Something Missing

I’ve finally finished reading Simon Bradley’s wonderful journey through Britain’s railway history, The Railways - Nation, Network & People. Authoritative, it certainly is, as well as thoroughly entertaining and well-written. The summary sections at the end of each chapter, where true feelings show through to add to otherwise impressive objectivity, are especially appealing.

I have just one grumble. Railway art does not just take a back seat. It misses the train altogether. Turner get a mention and so does E. Hamilton Ellis, but even he is included for his work as a railway historian and not as an artist. Frith, Solomon, Bury and Forbes provide early illustrations. E. McKnight Kauffer’s work for the London Underground is highlighted. That’s it.

In the concluding section, entitled Enthusiasm, every other conceivable interest group is dealt with, including promotions by the railway companies and British Railways themselves - for example by naming locomotives and the use of poster advertising, the trainspotting phenomenon, literature - from Thomas the Tank Engine and Ian Allan to the multiplicity of railway magazine titles and academia, poetry, film, Peter Handford’s sound recordings of steam, measuring locomotive performance through train-timings, railway clubs, railway antiques and collecting railwayana, photography, railway modelling, the mushrooming of the heritage lines and its army of volunteers and the string of new-build steam locomotives being developed to replace defunct classes.

The Guild of Railway Artists does not get a mention. Perhaps more surprisingly, neither does the contribution made by any of its leading lights, past or present - no Cuneo, Breckon or Shepherd, indeed, no railway paintings of the post-war period, at all.