Great War Commemorative Issues and Articles

[EddieB]

With the fast approaching centenary of the declaration of war against Germany, there would seem to be much interest in railway development as a result of the first global conflict and its modelling potential.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the railway media are picking up the theme, both in terms of articles and commemorative issues.  I'm hoping this thread will flag up items of interest and provide helpful reviews of  their content.

 

There is, of course, a wide body of published works that cover different aspects of the First World War.  However, despite the numerous books, certain aspects remain pooirly covered..  I'm happy to be corrected, but I'd say that the current picture is something like this: 

 

a) UK domestic railways wartime operations, ambulance trains - good coverage

b] Railways on the Western Front - good coverage

c) ROD locomotives (requisitions and new builds) - good coverage for steam, less for internal combustion (I've yet to find a full ROD locomotive list in an accessible publication)

d) German military railways and locomotives - good coverage in German language (although errors becoming evident in some works)

e) Austro-Hungarian military railways and locomtives- faircoverage in German language

f) Russia and Russian Poland - very little available

g) Other theatres of war (Italy, Balkans, Greece, Turkey, Iraq, Palestine, Africa, etc.) - scant coverage

h) Subsequent histories of WWI locomotives - variable

i) Post-war and the Armistice - patchy coverage overall, little in English

 

Two magazine editions have prompted this posting, and I'm sorry to say that neither has any breadth to the coverage that already exists.  That is not to say that they are without merit, just that they go over what is fairly familiar ground (and print the same images from the Imperial War Museum collection).

 

"Trains At War" is a special edition from the stables of Model Engineer Its feature articles on WWI subjects cover standard gauge railways, narrow gauge railways, ambulance trains and memorial locomotives, with a further piece on the Quintinshill disaster.  The first two articles get no further than the Western Front.  After these articles, the magazine appears to have run out of materiél and switches attention to the Second World War, preserved locomotives with wartime connections and modelling wartime railways (mainly Second World War).

 

The July 2014 edition of Railway Magazine is also a special edition commemorating railways at war - "The Remembrance Issue".  Feature articles take a step closer (as you might expect from the RM) - The role of railways in the First World War, the history of the Railway Operating Division and its locomotives, Tracks to the Trenches (narrow gauge), Ambulance Trains, In the Front Line (the role of pre-grouping railways, particularly the North Eastern) and Home Trains Running -(domestic train performance in the war period).  Again, the focus is primarily on the UK and Western Front.  Again these articles are supplemented by further coverage of WW2, military railways (UK), "wartime weekends" on heritage lines.  However, the level of coverage is still very much at an introductory level and lacks the technical data the magazine often provides to support its featured topics.

[The Stationmaster]

While I understand that the name 'Railway Magazine' has probably passed through more different ownerships than even the Triang/Hornby empire it is odd that they are not able to mine their own extensive past issues to aid research - plenty of good stuff as we have recently discussed.  However your comments about coverage of particular areas & themes apply as much to that as to other sources I suspect.

 

What is irritating me with all of this WWI coverage is that I am getting the impression it will all be over by Christmas - a mass splurge of stuff this year, in many cases prior to the relevant centenary, leaving me wondering what they will be doing in the three following years.  Surely they could at least have started with such interesting subjects as the pre-war plans for getting coal, and other supplies, to the Home Fleet base in Scapa Flow - something which was planned in advance and actually came into operation in 1914 and for which original source material is readily available.

[EddieB]

I must agree Mike.  If nothing else, given that the Railway Magazine has taken to reprinting historic articles in special editions, bringing together all the articles on the ROD, its locomotives and stock from the series of articles the magazine ran in 1932-33 in one place would be most welcome (even if you do have access to the originals).

 

On a wider level, comemorating the centenaries of some of the darkest episodes in history should hardly be cause for celebration.  I'd rather the commemorations did run out of steam than they become attempts to glamorise that awful conflict. 

 

In response to your second point, an informative article by AJ Mullay "Before The Ultimatum" featured in the May 2014 edition of Back Track, covering the formation of the Railway Executive Committee, plans and operations (Scapa Flow gets a brief mention) and the requisition of railway ships by the Royal Navy - the preparatory steps prior to the declaration of war in August 1914.  The July 2014 issue of Back Track also has an article about Ambulance Trains (which seems to be a popular subject, and of course quite topical as work commenced on conversion and fitting out right from the earliest days of the war).

 

Which kind of brings us to a couple more scholarly and specific articles that have appeared recently in the railway press.

 

"Assassination in Sarajevo" is a fascinating piece written by Keith Chester in Narrow Gauge World no. 94.  It follows the railway journeys of the royal couple and the young Serbian activists to their fateful encounter on a side street in Sarajevo.  (Keith, who is based in Vienna, has authored the definitive history of railways in Bosnia-Hercegovina).

