to the front lines by which I mean the back of the front lines because
Getting stuff from the factories to the back of the front lines was one operation getting it from the back of the front lines at up to where it was needed for the fighting another operation look at some of the things with the railway main War um some of the
Things with the women in the industry and closed by looking at Railway Waring warant um probably worth explaining just briefly how I got into this um when I left the rib um and started work with the rail Heritage Trust I’ve been well for five years I’ve been spending half My Time In
Dary which is where the rib’s offices are and a few months after I moved across um some some drug addicts attacked the Midland Railway Walmore at Derby and pulled off all the names of the Forum which were all on bronze plaques and they were going to sell
These to try and raise money for drugs fortunately they were so heavy they couldn’t carry them away so I got them back the next day and my former colleague rang me up and said what to do about this well my grandfather had fought in the Great Wall my great-grandfather had worked for
The Midland Railway as a Bo guard and eventually an inspector so I was quite interested in the Midland Railway war memorial and I put some money up and had some interesting debates with network rail who didn’t even know they owned it um but eventually Network rail put the other
Half of it up and we had got the memorial back and restored by November the 11th that year so be a proper remembrance so they miss that it but that started me looking at all the railway W networks it turns out it’s about 400 of them scattered around the
Country um and I’ve documented all those War memorials I now have a full list which I still keep up to date even in my quote retired unquote State um so I’ll talk about those as well so as I said go back to Liverpool and Manchester Railway um and on that first day Duke
Wellington was present and as we all know the then president of the Board of Trade William huskinson wanted to speak to the Duke so he got off the train and walked across to speak to him and was in front of Rocket was knocked over basically lost his life shortly
Afterwards but the Duke was very interested in how quickly he could move troops between Manchester and Liverpool by the time they had a through Railway to London which was about 14 years later they realized they could move a battalion between London the Northwest cities in nine hours
Compared with the 14 days it used to take to March them there and obviously a key issue at that stage was how quickly you could get troops to the the Irish Port so if there’s trouble in Ireland you could get troops over there very quickly so the military was interested
In the railway right from the word go um there are series of Wars we’ll look briefly at the Crimean War the American Civil War Franco pre war and the B because there were lessons from all of those that were learned in how the British dealt with the Great War
So I look at this slide and I think the more things change the less the change you know we talk about Sasa ball now and battles there and the Crimea um but we had a har at balac clava we were trying to take sebastan ball and they had to
Get the materials up it’s only about seven miles but shifting those materials by Road was a disaster and actually feeding TR the material to troops the front line is extremely difficult so the military decided they wanted better roads basically said send us some road builders and some of the contractors
Said hang on guys we’ll build you Railway be much better um and I think it was Peta actually went out there and bu build the railway in seven weeks flat it was a horw railway it wasn’t a locomotive work Railway but it solved the logistics issue once they have got the soldiers
Out of running it because one of the very early lessons that comes up again and again and again is the ministry should be telling you what it wants we want this number of cells etc etc but not how to do it because they don’t have the faintest idea the fact that you take
A wagon up the line loaded you’ve got to take it back empty pretty down quickly seems to be beyond the military mind so that was really the first campaign where the railways were involved um and the next one was the US Civil War um as you can see looking at
This motor power roundhouse it was pretty bloody for the railways and a lot of the war was fought up and down the railways um the Buster Keaton film General um all right was a was a 1920s film there’s a lot of truth behind it um and the
South did not manage its Railways all the railways in the north basically were standard gauge all the companies in the South each one built their own gauge um and the north the United States controled the railways in the north the the southern states did not control
Their Railways and as a result nor was a to move mobilize and move troops around much better um and eventually ended up winning the war but as you can see here a lot of damage to railway infrastructures the the campaigns tended to go up and down the
Railways two years later we have the Franco Prussian War um the French had largely left private companies to build their Railways in geographical areas if they didn’t have competing Railways in the way we did but um each Railway was built in a particular area to to meet the the
Business needs of that rail area um the preference built their Railways very much with war in mind so they have both radial lines up to the frontier and lines running along the frontier and 10 miles back and 20 miles back so they could move their stuff
Around contr it much better um and they were they had organized and were ready to move their um Railways forwards into France When The War started because they they had maneuvered to get them although the French declared war on Germans um bismar had maneuvered them to the point where that was necessary they
Didn’t get it all right um they never took on that the French loading gauge was slightly smaller than theirs until they they Advanced and found that all their engines suddenly didn’t have chinies um and if you look at Germany engines in the latter part of the 19th
Century the earliest part of the 20th century they actually all have hinged chimneys so that should War break out with the French b top of the chimney bag r on French Railways the French Railways were not properly controlled and it was chaos one of the reasons why the French did so
