In tribute to Vic Mitchell, rail revivalist and creator of the Middleton Press
THE death on January 18 of Middleton Press founder and prolific author Vic Mitchell has robbed railway publishing of one its best-known names, and severed an important link with the Welsh narrow gauge revivals of the early 1950s.
Vic, who died peacefully at his home in Midhurst, West Sussex, was a popular and sociable figure, and an award-winning inventor, shrewd investor, and sometimes wellintentioned mischief-maker.
He was 86, and he had been taken ill just before Christmas with a nonCovid-19 related condition.
Over four decades, he became a familiar name with his encyclopedic Middleton Press (MP) route histories, totalling well over 450 individual titles, and which continue to appear at the rate of one every two months.
There can be few Heritage Railway readers who do not have several on their shelves, and there is an elite group who claim to own every one. As well as UK railways, MP also made occasional forays into the continent, and also covered most of our longlost tramway and trolleybus systems.
Beginnings
Joseph Charles Victor Mitchell was born in Hampton on the western edge of London, and despite having to dodge World War Two air raids, he spent a happy childhood in a house overlooking the 2ft gauge 3½-mile Hampton & Kempton Waterworks Railway. It opened in 1915 to move coal to local power stations, and Vic recalled the three highly-polished Kerr Stuart engines that were employed until the generating plants were converted to electricity, and the system abandoned in 1947. A section of it has, in recent years, been revived as a heritage line.
Vic followed his father into dentistry and won several awards for his technical innovations. He later had his own practice in West Sussex.
His real introduction to railways was helping out at his local Hampton station on the Shepperton branch, where he befriended the staff. Carrying out menial duties such cleaning and polishing floors were rewarded with footplate rides, visits to the signalbox, and sometimes issuing tickets. The stationmaster was the sole guest at Vic’s 10th birthday party.
Enthusiasm
Responding to an appeal in the January 1951 issue of our sister journal The Railway Magazine, Vic and a school friend journeyed to Wales to offer themselves as volunteers to restore the then moribund Talyllyn Railway, seen as such a novelty that it made the front page of the Daily Express.
Soon afterwards, he was one of 12 who attended the first Ffestiniog Railway (FR) revival meeting at Bristol University on September 8, 1951. Again offering his volunteering services, he found himself reporting to the authoritative transport historian Tom Rolt, and establishing a lifelong friendship with its other famous stalwart, Allan Garraway.
Vic then had to juggle with his professional studies at Guy’s Hospital, National Service (which he disliked), his love of railways, a directorship of the FR, and his new fiancée Barbara (later his wife of more than 50 years).
Negotiating the FR’s Tanygrisiau reservoir deviation and its main line connection at Blaenau Ffestiniog is one of his lasting achievements.
Vic was also a keen inventor, setting up Mitchell Mouldings at Rogate station on the old Midhurst-Petersfield line, and then turning down a lucrative job offer from ICI to go down his own path. He held patents for dental equipment, and also a mass production compositing toilet for Third World countries that attracted the attention of the Duke of Edinburgh. He once owned two Fowler ploughing engines, and was also very proud of his garden railway.
His foray into serious railway publishing, and a long working partnership with former policeman Keith Smith, was the result of a chance encounter. Their first collaboration was a book on the 25th anniversary of the closure of his local LSWR Chichester-Pulborough line in 1981 to raise funds for a local church. It soon spawned more titles in the now familiar Ultimate Railway Encyclopedia, which examines individual routes with pictures, words, maps and lots of fine detail, including timetables and tickets.
Over the years, the gazeteer has completed its review of former Western and Southern territory, virtually the whole of London and East Anglia, and made recent heavy inroads into the south and east Midlands, and Eastern and North Eastern regions along the east coast. Extensive forays have also been made into south and west Yorkshire, the north west, and a start made on southern Scotland.
There have been other publications, and Vic stepped in when Network Rail ended the printed version of National Rail Timetable in 2007, ending a 160-year tradition. MP duly filled the gap with its own version, and carried on until the end of 2019.
As a tribute to Victorian timetabler George Bradshaw, who inspired Michael Portillo’s TV series, Vic cheekily titled his version as Bradshaw-Mitchell’s Rail Times.
Future
A private funeral took place at Midhurst on January 28. The family has said that it is too early to discuss the future of MP, although a number of new titles are in preparation. Vic had wisely spent some time cultivating new authors to keep the production line going for some time.
When quizzed in 2018 whether his goal would be achieved, Vic replied: “I can’t see why not… we have a larger team of authors, and a skilled team who are determined to complete the task, however long it takes.”