Playing Through the Lines

I love the way the pundits try to make football a more complicated game than it really is by regularly inventing new phrases to describe stuff that all good teams have always done as a matter of course. Last year it was “pressing” that was dropped into every possible conversation, and this year its “playing through the lines”, which we were already referring to as a through ball, fifty years ago.

Computer graphics now allow all sorts of measurements of patterns and performance, including those lines that connect encircled back-four players “look at the straight line across the back - playing as a unit”. We used to refer to it as pushing up together to catch opponents offside. I don’t think that anything much has really changed, in spite of the technology now used to illustrate it. It’s a simple game, however you want to dress it up. Some of this over-analysis enabled by fancy graphics belongs in Pseud’s Corner.

Playing through the lines was what we were doing at the engine sheds. They were dangerous places, though we never took unnecessary extra risks. We could, however, have easily been undone by a momentary lack of concentration, such was the buzz that those places offered, so you had to concentrate on what you were doing. We approached them with the happy confidence of youth. Now, concentration and confidence are things that makes a difference - in football, too!     

Full of Surprises

The Contemporary Art Gallery in Nottingham overlooks the tell-tale blue brick retaining walls of the former Great Central Railway, at the point that expresses bound for London Marylebone burst out of the tunnel mouth and straight onto the junction at Weekday Cross.

The Contemporary, itself, likes to surprise - even to shock - with its rapid turn-over of modern art. Some of it is bewildering and some amusing. Sometimes it is challenging and quite upsetting, and occasionally it seems banal beyond belief. It is always different - though not necessarily refreshingly so.

I’m always up for giving it a go, and I find little gems that take my attention from time to time, as was the case last week within an exhibition entitled Still Undead: Popular Culture in Britain Beyond the Bauhaus. This time, it was in the form of three London Underground posters designed by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy in the 1920s.  

The Manchester Club Trains

The club trains were initially provided by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and the London North Western Railway to carry businessmen commuters to their office jobs and back - to Blackpool, Southport, Windermere and Llandudno. They each provided a special saloon carriage that offered comfort and privacy for those paying a supplement to join the club. They continued to operate under the London Midland and Scottish Railway between the wars, but were discontinued during World War Two and not resurrected after it.

However, the fast, early trains and their return workings would have still carried on into British Railways days and its not difficult to imagine that the club mentality [especially for those who were “in the know”] lived on amongst many of the commuters whose lengthy daily journeys were the cost of working in the big city and living by the sea, much as it does in many other parts of the country today.

John Harrison’s atmospheric watercolour painting of the North Wales Club Train shows the southbound evening train heading back to North Wales through Warrington Bank Quay behind a Black Five. She would only be on the west coast main line for a short time before taking the Chester line south of the town.

Warrington BQ was one of the first locations we visited with our school railway society, probably in late 1960. We walked up the approach road from Warrington Central to see 46223 Princess Alice at the head of an express for the north. The club train would have already passed through without stopping by then and we would have left for home and our tea before she returned.  

Port at War - Liverpool 1939-1945

I recently rediscovered this book, left to me by my Dad. It was written in 1946 by TJ Buckley on behalf of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. It includes photographs showing what the Luftwaffe did to Liverpool during the blitz, but concentrates on the endeavours made to keep the port operational in response to aggression.

The three railway related contributions are of USA locomotives being unloaded in Birkenhead docks and of British and foreign troops at Riverside station, which I regretfully gave little attention to prior to its closure in 1971.

Gedling Country Park

The local borough council have transformed the old Gedling colliery site into an excellent country park. In the café is a wall display that points out some of the links with the past, including this reference to Colwick marshalling yards on the Trent floodplain at the bottom of the hill.

Better known to us as Colwick sheds, the photo shows Class A3 No. 60048 Doncaster, and although Pacifics received attention there it was with freight engines that is was perhaps more usually associated.

   

And Marie’s the Name

Just one of the things that the internet is useful for is gradually putting me right over the words of songs that I’ve got wrong for decades. I suppose we really only had the song itself to go on, unless you were going to go out and buy sheet music, which would have never crossed my mind. It’s just too embarrassing for words to recount what I have sung to myself since 1961 instead of “And Marie’s the Name” - a phrase which was even more obvious, as I see it now as the bracketed prefix to the title of “His Latest Flame”.

I suppose it reflects the fact that I wasn’t too bothered about lyrics at all in the old days, which was itself a topic of some heated discussions, I seem to remember. It was the tune that mattered most - and the exhilaration of that combination of notes that filled your consciousness along with the mood that the tune brought along in its wake.

