Kate Hudson

Richard, your narrative quality is spot on again. Brilliant read.

Daeds, when I was knee-high to the proverbial grasshopper, we had a mix of streamliners and more conventional looking engines pulling the expresses that rolled into Newbury from London Victoria. I always hoped it would be a streamlined engine that would carry me off to exotic…[Read more]

The usual reason given is for ease of maintenance in WWII. The streamlined casings were a diktat from the LMS publicity department (the LNER’s got them so we must have them too), and the Chief Mechanical Engineer referred to the batch of five un-streamlined ones he insisted on building ‘for comparison’ as ‘proper’ones.

Guys, I can’t apologise enough for being NINE days late coming back to this. THe holidays were … not conducive to remembering things, so I am sorry for keeping you in suspense (and making January a very brief comp!)

So… thankyou for managing to fit in writing your entries during the xmas busyness.

@Seagreen – I loved the tiny details that…[Read more]

Well, to be fair, accidents through excessive speed aren’t all caused by the heat of competition. One curve at Morpeth was the scene of three (count them) derailments within thirty years, all in the BR period: 1969, 1884 and 1994. Fortunately only the first caused any fatalities, six of them. And at Eltham Well Hall in 1972 the driver was…[Read more]

Another engaging story, Richard. I have no particular interest in railway history but your adept recounting of these incidents mean that I open your blogs with a sense of anticipation and I am never disappointed. You have a gift for giving us the right amount of background to bring the events to life. Thank you!

Very clever John – you’ve left me poised and nervous as to what sort of ‘reality’ comes next.

Yeah, do post an update when you have time, @philippaeast! I’d love to hear how it’s worked doing such big edits with your agent as editor. I didn’t really get much of that with mine, so would be interested to hear how it’s been.