Going Monthly:
Welcome to British Railways Illustrated Vol.2 No.6. This issue completes two years of those black and white days, two years of quietly consolidating progress. To all our readers a most heartfelt thanks for smashing support; together we've covered much new, as well as re-examining a fair bit of old, ground. From the next issue of BRILL we can announce with great pleasure (and some trepidation) our elevation to monthly status. With BRILL 3.1 there will be twelve issues, getting on for 700 pages, every year.

There are many 'hidden' sides, nooks corners and crannies of our railway history, indeed there are probably more obscure and little known facets and features than there are well known and familiar aspects. Special traffic of all sorts has often been consigned to the obscure and a good example is football traffic. Perhaps it was 'best left forgotten' after attaining something of an evil reputation in the 1960s, but through the photographs of W.A.C. Smith and the notes of Paul Anderson, it is possible to revive and recount in some considerable detail football trains (at least north of the border) in their steam heyday. Some highly unusual stock, locomotives and locations in Glasgow Football Traffic.

The 1500 tanks were a personal favourite of the Editor. Quick circuits of the London termini in the early 'sixties yielded less and less steam - south east and north, from Victoria in an arc across to Kings Cross and St. Pancras, diesels and electrics were fast becoming ubiquitous. Euston was a terrible bombsite but steam crept in and out on the carriage jobs to Willesden. Anything from a Mogul to a Britannia. Marylebone could turn up a B1 but only at Waterloo was there anything like a steam railway. At Paddington one never knew quite what to expect towards the end but an absolutely enduring memory is the rearing bulk of the 15XX, which seemed to sit there immovable, like some watchful sentinel. The big 15XX design was indeed Odd One Out. At Harwich was The LNER's Entry into Europe and here we board yet another long lost and long forgotten feature of the railway, the train ferry. The Channel boats have perhaps always been the most familiar but the LNER had its own entree into Europe, its Zeebrugge ferries serving a wide British hinterland, encompassing more or less the whole country. Peter Tatlow (like many of us) begins his story as food rationed child in the 1940s - an assumption that the vast trade with Europe grew from the War proved groundless as his studies took him back to. of all things, the Edinburgh and Northern Railway, a predecessor of the North British.

This issue foregoes Diesel Dawn, which will disappoint one reader at least, but Fourum (putting flesh on the bones of an obscure location). Nocturne again and one or two other one-offs are still with us. In the grab bag principle that drives British Railways Illustrated, London Midland matters are not to the fore, this time around - last month of course provided a generous LMR outing and next time around the whole mix will doubtless reconstitute itself in yet another form. In this issue, most unusually. Station Survey also takes a breather, but there are some fine maps and drawings to compensate.

The Southern in this last bi-monthly issue is represented by a tale of the ordinary-clerical and station-masterly life at Southampton Terminus touched by a hint of glamour. The great ocean ships in a time before cheap mass travel vied once with the railways for the rapt attention of the newsreel audiences and this indeed, albeit in ever fading form, continued through the 1950s. A homely account by T.A. Carter, illustrated by the efforts of R.C. Riley.