The Railway Magazine

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The Railway Magazine is a monthly British railway magazine that has been published in London since July 1897. As of 2005 it is the railway magazine with the largest circulation that covers general topics, i.e. preserved railways in addition to current news, modern traction and some history, aimed at the railway enthusiast market. It is now published by IPC Media, with ISSN 0033-8923. It has no connection with the 1835 title of the same name.

[edit] History

The Railway Magazine was launched by (Sir) Joseph Lawrence and Frank E. Cornwall of Railway Publishing Ltd who discerned an amateur enthusiast readership for some of the material they were then publishing in a railway staff magazine, the Railway Herald. They appointed as its first editor a former auctioneer, George Augustus Nokes (1867-1948), who wrote under the pseudonym "G.A. Sekon". He quickly built the magazine circulation to around 25,000. From the start it was produced in Linotype on good quality paper and well illustrated with photographs and occasional colour lithographic plates.

In 1910, following a dispute with the proprietors, Nokes resigned and started a rival, and very similar, magazine, Railway and Travel Monthly. Both this and The Railway Magazine were purchased by John Aiton Kay (1883-1949), proprietor of the Railway Gazette and Nokes's title was renamed Transport and Travel Monthly in 1920 before being amalgamated with The Railway Magazine from January 1923. Apart from this episode, The Railway Magazine had no serious commercial rival in its field until the 1940s. Nokes was succeeded as its editor in 1910 by John F. Gairns (1876-1930). On his death, W.A. Willcox took over.

The magazine claims a record for the longest unbrokenly-published series, begun under the title “British locomotive practice and performance” in 1901. Its first writer was the New Zealand-born Charles Rous-Marten (1844-1908). One of those who shared authorship of the series after his death was the Great Eastern Railway engineer Cecil J. Allen (1886-1973) who became sole author from 1911 until succeeded by O.S. Nock in 1958.

The editor originated a series of “Illustrated Interviews” with senior railway officials. Other contributors of features in earlier days included Rev. W.J. Scott, Rev. Victor L. Whitechurch (1868-1933), Charles H. Grinling, railwayman H.L. Hopwood, and the much-travelled T.R. Perkins (1872-1952). Harold Fayle contributed on Irish railways (for many years it was traditional for the May issue to have a strong Irish content, with the January one having a Scottish slant). A notable series by the locomotive engineer Ernest L. Ahrons (1866-1926) on “Locomotive and train working in the latter part of the nineteenth century” was published between 1915 and 1926 (and much later collected in book format). A very small amount of fiction was included in the magazine’s earliest days.

Notable photographic contributors of the Interwar period included Maurice W. Earley (1900-82), W. Leslie Good, Frank R. Hebron (d.1980), F.E. Mackay, O.J. Morris (1902-61) (who produced the first colour photograph published in the magazine, in 1938) and H. Gordon Tidey (1878-1970).

[edit] Bibliography

Jackson, Alan A. (2002). "George Augustus Nokes: notes for an unwritten biography". Journal of the Railway and Canal Historical Society 34: 110–15.
Sekon, G. A. (1947). "The start of The Railway Magazine". Railway Magazine 93: 197–8.
Semmens, Peter W. B. (1996). A Century of Railways. Oxford Publishing Co. ISBN 0860935353
Semmens, Peter and Pigott, Nick (July 1997). "100 not out! – the story of The Railway Magazine". Railway Magazine 143 (1155): 13–19.
Semmens, Peter (July 1997). "Practice & Performance: the story of the longest running railway series in the world". Railway Magazine 143 (1155): 77–80.