Badly was they couldn’t support their troops with the railways behind the mine uh but they still managed to blow Bridges that’s German TR where the French did manage to blow the bridge um and something that became much more of an issue in later Wars was as troops were moved
Forward how do you feed them and see here a group of German troops in the station buffing but that’s not necessarily the best and the only way to do it the the logistics for the food for the troops is every businessman as important as the um Munitions and the
Napoleonic version of living off the land with the size of armies the Great War was just not possible and of course it was too static the Napoleon version the armies were advancing on retreating so there’s lots of new land always coming under their control and then we had the B wall again
Very much a war up and down the railway lines um and this was one particular train somebody had the bright idea that we had an armored train it couldn’t be attacked so here we see all the troops getting onto the armed train and there’s a journalist getting onto the armed
Train by the name of Winston spenc Winston Spencer Churchill and they chuffed off chuffed off up the line and as soon as it gone about 10 miles they found there weren’t any rails in front of them because the Bowers had taken the rails away they tried to go
Back there weren’t any rails behind them because the Bowers had taken the rails away from there as well so they were stuck and the Germans could the Bowers couldn’t shoot them but guess what the engine ran out of water they ran out of water and I think
As we all know Church ended up all these troops ended up as prisoners of War um so again what you can and can’t do with Railways there’s a big lesson here and again the military triying to run the railways and made a right ass of it and
They ended up sending out rail to run them there were there was a lot of legislation 1842 and 1871 Acts were passed that basically said if there’s a war the Army does what it want with the railway the railway ised out and they did have other things to do than support
The military um but it wasn’t really until 1896 when they set up an army Railway Council which included Railway managers that they began to get a sensible approach to how the railways could be run if there was a wall and as I said the B the railing went out and
Eventually ran the railways and much better support for the armies as they Advanced and from 1904 onwards we had mobilization timetables um which is interesting because of course in 1904 the thinking was we were mobilizing against the French and it wasn’t until a few years later that we decided that we were
Friends with the French but we like want to mobilize against the Germans and we had a lot of soldiers 200 Battalion and there were specialist Railway battalions part of the royal Engineers they served in the boa War um the oldest war memorials I know the bo War memorials there’s one at Darby
Midland station and there’s a massive Garden the railway War Memorial in crew uh somewhere from the railway but the railways had to move move the reserves that the volunteers around the country for training and Maneuvers um so of course the balians needed moving as well so by the time we came up towards
The the railways were very well used to moving troops and their equipment around country um any northw bias in this lecture is purely deliberate um just one example TR venth up near blind fog the branch to Blinder fog totally out of the way Branch uh no use at all the passengers because there
Weren’t any no use at all afraid because there wasn’t any and then they went to build a military camp for training troops and all of a sudden um a line that was basically run with 042 side tanks no6 Ana tanks had to be upgraded as far as trous to take the big
26’s of course it isn’t just you don’t just have to take the men you have to take all their equipment all their horses all the ammunition and the these pictures out trvth just give you some idea of what was involved in moving troops around and the the railway was
Doing this before the war started and some of the place C camps were completely out of the way this is aisus and the only way to get troops up there was on the veil of ryol the veil of ryol didn’t have enough engine so poor old palston which seemed always be
The engine that was sent to other places by the fesia was sent to Ral time as well and it actually went down every summer um before the war and then several years after the war until eventually the festin decided they couldn’t spare it anymore and the Great
Western had to build the third 262 Prairie nobody was expecting the war to break out 1914 and even after Saro who was no expectation that it was going to end up in a a major war um and it was only about 8 to 10 days before war was declared that everybody
Realized this really was going to happen this time um and all the territorials were in Wales and elsewhere On Maneuvers they all had to be gotten back the volunteers and that took about a 100 special defs in itself organized almost overnight to get all those guys back to their bases and at
The same time planning to get the British expeditionary Force together and get it over to France as quickly as possible um mobilization be war was declared on the 3D of August the mobilization actual moving of the troops started on the 10th the next 17 days those numbers
Are John you’ve just written a book about moving Freight around at short notice 689 trains in 27 days organizing it’s a very different how we reacted in those days but uh absolutely massive drop and it was all done amazingly smoothly the trains all the companies were working
Together the trains were going down to Southampton offloading the troops engines round to the other end and back again um for the did got new in Southampton course was particularly essential for that and we see here a group of Scottish troops about to go off and of course for
The women folk particularly they don’t even ever know if they’re going to see the men folk back again or not as the war went on that got much worse and Birmingham News Street we’ve actually worked out exactly where that is and the TR there is between the the med Northwestern stations when there
Used to be two separate stations but a group of guys being mobilized that Street there and moving horses to the front normally when you move horses you have have a nice horse box I mean those of you who remember Hornby dou remember they have a lovely horse box with have
