Cecil J. Allen

Cecil J Allen
Born	1886
Died	1973
Occupation	Railway engineer
Employer	Great Eastern Railway; London and North Eastern Railway

Cecil J. Allen (1886–1973) was a British railway engineer and technical journalist and writer.

Work

Qualified as a civil engineer, Allen worked for the Great Eastern Railway and later the London & North Eastern Railway, becoming an authority on steel rails. He inspected new rails for quality.

He also was the second contributor to the long-running British locomotive practice and performance article series in The Railway Magazine from 1909 to 1958,^[1] and then went on to write for Trains Illustrated (now Modern Railways), which at the time was edited by his son, Geoffrey Freeman Allen.

He was a committed Christian and an accomplished organist, writing a chorus "The Lord has need of me". He was offered a place on the train when Mallard broke the world speed record in 1938, but declined the offer as the run was scheduled for a Sunday morning and clashed with his regular church (Christian Brethren) attendance.^{[citation needed]}

Bibliography

He wrote numerous books on locomotives, and railway company histories, as well as an autobiography "Two Million Miles of Train Travel":^[1]

Locomotives

• The locomotive exchanges. Ian Allan. 1949. 
• Locomotive practice and performance in the twentieth century (2nd revised impression ed.). Heffer, Cambridge. 1950. 
• The Stanier Pacific of the L.M.S.. London. Ian Allan. 1950. 
• The Gresley Pacifics of the LNER. Ian Allan. 1950. 
• The Bulleid Pacifics of the Southern Region. Ian Allan. 1951. 
• British Pacific locomotives. Ian Allan. 1962. 
• British Atlantic locomotives. Ian Allan. 1968. 
  • —; revised & enlarged by G. Freeman Allen (1976). British Atlantic locomotives (2nd ed.). Ian Allan. 
• Cecil J. Allen; et al (1972). The Deltics : a symposium. Ian Allan. ISBN 0-7110-0322-X. ^[2]

Railway company histories

• The Great Eastern Railway. Ian Allan. 1955. 
• The North Eastern Railway. Ian Allan. 1964. 
• The London & North Eastern Railway. Ian Allan. 1966. 

General railways

• "The Coronation" and other famous L.N.E.R.trains. Nicholson & Watson. 1937. 
• Titled trains of Great Britain. Ian Allan. 1946. 
• Switzerland's Amazing Railways (4th revised ed.). Thomas Nelson & Sons, London. 1965. 
• The Steel Highway. Longmans, Green & Co, London. 1928. 
• Modern railways: their engineering, equipment and operation. Faber. 1959. 
• Two million miles of rail travel: the autobiography of Cecil J. Allen. Ian Allan. 1965. 

Other

• Hymns and the Christian faith. London, Pickering & Inglis. 1966. ^[3]

See also

• Geoffrey Freeman Allen, his son, also a writer on railway topics, and first editor of Modern Railways

References