The internet brings so much information so quickly that its revolutionised the potential for railway enthusiasm as well. www.realtimetrains.co.uk provides spotters with the information they need on the platform via their phones. www.prorail.co.uk keeps tabs on the railwayana scene and now www.railadvent.co.uk keeps me posted - by the minute almost, though I don’t remember asking it to, about every occurrence out there on the network, or so it seems. My life has changed in so many ways, or more accurately, my life has changed in oh so many ways.

Happy Birthday, John Harrison - Railway Artist

John Harrison was born eighty-nine years ago today. Though never a train spotter, the London Midland and Scottish Railway was never far away while John was growing up in Lancashire, whether for holidays, shopping trips, family visits or the occasional commute if the buses weren’t running. After art training in Liverpool, John went on to become Head of Art in a large comprehensive school. Having eventually taken early retirement, he was able to concentrate on his own railway art. A full member of the Guild of Railway Artists - and formerly on the guild council - he adds, “my work is unashamedly nostalgic, seeking to recapture the men, machines and atmosphere of a departed way of life”. John Harrison’s work, with watercolour as his usual medium of choice, certainly exudes atmosphere - heavy grey skies, wet days, polluted air and railwaymen going about their business. John captures the gritty everyday reality of the steam railway in the 1950s and 1960s as well as anyone. Most competent railway artists communicate the appearance of the steam locomotive effectively in technical terms. It is skill on a different level to additionally bring to life railwaymen in their everyday surroundings as convincingly as he does. It was a pleasure to meet him yesterday and to travel back home with this particularly evocative John Harrison original - a glimpse inside Sutton Oak shed, entitled Memories of 8G. It is a scene so reminiscent of our own frequent visits to the next shed in the list - 8H Birkenhead. Happy returns of the day, John. Thank you for welcoming me and for sharing some of your own memories so readily.

Original railway art sold at railwayana auctions in 2019

Only original paintings depicting railways in Britain and sold at the main railwayana auction houses during 2019 are included below - GCRA, GNRA, GWRA [including their “buy and go” sales], Stafford and Talisman. The online auction at railwayana.net did not hold a sale in 2019. Postal auctions [as at GCRA] are not included below, neither are results from general auction houses that hold occasional railwayana auctions [as at Thirsk], nor any that have railwayana sections within mixed sales. Paintings that were in the auction catalogues but which did not sell on the day are not included. Other railway paintings will certainly have changed hands in fine art sales elsewhere during the same period. All the information from which this summary has been taken has been available in the auction houses’ own online archives. Railway paintings continue to make a noticeable contribution to the variety of objects for sale at railwayana auctions, and, unsurprisingly, examples of original artwork provide popular catalogue cover illustrations for many of those auctions. The work of a relatively small group of leading railway artists repeatedly attracts considerably more interest than the majority of the art works brought to auction. The prolific output over recent years from Guild of Railway Artists associate member, Joe Townend, continued in 2019, when 27 of his unframed paintings were sold at these auctions, contributing 31% of all the paintings sold.



1. The number of original railway paintings sold at the main live auctions continues to fluctuate: 2011 - 32, 2012 - 41, 2013 - 61, 2014 - 88, 2015 - 105, 2016 - 136, 2017 - 81,

2018 - 66, 2019 - 87.



2. The number of railway artists whose work was sold at these auctions in 2019 was the same as in the previous year: 2011 - 25, 2012 - 20, 2013 - 27, 2014 - 34, 2015 - 42, 2016 - 48,  2017 - 31, 2018 - 25, 2019 - 25.



3. In 2019, the number of railwayana auction events that sold railway paintings was more than in the previous year: 2011 - 7, 2012 - 10, 2013 - 13, 2014 - 19, 2015 - 18, 2016 - 22, 2017 - 18, 2018 - 14, 2019 - 16. 



4. In 2019, nine paintings by five different artists reached or surpassed a £1,000 hammer price at railwayana auctions. Since 2011, the number of such paintings sold at these venues each year and the artists concerned were:



2011 - 3 paintings - by Heiron [2], Broom,

2012 - 3 paintings - by Bottomley, Hawkins, Broom,

2013 - 8 paintings - by Broom [2], Breckon [2], Heiron, Root, Price, Freeman,

2014 - 7 paintings - by Root [3], Elford, Breckon, Freeman, Hawkins,

2015 - 11 paintings - by Breckon [3], Hawkins [2], Root [2], Beech, Ellis, Elford, Price.