Room for the groom to go with it and everything um those of you that old also remember the air fix cat wagon and that used for moving horses um at the wall because suddenly vast numbers of horses were needed particularly in the early days because that was how they got all the
Ammunition to the front line and there was the assumption that you would break through the front line and the Cavalry would then Advance through the breach in the front line so all the count were held in reserve ready to to attack which they never did of course and everybody assumed that there
Would be less traffic on the railways if we war and therefore staff would have to be laid off be less trains running um and the opposite happened traffic built up for the military massively and the civilian traffic held up particularly early in the war there was no stopping of holidays no stopping
Of dining cars to start with and vast numbers the staff volunteered to join the Army so um the number of people who were available to operate trained went down very drastically and a lot of retired staff were called back um and those retired staff called back it did C don’t they look young
Um and there was a lot of movement in the opposite direction again you think about Ukraine now exactly the same has happened and 75,000 people arriving at do in the first nine months mainly from Belgium and they had to be mooved to London on to other parts of the UK lot
Of them were taken on by the railway to help cover the gaps where Railway men had gone and joined the forces uh but there was concern about the security of the line and where the German spies had come over with them so um do we have security and a lot of
People were taken up guard in the railways in the early days and not sure what benefit it gave but they did it and the numbers were reduced quite drastically as the war went on so there we are real welcome v um somewhat different attitude from how we look at refugees these days so
Lots of people turned out to welcome them and guarding a t not sure what good they did whatsoever I suspect suspect that was a posed fiction picture just to be a short standing slightly close to the crack yes absolutely the demand for traffic went up hugely about 30% increase right the
Way through the wall um the troops moving to and from the front um just one statistic the Great Western ran 88,500 troop trains during the war and lot of old Rolling Stock was retained to do this um of course when you get to um quinton’s Hill catastrophic
Results of that there were the wounded coming back they all had to be moved around Munitions had to go forward and empty shell cases had to come back because he didn’t throw the shell cases away you brought them back reloaded them send them out again um at the other end of the country
The grand Fleet at Scara flow had to be kept supported with fuel and Men um and the age old problem that people look on wagons of stores Mobile stores that the Army was the worst possible offender and once they got a wagon or something they’d keep the stuff
In the wagon and wonder why the railway people were screaming blue murder about it and right the way through the war there were the conflicting demands of the army and Railways for men when we come to talk about memorials I should come back at that point because a rather sad story
End of 1914 dining cars were withdrawn and that led to the setting up of the free buffets for the troops so when The Troop Train was moving through the country would stop somewhere like Preston cering was another one Redford was another and they would all dive into
The free buffet get a cup of tea or coffee and and some biscuits or sandwiches back on the train and off they go again slip coaches largely ceased to be used although some some slip operation did res start after the war I think it was in the 1950s when it finally stopped
Completely a slip coach a slip coach is when you you run an Express generally out from London with srip coaches on the rear um with a coupling you can just pull a lever and release the coupling and you have a guard that rides in the front of
It and so when you get to a station like Bamber or something so 40 or 50 miles out you release the coach the driver then accelerates the trend the sigma changes the point the the coach runs in under its own momentum with a guard controlling its speed to stop it in the
Platform and then a shunter comes out on the back of it and puts it away in the sings once it’s ented obviously you can only do it in the down Direction in the up Direction the train has to stop and have the carry head it back onto it
Again um but that was quite a common practice before the first war and it lasted till into BR days there were Branch line closures sometimes because of lack of traffic um the one that I know particularly the North Wales narage um what eventually became the Welsh Island that closed in 1916 for
Lack of traffic to basically taking tourists to go on Snowden um and others the basing Stoke in Alton for example was closed and the track was lifted and sent to the front um the branch line the original line to Henley nard which was the fre only branch that was lifted so there were
Lines that were lifted just to send the material over to France some were reinstated some that quinton’s Hill the worst accident in British Railways history um it was a change of shift signalers and the signaler who was going off duty had got four trains approaching
Him and one of them was a slow train the front of the key sorry there was a freight train which he put in a loop then there was a stopping passenger train and there was an Express behind it so he moved the stopping passenger train over onto the
Upline sted there outside his box to let the express go through the shift change happened the new sign didn’t understand what the position was and he cleared the signals for the up an up Express or up true train which ran straight into the static train and then northbound express
The down Express ran into the whole l so 215 people died and 191 were injured the majority of those who died were Scots guards on their way to the front but there was some children as well the carriages were all wooden coaches from the Great Central with gas lighting
Which made the whole thing worse having been involved in accident investigation perhaps more than many people have looked at it there’s always a tendency to to blame the sigas I don’t blame the sigas I blame the Caledonian Railway company because there were no track circuits and that was well into
