Welcome to our latest rummage into the lesser-known, formally referred to as RAILWAY BYLINES 2:3. This time out, our efforts to provide the proverbial mixed bag take us from London to Lothian via Shrewsbury and Grassington, with brief glimpses of Plymouth, South Molton, Criggion, Sheep Pasture (again!), Chesterfield and Liverpool along the way.
We kick off in London, looking at the Port of London Authority railways at the East and West India and Millwall docks. The PLA was formed in 1909 to administer all of London’s docks and it inherited the railway systems at three groups of docks, but for various reasons of practicality the railways at each dock group were regarded as - and worked as - completely separate entities. The PLA’s railways are a fascinating subject, but given their scale and complexity it would be overly ambitious - nay, foolhardy - to attempt to deal with them all in a single magazine article. The obvious solution is to deal with each group separately, and so we start here with the railways of the India and Millwall docks. The PLA railways at the Royal and Tilbury docks will be dealt with at a later date - hopefully later this year.

Our northern extremity in this issue is Polkemmet Colliery, in the Lothian coalfield to the south-west of Edinburgh. This colliery was an outpost of steam until the late 1970s, and inevitably became a very popular location for enthusiasts - the sight of two well-worn and indescribably filthy Barclay tank engines double heading a train of coal wagons up the ferocious slope to the exchange sidings was a little bit special. The atmosphere is admirably captured in some positively stunning photographs by Bill Roberton and Adrian Booth. Just feel the coal dust!
Another principal articles deals with the Kitson 0-4-0STs which were purchased by the LMS in 1932 and the five similar locomotives built by the LMR in 1953/54 - Kitson and Kin, for want of a more concise title. We also have a frustratingly brief glance at the Shropshire & Montgomeryshire Railway. This is a long-overdue look at a Colonel Stephens line - after all, when BYLINES was launched we vowed that it would include ‘more Holman Stephens than Nigel Gresley’, but it has taken rather a long time in coming. This has not been due to reluctance on our part. It is simply that the Colonel’s railways have had such coverage in the railway press over the years that it has sometimes been difficult to home in on an aspect which hasn’t already been ‘done to death’. And then there is the problem of photographs - there is only a finite quantity in existence, and most of the best ones have had many airings before. Or so we thought

STOP PRESS: An announcement about binders for RAILWAY BYLINES and an index for Vols.1 and 2 will be made in the next issue. We also regret to announce that we only have number 6 left from volume 1.