 

"ROD Baldwin Locomotives" is a special edition of the Industrial Railway Society's bulletin and traces the known histories of all standard gauge 0-40ST, 0-6-0T/PT and 2-6-2ST locomotives supplied by that progidous builder to the ROD.  This 24-page A5 format publication is available to non-members of the IRS at £3 including postage (IRS members receive copies as part of their subscription).

[The Stationmaster]

Interestingly - and it might well have got a mention in the Mullay article (?) there is somewhere in one of the archives a copy of the 1911 GWR plan for coal movements out of South Wales to supply the Grand Fleet.  I wonder if anyone photographed a GW 28XX at Warrington which was going to be teh limit of GW loco working?

[1ngram]

But no photographs of British locos and stock, British trains, running in Britain.  I well remember the usually photograph heavy magazine "Railway Archive" a few years ago publishing a three part article (excellent though it was) on the Jellicoe trains during WW1 and having to depend almost entirely on photos from pre or post war as they just could not locate any relevant contemporary photos of WW1 trains.  Plenty of photos of R.O.D., locos, less (alas) of rolling stock, in France but simply none of any British railway during WW1.  Is there some secret stock of IWM photographs hidden away somewhere?  Its seems ridiculous that  we don't seem to have any photos of the enormous effort the pre-grouping companies made to sustain the war effort.

[DaveF]

The only photo I know of showing a "Jellicoe Special" of coal for the Grand Fleet is of a LNWR Webb Compound 0-8-0 climbing Shap  with an unidentified banker at the rear.

 

It appears in "Britain's Railways in World War 1" by J A B Hamilton published by George Allen and Unwin in 1967.  No ISBN as they hadn't been invented then!

 

In the caption the photo is credited as being from "The Railway Magazine".

 

The same book has a photo of a Hull and Barnsley Railway 0-6-0 on a goods train on the SE&CR near Orpington, also a photo taken at Hounslow with a GNR 0-6-0 on a goods train with an LSWR 0-4-2 passing in the opposite direction.

 

I suspect the lack of photographs is that there were very few railway photographers around then and most of them were probably a bit busy at the time.

 

David

Edited to correct grammar.

David

[1ngram]

That must be a rare book indeed as it doesn't appear on Abebooks and there is only one for sale - in the USA - on Amazon.  Does any bookseller in the UK have a copy for sale, I wonder?

[The Stationmaster]

But no photographs of British locos and stock, British trains, running in Britain.  I well remember the usually photograph heavy magazine "Railway Archive" a few years ago publishing a three part article (excellent though it was) on the Jellicoe trains during WW1 and having to depend almost entirely on photos from pre or post war as they just could not locate any relevant contemporary photos of WW1 trains.  Plenty of photos of R.O.D., locos, less (alas) of rolling stock, in France but simply none of any British railway during WW1.  Is there some secret stock of IWM photographs hidden away somewhere?  Its seems ridiculous that  we don't seem to have any photos of the enormous effort the pre-grouping companies made to sustain the war effort.

There are definitely GWR (posed) photos of ambulance trains (I think on the Badminton cut-off?) and they were issued on postcards.

[Ozexpatriate]

There is, of course, a wide body of published works that cover different aspects of the First World War.  However, despite the numerous books, certain aspects remain pooirly covered..  I'm happy to be corrected, but I'd say that the current picture is something like this: 

 

g) Other theatres of war (Italy, Balkans, Greece, Turkey, Iraq, Palestine, Africa, etc.) - scant coverage

Given the colourful accounts of T.E. Laurence, there are some ancillary descriptions of railways in Palestine and in particular the Hejaz Railway (Damascus to Medina).

 

Later than the great war I do remember an article on railways in the Palestinian Mandate around 1935/1936 from "Railways of the World" These were online but links to the data are dead.

[EddieB]

Such is the fragmentation of RMweb that it might not be apparent that some of the sources for those Wikipedia pages have been mentioned in a thread here: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/81880-rod/?p=1507818. 

 

As far as Wikipedia goes, those pages are excellent (and give me an idea of their authorship).  I do note however that a linked page from the Hejaz article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Railway_Museum states that the Krauss locomotive in the railway museum at Haifa is the only surviving steam locomotive in Israel - happily no longer the case as there's also now an ex-TCDD 8F preserved at Beer Sheva.  But we digress...

[1ngram]

Mullay also now has a book out: Blighty's Railways - Britains Railways in the First World War.

 

http://www.amberleybooks.com/shop/article_9781445638577/Blighty%27s-Railways%3CBR%3EBritain%27s-Railways-in-the-First-World-War%3C_BR%3E%3CI%3EAlexander-J-Mullay%3C_I%3E.html?shop_param=cid%3D89%26aid%3D9781445638577%26