The time of track circuits had there been track circuits they wouldn’t have been able to clear the signals for the other train to run in and both the signalers went to to jail for relatively short terms and their families were looked after by the railway and I I
Suspect that a deal was done that they would carry the cam but not be suffered too badly um the railways the C Railway get the plane which it didn’t not one of the better um issues for for the industry and the Scots guards who survived were basically picked up taken
Back to Edinburgh reformed and then sent on another train now to the front ambulance trains it’s a posed F picture but it just gives you some idea of the the wounded having to come back and of course we talk about all the people who died in the but the numbers
Who were injured were horrendous feeding Scar the flow they wanted ROM the Cal because it was smokeless and so 79 fright trains a week were having to go from the Ronda to gr mouth um the only phot I’ve ever found is this one going up sharp London Northwestern compound 80 and something
Behind it shovel um and then the coal was loaded into ships at gra mouth and and sailed from there to scar flow the thought was that the the southern half of the North Sea wasn’t safe to sail in so you go to gr and then take the C water from
There and the Jellico Express ran from Houston to tho and from tho to Houston every day took best part of 24 hours to do it I think it’s the longest timetable service ever operated in the UK and it continued running till until 1990 um as part of the cenery of the war I
Worked with John yeles and various other people to put out plaqu all the stations where the jelo expresses stopped um including one in the swimming pool at ho because of course most of the other stations are still in use but Quake very sadly is definitely not um another Post photo but this is
The free buffet of Addington um and this was actually the last day of the buffet of the F customers the I think not sure where it is to it probably is yes I’ve mentioned shells before and there were massive numbers of Works involved in producing shells even Boston
Lodge was set on to produce shells um and Eric GES who’d been general manager of the northeastern Railway was Minister Munitions by this stage and there are letters from the railway companies writing to them saying for God’s sake tell us what your RS and stick to it
We’ve got Works sitting who are not producing anything at the moment because we haven’t got clear instructions as to what we want um that was a a big problem what else they produce they produced the ambulance trains they produced tanks although it was mainly the locomotive factories that produce tanks rather than
The railway Works um but they certainly produce cordite they produced wagon and they produce Locos for the front so there’s a lot of construction going on for the wall uh porridge Works producing shells isn’t that a rather Splendid lot of belt driveing with hands there’s health and
Safety yes exactly but also how few men there are in to look quite hard to spot any m well in doing the work and there swendon converting one of their traditional gwr coaches into an ambulance train and the Lanas Yorkshire Railways ambulance train ready for delivery that’s a swind and built
Rectang wagon so when you think about first world war tanks the size of them actually was governed largely by the British loading gauge um and a lot of them these turrets on the side where the guns were were removable so that they could be taken off deliver the wagon
Then Vault back on again when you get to the front that’s an anti-aircraft gun being produced at Swindon I I have a suspicion that that’s a second world war photo rather than a first world war one but it still shows the sort of thing folks were
Doing and I don’t think the railway ever built gun barrels but they certainly built gun carriages um we all know where that is with the the um moldings of the or the the carvings of the Great Western broad gauge Locos on the works at swiming that we can still see as we go
In on the train there all that equipment was produced then all had to be shifted across the UK across the channel and through northern France the rear of the front line so a pretty massive as I’ve said there’s also all the stuff coming back the wounded the shell cases equipment that needed
Refurbishing I’ll by the way we’ve got other Wars going on as well particularly in the Middle East so there’re swimon again preparing material for loading and Wolverton works and they ran a weekly train for Wolverton with all the stuff they produced which was dispatched off to the military you can
See they gun carriages ammunition carriages barges all that lot is sent on one train then that’s got to be REM marshaled at some point to to go to the various points on the front B that was done in France idea and from 1917 onwards um this is
Naughty Ash but it’s not the naughty men um oh God that Joe’s getting very FL very flat these days people don’t remember K do obviously um but the US Army was around and they had to be they generally came in on the western ports for obvious
Reasons and had to be moved South and taken over the channel there was some bomb damage not as much but nine people were killed at Liverpool Street there certainly was a bombing raid on Derby Loco works and see there signal boxes taken a battering um other problems apart from
The damage to the railway from bonds was was a short of locomotives because of course a lot of Locos had been taken out of service and dispatched across to France um there’s minimal new construction a lot of the new construction was going straight to France a lot of the Fitters were in
France and a lot of Locos should have been withdrawn scrapped were being kept going through the wall so there’s a constant shortage of locomotives um don’t minor thing but the war military Railway better known as the long War military Railway was set up and was used to start training troops during the Great
War not as it biggest then it became much bigger between the wars and then we get stuff to the channel you think got to get it across Southampton DEET was the main route folks of the Cal was used and a complete New Port was built by the Southeastern
Chattan Railway at richro which was a temporary pa um just the duration of the Wu basically a lot of stuff went by rail but some of it by Lorry and quite a bit in bulk which of course is another problem so all of those meant there was
