A fitting tribute to W E Hayward’s work
Your fascinating item on the late W E Hayward and his remarkable collection of papers and artefacts ( RAIL 907) stirred some distant memories.
As an aspiring railway writer in 1962, I met Hayward at the then BTC records office at Royal Oak, near Paddington.
On my first visit I was seated next to Hayward, who not only provided some guidance for an obvious novice, but also took the trouble to delve into some of his own material to show me papers and pictures relevant to the little-known lines I was then studying (The Cleobury Mortimer & Ditton Priors Light Railway and the Saundersfoot Railway).
His kindness did not end there. He was also ready to engage in occasional correspondence. Some of my queries may have been naive, but he responded promptly, usually using typewritten postcards (black and red ink!) tucked into an envelope.
In the years before the BTC Records were moved to Kew, a visit to Porchester Road could be quite memorable. The building, which I believe still stands, resembled a warehouse, and the corridor outside the Search Room led to a fire escape door which provided a fantastic view of locomotives gathered around the Ranelagh Bridge turntable outside Paddington.
The Search Room itself was dark and quite cramped, but the atmosphere relaxed, and quiet conversations between researchers fairly frequent. It was wonderful for a young enthusiast to be working close to notable railway writers of that period.
C Hamilton Ellis concentrated on his work and seldom spoke, but C R Clinker and O S Nock were more conversational, although they clearly saw me as the sixth-former I happened to be.
As I encountered these notables in the course of maybe only half a dozen visits to Porchester Road, it is highly likely that W E Hayward knew almost everyone. It is good to know that his huge collection has been catalogued by the National Archives.
Martin Connop Price, Herefordshire
When I read you were to publish an article about W E Hayward’s collection, I had been tempted to write to comment how helpful he was to a teenage enthusiast - and then I found my name quoted in the article!
I met him at a Bristol Railway Circle exhibition and asked if he had any information about the Wrington Vale Light Railway that I was researching. An invitation to visit his house was offered immediately, and for several years we kept in touch.
On my trawls around booking offices around Bristol, I acquired several items - such as a fare table chart from the waiting room wall at the (closed) former LMS station at Stroud (removed for me by the porter), and the first ticket issued from the new station at Portishead when it opened in January 4 1954. I felt things like this were best kept in his archives.
Sea Mills, the source of the Midland Railway black tie, was our local station where I learned to be a railway enthusiast, spending my spare time ‘helping’ - trimming the signal lamps, putting up (and taking down) posters, and issuing tickets to commuters on my way to school and helping with booking-up.
I think the tie was given to me by Walter Mounty, who also gave me his CER cap-badge (Clifton Extension Railway). I used the train for school, shopping, going to work, and even embarking on my honeymoon in 1966!
A few months after that, I received a neatly parcelled package which contained a
Bristol Tramways license (sic) plate as a thank you. It was beautifully mounted on wood, as WEH was a skilled carpenter, and it still hangs in our home.
Sadly, shortly afterwards we heard of his untimely death. But he had achieved his lifetime’s work - to provide an invaluable resource for future researchers.
And what happened to the teenager who donated the tie? He retired as a ticket office trainer with South West Trains in 2002!
Michael Farr, Cornwall
The fascinating feature on the W E Hayward collection highlights the importance of having a national policy on preserving artefacts relating to the history of our railways.
A simple search for my surname on the National Archives web site, combined with the file reference ZSPC 11, returned a gratifying 42 entries. However, it isn’t apparent how one can access images of items in the collection online.
Access to images would allow ‘crowdsourcing’ of expertise which, coupled with a mechanism for capturing users’ comments, would allow railway enthusiasts to gradually improve its quality.
My other concern, as a former museum curator, is whether the National Archive’s wellintentioned volunteers are unwittingly adopting a standard for the recording of railway ephemera that might not be applicable to other collections.
To be fully functional, the National Archive’s Hayward catalogue would need a massive investment to reach this standard, recognising that the collection is not simply a conventional paper archive. But what has been achieved so far is a very good start.
John Edmondson, Holywell