First, a confession…
EAGLE-eyed readers will notice a new headshot on this page this month, while those with even keener eyesight might recognise it as a less-youthful version of the one that’s appeared on the Metro News pages since 2010. But my journey aboard The Railway Magazine goes back even further, beginning with my time as a teenage reader in the early 1980s, during the exciting period when British Rail’s regional structure was giving way to Sectorisation, and the many loco-hauled services were being lost to a new generation of diesel and electric units. After leaving full-time education, my career took me into journalism and editing within the electronics industry until in 2004, the RM’s editor of the time Nick Pigott gave me the break I had longed for, allowing me to step up from being a ‘passenger’ to part of the ‘crew’ in the editorial cab. Back then, future editor (and my immediate predecessor in the driver’s seat) Chris Milner was Nick’s deputy, while John Slater (editor from 19701989) was still working part-time, the four of us thus representing some five decades of RM history. The only one missing at the time was Peter Kelly, editor from 1989-1994, but I’m pleased to say that Pete will now be contributing to the magazine once more. Our publisher Mortons Media rostered me to take charge of our shedmate title Rail Express in 2013, but I am honoured and humbled to return as the next editor in this magazine’s proud 124-year history. I have to thank Chris, and Nick before him, for their excellent work making the magazine what it is today, and I can only say that the team and I will do everything we can to keep the magazine at the top, through its combination of broad-ranging news, in-depth features, and topnotch photography. So what’s the confession? Well, I have to admit to the more dubuious honour of being the first editor of The Railway Magazine not to have known the steam era. I was born as the last fires were being dropped from engines around the sheds of the North West, and the only locos I could see from my childhood bedroom window overlooking the Leeds to Bradford line were of the diesel kind.
But, in the early 1970s, my parents took me to the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, and I stood on the footbridge at Haworth as a steam loco passed underneath on its way to Oxenhope. I don’t know which one it was, but I was engulfed in a sensory overload of noise, steam and smoke, and from that moment on I was hooked.
Glasgow or bust!
In one of my first jobs as editor, I was lucky enough to be aboard the attempt to set a new West Coast Main Line record for the shortest time between Euston and Glasgow Central, a record that has stood since 1984 when an APT did it in 3hrs 52min 40sec. It was a fantastic day – one resulting from much hard work by Avanti West Coast, Network Rail and my predecessor Chris, and with the cooperation of many other operators and staff – that was thrilling from start to finish, with the result never quite decided either way until we arrived into Glasgow. Sadly it was not to be this time, missing out by just 21 seconds after the 401 miles – although we can at least claim a new nonstop record, as the 1984 APT run was held at Stafford. We have the full account on pages 9-11 this month, but I would like to thank everyone involved, not only for making such a bold attempt, but for the money it raised for the Action for Children and Railway Benefit Fund charities.