A lot of handling to get stuff onto the fairies and off the fairies so there’s a fairly typical Ferry coaches probably an ambulance train coming back or going out I think going out looking at the state of the lores um so you’ve got a mixture of Road
And rail on that Ferry about to leave Southampton and troops coming back at folston disembarking and presumably back for leave there’s one of the richair is absolutely fall to the guns that’s rich brother loading you can see the big crate to lift the rails up and down with the tide
So wherever the ship was you you could create the right grading to get the trains on no matter what the stfe of the tide was and there Val has to be at high time I’m not sure I want to take a wagon down that ramp and then we get into France um
Basically the French by the end of 1914 said that bit’s yours we’re taking all our engines and all our railwaymen to run our Railways further south so we suddenly found ourselves with a whole of the northern French Railway system um fortunately that meant there’s a lot of professional railing got out there
Quickly um to to run it and make sure that things like return and wagons were taken on and there was a railway operating division R by rail so the Army said what it wanted and the rod delivered it so it worked with a massive demand for loon wagons of course and
Damaged the infrastructure near the front line and you could divide the war almost into two stroke three bits there 1940 the first four five months when the Great German advance and then the German Retreat back to what became the Western Front by the end of 1914 and then 15 16
17 the first three months of 18 this sort hell of the Western Front where advances and Retreats were measured in yards not miles and then March 1918 the ger the fin the German fling when they Advanced through the Western Front and way to the West not quite as far as they got in
1914 and then ran out of everything and the British Army and the French Army and the American Army which arrived fresh push them back through the western front and back into Belgium at which point there was the arm the war never actually got into Germany but keeping up with those
Advances and Retreats changed the out the railway word quite drastically so you’ve got the bul material which comes out in sacks and then has to be loaded into wagons you need lots of people handling bulk material box goods and a lot of Empire troops Indian troops Chinese were brought in to do that
And again we’ve got the problem that people military holding Wagons at the front line is their Mobile stores no wonder the Transport Systems working um just a couple of pictures of return traffic the top one is uniforms resum it from the wounded but being sent back to be repaired and ready for reuse
And damage Lor is going back for repair as well so there’s a lot of stuff going back over the channel in the reverse direction as well yes and there you see a nice modern example of Mr Kurt’s Motive Power which the Midland Railway I’m quite sure were
Only too pleased to shuffle off onto the rod um but uh I doubt that was particularly an effective locomotive the Great Central the Robinson 280 the other hand was a very effective locomotive one of the best preor war one locomotives and that became the rod standard Freight locomotive and vast numbers of these
Were built by the private contractors um in the first ball and they a lot of them were left over the LR obviously had a lot but the Great Western ran these engines and quite a lot of the run in Australia as well because it was quite a surplus of very
Good very modern 28 at the end of the war so think sold over the place and at the start of the second go they they seriously talked about restarting the production line for these before they decided they’ stick with Stan as a rat instead as the standard
Locco um and of course the inevitable happens you lose trains on der so what you do you push it out the way put the rails back and carry them regardless um and that’s the sort of thing that they were keeping the railways going with interestingly the
Low level there by the canal um was part of the two foot gauge system it’s the bit the two foot gauge that has survived the flashy dumpy Airline doesn’t look anything like that now but the two foot gauge at the low level is still there and I’ve already said the problems
That happened particularly as the Germans retreated in 18 they were scorched Earth behind them so they were demolishing everything on the railway to try and stop the Allies from advancing to keep up with them that that picture I’m sorry C all the text out of it but
It gives you a pretty fair idea of the sort of things that the army that the Army raway were dealing with towards the end of 1918 M H’s HST the headquarters staff train um I don’t know who the gentleman stood to hag’s left is but I guess from
The boards and everything that uh he some foreign VIP who’ been to meet ha about driven away in a vehicle on the left hand side I’ve hinted a couple of times that the standard gauge Mainline Railways for getting up to the rear of the front line
But there were no use for getting stuff up to the front um you’ve all seen the photos it was it was a hell full up mod um you have to have something lighter the French and Germans had both developed 60 cm gauge Railways the felt B with the Germans
Dville the French we hadn’t and we started the guys developing their own trench tramways with wooden rails to just push trucks forward and get the shells to the front um and the war department realized very rapidly this wasn’t going to work and they developed a system of two foot gauge Railways which by
1916 was a really effective way of Shifting stuff over those last three or four miles up to the front um and we talk about the technology cycle the WD light Railway is the ultimate technology cycle from invest invention development maturity redundancy in the space of just over two years because from March
1918 it was no use at all because the fund was moving so fast they could not move the two foot gauge around to where the front was um more trans shipment in this case from Nar standard gauge down to Nar gauge and see some CH Chinese troops there
Shifting stuff out of the standard gauge wagon into a d-class burgie wagon and power lay two foot gauge track in a hurry and you’ve got lots of troops and it could go anywhere literally through the building but it was a complex system the bottom right picture one of the workshops Maring yard top
