NEW JULY 2021.  'Trains Illustrated' magazine first appeared soon after the Second World War. There was initially no attempt at making it a monthly or bi-monthly periodical, and it came out at irregular intervals when sufficient paper was available.

The first sixteen issues were numbered, therefore. No. 1 appeared early in 1946. No.14 brought the welcome news that the magazine could finally be produced at regular bi-monthly intervals, and was accordingly dated August-September 1949. No.16, the final issue mumbered in this sequence, was for December 1949-January 1950. There had already been a parallel numbering system developed, and that issue was also described as 'Vol.II No.5'.

After that, monthly production commenced. February 1950, therefore, marked the start of a new series. It became Vol.III No.1, and the notion that it was the seventeenth was dropped. You can readily distinguish the first sixteen, all of which are in this file, by their front covers: the 'Trains Illustrated' appears in a square coloured box, either at the top left or the top right corner depending on which suited the photograph being used. The successors have the title in a coloured box which goes across the full width at the top, a design which was not superseded until 1959.

The file contains 650 pages, every one well filled with news, articles and photographs. The founding editor was Ian Allen, soon to be replaced by his namesake Cecil J Allen. Regular features such as Train Topics and Motive Power Miscellany were introduced and developed. A list of the main one-off articles in each issue are HERE.

When glossy paper could be used, as on the front covers and an occasional internal page, the photographs are quite clear. Most pages at the time were of poor quality paper, however, and on those ones photographs are more like the ones in newspapers.

A price of £2.40 works out at just 15p an issue, which we hope you will not consider excessive. Five of these issues were introduced a while back as file MG013, with the promise that purchasers would be able to claim their payment back if the whole sixteen subsequently became available: those individuals should now answer 'yes' to the question 'Bought MG013?' and that pound will be deducted from the cost this time.

The file is word-searchable and has bookmarks to the separate issues. It will be available to download as soon as payment has been made. You go to your account and click on ‘Downloads’. New customers create an account as they place their order.