2016 - 13 paintings - by Breckon [4], Price [3], Hawkins [2], Freeman, Root, Broom,

                                  Greene,

2017 - 7 paintings - by Freeman [2], Price [2], Broom, Root, Breckon,

2018 - 9 paintings - by Hawkins [4], Breckon [2], Price [2], Root,

2019 - 9 paintings - by Breckon [4], Broom, Cuneo, PO Jones, Root,  

And for Christmas, Bob wanted to give her a drum [but why?]

I wended my way to the GC Railwayana auction at Stoneleigh with Bob Dylan for company, this time. When I’m on my own, I tend to listen to other peoples’ conversations for entertainment, though I realise that this is not necessarily an endearing characteristic. A stall-holder drew his visitor’s attention to a collection of luggage labels, which I gathered were a job lot from a previous [now, late] avid collector. “Very soon, nobody will know what they were”, he added ruefully.

On another stall, I noticed a blue enamel sign from LNER days. I was about to ask if I could take a picture of it when someone snapped it up. Perhaps he saw me eyeing it and decided to take the plunge there and then. It said something like “Please lock the back wheels of your bicycle”. I was just imagining the possible scenario that had made that sign a requirement, when it disappeared through the door in the company of its new owner, before being locked above the back wheel in the boot of a car.

I always gravitate to the paintings, these days. Once again, I’m tab-hanging. Do other people see what I see? Do they share my tastes about what makes a good railway painting? My guess is that both of these men next to me are too young to remember steam as an everyday occurrence on the main line in the 1960s. “The number plate’s wrong”. I couldn’t see that. It looked perfectly OK to me. “It’s in the wrong place”…. “He’s got that right”, he said, turning to the next painting, “..but it’s not so technical”. In this second painting, the engine is further away, so the same level of detail is probably not necessary [or even possible], though the perspective and the overall accuracy, I agree, is certainly present. They go back to the first painting. “The smoke’s wrong. It’s a shed scene. It wouldn’t be so thick”. I’ve heard this one before elsewhere, though coincidentally [and somewhat surprisingly], it was the same artist coming in for criticism. Then it had been a rather scornfully, “How can you have the smoke from two engines in the same painting blowing in different directions?”

When I got home, I checked out number plate positions when compared to photographs on Coronation Pacifics and Jubilees. Both paintings were accurate representations.

Smoke, however, is very variable stuff. It is perfectly possible for smoke to appear to blow from one locomotive stopped in a station in the direction of the prevailing wind and for the smoke from another locomotive travelling through the scene towards the former, light engine, to trail its steam in what appears to be an into the wind direction. For locos on shed, the possible variations in the amount, colour, density and direction taken by smoke emanating from smokebox chimneys are almost limitless. They might include - the state of the fire [firing up, building up steam or dropping the fire], the type and quality of the coal and the impact of hosing down, wind or lack of it [strength, direction, consistent or gusty], the open or hemmed in nature of the yard, the presence of nearby locos, nearby buildings [inside, outside, near or far, tall or single storey].

It makes a nonsense of trying to make definitive judgements about the circumstances on the day. You have to conclude that some people just like to try to sound authoritative even when they are not. My advice would be, if you weren’t there on the day and you only have the painting to go on, give the artist the benefit of the doubt. The artist was there [or at least had a photo to go on].         

Crossed Lines

Hotels often display the worst examples of corporate art. So many spaces to fill, most of which will be subsequently ignored by most of those passing through. Something still has to be up there, otherwise it will look - well, quite empty. They are, by definition, mass-produced, but also frequently bland, with a tendency to smudgy, sloppy impressionist offerings that don’t really provide an impression of anything recognisable. Usually quite colourful, but too often garish, they might add a bit of variety to an otherwise blank wall, but fail to draw people in with any specific focus.

Not so, at the 17^th century Wotton House Hotel, near Dorking in the Surrey Hills - the former residence of the botanist, diarist, designer and collector, John Evelyn. It is decorated with prints of the plants that he investigated, portraits of the family and a range of other themed exhibits. In the bedroom and above the headboard is a large-scale version of a Victorian map of the surrounding area, showing the routes taken by the two railway lines that crossed in the town.

The north-south line uses the Mole valley through the North Downs to connect London to Horsham. It was built by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway and opened in 1867, serving Dorking station. The east-west North Downs line was opened by the Reading, Guildford and Reigate Railway in 1849. Great Western Railway services stop at Dorking West and Dorking Deepdene stations.