Left Junction the station the track being maintained the bridge with a petrol electric Loco running over the top there so it wasn’t just a twoot gauge traway it was a a proper Railway system um various sorts of locomotive um top left is the Baldwins which were
The majority of nearly 500 of those um the British Mo Railway industry managed to produce 100 HS 46 which is the top right locco um but that was as much as they could had capacity to do so most of the or went the stains
Um and you can see the the left top left train moving plates of some sort s right one an ambulance wagon um bottom right is the blow up of the picture we saw of the bridge with a petrol electric Loco hauling troops in d-class wagons bottom left the simplexes
Works in Bedford where they were turning out 20 horsepower and 40 horsepower engines with the 40 horsepowers having different degrees of arm and protection that was one of the less protected ones um and the reason they had all these internal combustion engines was that you
Could get up to about a mile or two miles back from the front of the steam engine if you try to get any further forward at night you could see the Sparks a shelter so they move to internal combustion that final bit of delivery see there mobile
Worktop and artillery being moved on the two foot the same sort of um gun trucks that we saw at swiming Works being moved on the standard gauge wagon now being moved on two foot gauge the specification for the Locos was they should have a three- week working
Life so I just thought i’ show you the three weeks working life of some of the engines in 2019 they forgot about the other 100 years um so what are we got there we’ve got mountainer the TR toori which R until the 196 and been on
The first ever since it’s been out of service for a few years it’s being overhauled at the moment Maran longest serving internal combustion engine on any British Railway during the FES about 1922 one of the simplexes and from oil there a US Army bouldin locomotive T bed in the 1923 again still
In use so the second longest serving internal combustion engine on British Railway and then hunslet 303 here on the right hand side which we just borrowed for weekend um that that worked in Queensland and then came back to UK so they 102 years into their threee working three week working
Life but at the very front line you’re still back toing and trench TRS and I just put out to give some idea of the horror that it must have been like on the front line brief diversion um couple of campaigns three campaigns in the the Middle East obviously it was galipoli
Um Churchill’s idea did not work at all well I was very fortunate because my grandfather’s one of the last people to be out of gipo um he then worked in Mesopotamia what we now call Iraq but there was also the pasttime campaign where we invaded North from the Siris canal and reached
Jerusalem then have to go on from there and here we see the trains out Jerusalem London Southwestern trains and London Southwestern Loco there as well um but the same sort of issues on a smaller scale that they faced on the Western Front they’re certainly facing
Here as well having to send stuff out to support these operations we reckon 200,000 Ro served in the Great War somewhere in the front lines some overall we know 23,000 died that’s fig it’s pretty accurate there was a book a service in 1919 at St Pauls that honored
The Fallen railing which the king requested and attended and they produced a book for that and you can check the names on that and if you also check the numbers on the Waring Rines you come around 23,000 Mark people pretty close it is roughly the number of people that work for Network rail
Today there were eight Victoria crosses won by rman four pus four of them survived the war um I’m only going to talk about one of them um Alan Lewis because I think what happened to Alan Lewis was utterly disgraceful Al Lewis came from harid um and for reasons unknown moved
To Neath where he was a bus driver employed by the Great Western Railway he joined up as a volunteer someway into the war by the time they had got control of um R and going to war and basically you you were only supposed to leave the railway and go to war if you
Were had approval from the company and from government and he didn’t he resigned and he went to and the Great Western totally disarmed him and he was killed and he won the Victoria Cross so what did the Great Western do he’s not on the roles of Honor he’s not
In the 1919 book He’s not of Padington and people who were like that they lost their pensions they lost their company hands they lost everything um In fairness to today’s Great Western Railway they recognize that there is IEP named after him and we have put plugs from these station in
English and well honoring him but the only reason we know about him is because my secretary went to the ha Book Festival and they were ra raising money for a statue of Alan to put up in harod which they have done now and cl went and
Said oh yes we we’re we’re trying to honor all the rail women who won the Victoria Cross we’re doing plaques for them well my great uncle was a raing man and you’re not doing anything for him I came back and told me this what we can’t
Have missed one we had nobody in the industry knew anything about him until then so I think we’ve now done him properly but I don’t think that reflects any great credit on want that have rail to those who went to B but the other extreme you have individual sales of heris and
Captain Fri AC course a great eastern Railway ships Camp was involved in an incident where um a submarine tried to get his ship and he just charged the ship of the submarine the submarine submerged and got out of the way and he got a medal a
Watch honoring him for this from the G some years later his ship was captured um and they decided that because he was a civilian that was a war crime that used be watches evidence against him and shot him sure yes so there’s some gwr staff lined up after they volunteered at
Padington um that’s John Michael VC’s plaque John worked at nitsill um with the eight stations where the VC winners were put plaques on all of them or the nearest station of the Clos and in all by one we managed to find members of the family one one of them Jacob Rivers at
Derby um he he died he had no descendance but we did a massive amount of work on his family once we eventually made contact with him um and they were T to a generation uh between 1914 and now there’s about 80 or 990 different legs the family all in Darby none of them
