Welcome to British Railways Illustrated No.S. Readers familiar with the magazine from the first will recall something of its declared 'home ground' broadly the British steam railway in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. 'Ebb and flow' of emphasis was mentioned, and it was suggested that the magazine's content be judged over a volume rather than an issue. The pull and tug of editorial content, what should go in or out, must go in or out and what can't go in or out. is a benign if unpredictable force, and a hard taskmaster; the most closely detailed plans evaporate as items and articles suddenly declare their candidature. Lurches in emphasis were predicted, from north to south, from 1930s to 1960s and back again. So has it proved: No.5 has something of a Scottish flavour - the country has a thriving native enthusiast element and like Wales, commands a sizeable slice of English sentiment too. So to the 'Big Goods’ or whatever it is decided to call them, a Thirties File extended a decade or so either side of its normal boundaries by A.N. Marshall.
Space exercises a relentless constraint, and some hitherto perennial features, it has been decreed, must now adjust to rather more occasional status. Nocturne and Geoffrey Symms (he works too hard as it is) and War Report thus pass for this issue; Fourum eta! remain with us.
Diggle is a place most of us will wish we had visited after reading Ian Sixsmith's article - no engine shed but unending train movements amid the foothills of the Pennines, and the awesome backdrop of Standedge and its four generations of tunnel. A place of ghosts where Neolithic remains run into the scattered stones of navvies' huts, and still the grass does not grow on the great fans of spoil, laying much as it was first harrowed out, a century gone.
Station Survey is in the beating heart of the Great Western, Bristol Temple Meads, where a foreign presence nevertheless maintained a prominent part in things. With archive material, contemporary reports and accounts, Martin Smith surveys one of the great stations of Britain.
Glasshouse continues with further examples at Dorking, Horsham, Arundel and Bognor Regis.
Davina meets Diviner from last issue met with an unexpected response. One correspondent castigated BRILL for a resort to April Foolery (but it was true!) illustrating the old line about truth being stranger than fiction. Other readers wrote labouring under similar assumptions, offering by turn explanations which if published would close BRILL forever. '9499' recounted an unusual episode but a true one. Though was it any odder say. than the Worsdell 0-6-0s in Worcestershire and Herefordshire?