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Front cover of Backtrack Magazine, November 2018 Issue
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Backtrack Magazine, November 2018 Issue

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Contents Listing - Articles & Features in this issue
Cumberland Coal
Britain's Railways in World War I - Part One 646 The Perth Hotel Boots Case
Economics, Religion and Politics
The LNER's 'Shires' and 'Hunts'
1948 - The Beginning of the End for the Steam Locomotive
Retro Tanks - The North Eastern Railway's J72 Class
The Hoylake Railway
The Chatham Line to Dover - Part Two
Great Western Branch Lines
The Horwich Branch Railmotor
Glimpses from the London Times
Western Stopping Places
Book Reviews
Readers' Forum
 
Cover - NERJ72 0-6-0T No.68736, as decked in North Eastern-style livery in 1960, performs its role as station pilot at York.
Article Snippets
Article Snippets
History lessons:
If we didn't believe in the general interest in and importance of history we wouldn't be producing this and you wouldn't be reading it. In the simplest of terms we are where we are now because of it. To some that matters not the slightest; to others (such as ourselves) it intrigues us to try and understand causes and effects, to ponder upon how - had circumstances been different - the subsequent course of events might also have been different (be that for the better or worse). As traditional wisdom has it, if we fail to understand history we will never learn the lessons of it - though, sadly, in all probability we won't anyway; and that in itself is a lesson of history! I was taken aback recently when a friend of mine, gratefully retired from the teaching profession, told me that in junior schools history was now being very selectively taught if at all - and if at all it would apparently be a matter of 'don't mention the war'. The militarily and politically-detonated conflicts of the twentieth century have, it seems, to be avoided in case they enhance stereotypes of 'foreign aggression' and that, of course, would be a 'negative' thing.

But where does that leave those supposedly impressionable and hopefully enquiring young minds wondering why we wear poppies in November, have remembrance days and parades and two-minute silences, or place war memorials all over the land from the biggest cities down to the smallest towns and villages. 'Stuff happens' as a US politician said to waft away uncomfortable practices of the day, but 'stuff happened' in the past: perhaps better to have an understanding of it than not? Railways haven't been the fundamental cause of much political turmoil but it can't be overlooked that they have played their part in enabling it to happen and have often been in the centre stage of theatres of war. It has been right and proper that Backtrack has considered many aspects of such events.

In 2014, in the centenary year of the outbreak of the Great War, we presented a series of articles on aspects of its railway history: preparations in advance of the conflict, the arrival of women in the workforce, ambulance trains, 'war memorial engines'acknowledging key characters, events and locations, along with that 'Sideshow of a Sideshow'-the Hezaj Railway and Lawrence of Arabia - and the epic 'Sealed Train'conveying Lenin from Zurich to Petrograd in 1917. I'd like to think we have left a measure of enlightenment for present and future generations to absorb. In this year we mark 100 years since the cessation of the hostilities of the Great War: not the peace treaty at Versailles which was to follow in 1919 but of the armistice signed in a railway carriage at Compiegne, an event (and its awful sequel in 1940) described in BTVol.25 No.7). As we now know, it was to be the conclusion only of the First World War, for the settlement terms were to sow the seeds of the Second just twenty years later and everything that followed: even up to today. Is this not a history we all deserve the chance to understand?

It's a subject area in which I've become increasingly interested. Several years ago I visited the Somme to find the grave of a great-uncle who fell almost at the end in the '100 Days Offensive' to break the Hindenburg Line and went on to discover indirectly a surprising family connection to the great naval engagement at Jutland in 1916. My home town was the traditional base of the Lancashire Fusiliers and each year the regiment commemorated Gallipoli Day in honour of the bloody but ill-fated action in April 1915 in which it had won its celebrated 'six VCs before breakfast' and I remember watching as veterans of the 1914-18 battles marched proudly past Bury's cenotaph, increasingly stiffly, increasingly fewer in number, until eventually there were none left. It is possible now that many of us might seethe last of the 1939-45 campaigners go off to that ultimate parade ground. The Fusiliers, incidentally, were our neighbours until they vacated their barracks in the early 1960s for new quarters elsewhere. From overa wall above Bury's Bolton Street station (where the heritage East Lancashire Railway now operates) I watched the soldiers board a special train to take their final leave of us, with the 'Jubilee' Class locomotive Palestine present and correct on the front. But the town still marks Gallipoli Day and hopefully those watching the time-honoured ceremony will appreciate why - history is history, after all...Backtrack returns to the subject this month, with the first instalment of a two-part article delving not so much into the military aspects of the railways' involvement in the Great War and how they coped under adversity, but rather into the machinations within Government and along the corridors of power regarding how the Government took control of railways and what it did with them. Next month an article will review some of the railway companies' achievements in response to the demands made of them to support the war effort. And with these BTwill have fulfilled the responsibility appropriate to it to present the story of Britain's railway contribution during the years of the First World War, but we are aware that the 80th anniversary of the start of the Second one lies only around the corner...
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