Knowing each other we actually reunited the whole family um and when we unveiled the plaque we had the first class Lounge in Darby and we had the family treat roughly from the end of the screen there to about where the partition is up on the wall so can see how they all related
To each other there’s the memorial to Captain F at Liverpool Street on the left and his grave at do cour near harage um I’m very pleased to say that the grave which was getting a bit Tatty we were able to fund it restoration with some rht
Fism and this van you come back to Har dou is the standard southern region van said this is the Prototype it was built for the Southeastern chatt somebody bought it they just bought a southern south eastern guv van and then gradually it turned out not only was it the Prototype of the design
But it was actually this wagon that was used to bring back the bodies of Captain Fri Nur nurse Edith Cavell and the unknown Warrior so massive historic importance preserved purely by fluke and it’s now on the Kony Sussex Railway and if the unknown Warrior loo would ever come to success with Mainline
Running I think we’d have tried to put it behind the unknown Warrior but I think if that ever gets together it’ll be on Heritage lines only and a lot of men went to war and we saw the photo at H the women doing jobs they’d never done before um
And it starts mainly on clerical roles but it spread out to many more roles that were thought men only the unions don’t come out of this at all well um they fought keep the jobs for men um they insisted that the women were paid less than the men that they had to be
Discharged as soon as the men came back from the war um but I think what happened with the female employees J showed that women were capable of doing most of the jobs that men do and the only real issue is physical strength and the advances that we see in
Women’s equality in the last 100 OD years I think started with the mobilization of women in the Great War which the raway was very much at the lead so we see TI Clark ran some sort of factory obviously stewards on the trains some cleaning the Locomo don’t
Ever find we did actually find one photo of of a woman Sigma it’s pretty unique and then we come to war memorials so these are three of the big four War memorials the Great Western one and Padington um the unveiling of the Northwestern lms1 at Houston and the Victory Arch at watero
And my view is that the railway companies because they were going to lose their own identity put a lot of effort into the war Memorials of the preing railways um in their last days because most of the warming wars were actually unveiled in 2223 so uh said put a lot of effort into
Um to finding what there is and finding what’s not what’s not covered one place that was not covered Colonel stens or no C seens was the festiniog and we did a lot of research um and we found that two employees of the festiniog had fallen in
The W and several others have served so my colleague marwood designed the plaque trust funded the plaque FES York supporter funded the the base and that R up at T was unveiled on the centinary of the armis again we had families that have fallen there right nearly at the
End this is the memorial that was done by the laner yor we C W Works they listed all the men who had served on those six panels all the men who formed on those two that went up in their Carriage Works Newton Heath in the early 1920s and of course
In 1928 the LMS is formed do we need a carriage works that Newton Heath from got the main Carriage works at crew and Derby answer no so they closed the carriage works and nobody knew what could happen to this completely vanished from trace and then sometime in the
1980s um may even have been the early 1990s they were doing some work at Picadilly some of the guys came to see the dce an old mucker and L Richard law and they said to Richard boss we think you better come and have a look at what we just found downstairs in Picadilly
And what they had found was this The Three Bs with the names all the framing had gone and Richard had those shipped to the east lure Railway but the eastn railway never had space to put them up so they just stayed in store eventually I was approached and we found this photo
Thank God so with the shadow marks on the the plaques and that photo we were able to know what it should look like we got a firm in York that recreated all the Bings and then there we see it in position before the mold put out and there’s a rededication service to it
Back in Newton Heath not not in its original location but in the Depo of Newton Heath and it’s was being unveiled on the 28th of June 2019 which is of course cery of the veride treaty and the end War I think that’s probably enough thank you thank you than you
Do I’m sure some questions going to come out to this is there any questions from anyone on online no not the minute okay F there any questions excuse us chair please against pleasy call okay any questions just just one reflection really if you watched any of the war programs on television channels like
Yesterday one of the constant sort of difficulties of all advancing armies is keeping in touch with their supply lines yes and be it on the Alli side or German side or Russ yeah they all seem to have that problem you know you got you got the Army up the front wanted to push
Ahead and capitalize on their advance but of course they forget the problems behind of bringing up all the supplies which even be destroy the last hour well I mean you only have to look at the initial Russian Advance into Ukraine and how much they had to retreat back you
Know we tend to forget that the Russians have got probably less than half what they had in the early days of the Ukraine because they could they hadn’t got their Logistics right did I imagine it or with those two foot gauge track panels what the M of Steel sleepers um there certainly Jubilee
Track with steel sleepers is is a very common feature of industrial Railways in the 1920s and 30s um I’m quite used to working because when we built deviation on the festino we used Jubilee track all the way um still a lot of it around whether it was used in the gra wall I
Don’t know certainly there were more sleepers there there would be for juv track it certainly features in once or two of the M programs of recent years yeah when he was trying to putting two foot gaug panels into yes that’s track yeah I’m I’m very heavily involved in the Daran tank that’s just
Been preserved the one that Adan Sho me to um and one of the things we’re looking at is whether to have 200 yards of Jubilee type track it’s proba be pretty solid to take that engine is quite heavy um but so we can take the engine of the coaches round particular to Indian
Festivals there still there’s still jupy track around must been a huge amount for industrial purposes at the time as well well there are photos of literally hundreds of engines um in store in Kent after the war near there for some years because s the first wsh island they bought 590 for the
Wsh island which was a BAL 460 they brought Maran they brought the baldwi all of those in about 1923 so that’s four years after the war has ended the stuff’s still there waiting for the buyers but I mean there were Bings and Indian there are about 15 or 20 R in the UK
Between the walls mainly at Ash over but wor Island snail beach one of two other places as well K stees was quite Kean on them um Glen Valley had one and some of the hunslet were up near Fort William on a hydroelectric Railway there there were hunslet in in Argentina
There were certainly engines in Australia we brought some of them back so a lot of two for games Locos went all over the place mat as well bit ended up in France after the war was on Belgium yeah yeah should beat Rail and things like that well was
Largely sugar big rail but of course that was way away from where the fighting was yeah p and the and what sort of difficulty occurred because of the variation in game is not much but in Railway to it’s great between a twoot gauge raway in a 500 or 600 mm metric
Gauge and and how did it work out in practice uh as far as the World War I railroads was ConEd I don’t think there’s any substantial difference I don’t know what gaug it actually was um the I have known problems in terms of fenoc um certainly there was a derailment
Couple of derailments with Linda and blanch when they first arrived because they were set for 1 foot 10 and 3/4 the FES was 1 foot 11 and a half both those engines derail in the early days and we’ve never had a veil of rideal engine on the first in because of
The back toback issues um but we have had first in enges on a fail of ridal the M mod has had a lot of problems with it because I personally been involved with sting out their problems because they freely mixed um twoot gauge and 60 cm gauge you equitment because the two I
Think was two foot goes in the first world war and whilst everything was all clapped out and everything it didn’t really matter but we’ve been they bought some new turnouts they kept derailing wagons and it took some while to work out that some Vehicles had 60 cm axle
One end and two foot goes the other yeah so they I mean the the the the big ones the engines we bought back from South Africa because all those big bear Gars and the mcard which is about to enter service were very definitely 610 he fairly fundamental how far apart wheels
Are it is but two two foot that was anything I think 610 is the widest I’m sorry yeah yeah um and I’m not sure what one 10 and three qus is somebody can leave that’s an exercise for the student but that’s the smallest two gauge which
Penar IE men no no first Y gug is 598 and it happens all the time the rat and the r Church don’t use the same check gauge either as they found out at the Liverpool garden festival so um people just AR so interested in that but any more questions me S the property
So get lost on track issues but it just with memorials it’s very same with pton or something it’s very obvious it’s very big c i remember a c invol tried to get the names together for a to go back and W there after I assume we lost some
Stuff inside the the Comal so it’s keeping track of the smaller items as well W poster was the yeah the the ones on Central Station are new ones yes I have no record of there ever having been memorials here it’s unlikely um the one that does not exist as far as I’m aware
And one of the biggest gaps is the rumy we know where the Barry Railway is we know where the tale Railway is and there’s a replica of the TA Railway Railway one on display at Queen Street which I organized um but I’ve never found a memorial for the rumney or any trace of
Having been one um but I can tell you I’ve got a database that’s not in my head because there’s lots of stuff but most of the locomotives that that have war memorial names and most of the actual War memorials pry good idea where they are if they still
Exist I can’t think I know there’s one in the show blide so yeah well the Great Western Great Western Memorial roles of Honor in a lot of locations and we actually funded renewing some of them about 15 20 years ago just before I joined the trust yeah thank you more
Questions all right thank you Andy so I’d like to call on John Davis to propose a bunch of thanks thank thanks thanks for the invitation guest um fascinated absolutely fascinated I don’t know much about rway history not alone War history but today it been most most interesting um I’ve had association with
The with the speaker a long time ago uh come Brown station I think was the first thing we really got together on another thing I see on the outside kin viod I remember you inviting me to absil down with you and I declined on a out because I was with the
Provincial services in British way and um one of two things I se from that um the law of un intended consequences nothing new seem to be very much the four in those first world war and the um fact that we don’t learn from history shows we don’t learn from
Our mistakes we still make the same sort of mistakes today as far as I can see OB something worse uh but um fascinating to see the facts and figures and just how much you know was done think how how El could be done those things with technology much l
Developed than it is today so thank you very much uh really good interesting thing well worth my trip who wanted come listen to thank you before I close Mone sign the attendance sheet it’s up here anybody has hasn’t so our next meeting and again on a a historical notice the cor Valley
Lines in the past by Dr Adrian humit that be our next leeting on Monday the 11th of March um he’s with the Welsh Railways research Circle the 8th of April um we have he you muted Andy for the last 30 seconds or so I don’t think I don’t think you can hear
You next time yeah as long as it’s not important I got the bet for the next meeting so as long as we go to the go to the 11th we’ll know about the eth and whatever it is anyway so that’s good I do oh