We have quite a number of new items which will be on sale at Norwich.
Pride of place has to go to our latest 2-DVD set of the Railway and Travel Monthly. This was a monthly magazine which ran from 1910 to 1922. Initially it was in direct competition to the Railway Magazine and contained a similar mix of articles and photographs. The main emphasis was on railways, though developments in shipping were also covered particularly well; motorised road transport and aviation featured occasionally too, not so thoroughly but of interest due to the early date for both of them. The price is £10 to members (non-members pay £15), exceptional value when you consider that the pair of DVDs contain over 12,000 pages.
In the early days of British Railways there was an Eastern Region Staff Railway Society – a group of railway workers who were interested in railways – whose headquarters were described as the Up Main Platform, Seven Kings Station (later Goodmayes). In the early 1970s they published a total of nine magazines which they called Handbooks. The number of pages in them ranged from 96 to 148, including adverts. The front cover was in colour, and occasional colour was used inside to adorn some of the editorial pages and a few of the adverts. There were many photographs (both of steam and of the railway of the time), often supplied by members, but these were always in black and white. The Handbooks are offered on a CD (ERS.CD, £4).
The conclusion of Volume 16 of our Journal has resulted in some new Information Sheets. N142 (£3.00) is a cumulative index covering Journals 101 to 160; this is also available in digital format as N142.CD (£2.50). Index.CD, still priced at £3.50, now contains the Indexes to J1-100 and J101-160. N143 (80p) is an index to Volume 16, and this can be supplied to special order in a form which is suited to binding.
There is no plan to replace the current DVD of Journals 1 to 150. Instead an add-on CD is being issued: it will contain Journals 151 to 160 and, as a bonus in response to a member’s suggestion, the five Journal Specials are on it as well. J151-160.CD is available to members only at £5.00.
John Pendleton's two-volume work entitled 'Our Railways - their Origin, Development, Incident and Romance' was published by Cassell and Co. Ltd. in 1896. Reproduced in a new Information Sheet (M465, £1.00) are the complete contents of his chapter headed 'The Great Eastern - the Workman's Railway Friend'. He tried to be as up to date as possible in his writing, so although he provides a balanced survey he concentrates on topics that were the issues of the moment – in this case the building of the Lancashire Derbyshire and East Coast Railway, supported by the G.E.R. and destined to provide them with a far greater share of the coal traffic to London, and the question of workmen’s fares. Included too are some notes by him on railway speeds, reporting on returns the House of Commons had requested from the railway companies in 1892. There is also an account of the rise in passenger numbers at London termini in 1891 compared to those of 1881, Liverpool Street coming at the top of the list.
Our Minutes Summaries continue to appear, of course. New this time is M466 (80p), dealing with the ECR Way and Works Committee 1855-1856. Summaries of a Minutes Book which includes the GER Way & Works and Stores Committees from August 1868 to January 1869 feature in M467 and M468 (£2.00 each). Most recently to hand are ones of the GER Traffic Committee from January 1866, and it is expected that these will be issued as M469 (probably £2.00).
Postage must be added to the above prices if they are to be sent by mail. Nearer the date of the meeting all the software can be ordered on-line via the Files Emporium, in which case postage costs are automatically added. The Information Sheets will also soon be there as files – cheaper than the printed versions, with immediate download and no postage to pay. To find items there, go to the Files Emporium home page and click on the large blue button marked ‘Search the Emporium’. Enter either a keyword or the Sales List order code: thus either ‘M465’ or ‘Pendleton’ would instantly bring up File RH034, which is its digital version priced at 60p. The minutes summaries will be incorporated in larger files as on the CD, but nevertheless a search for the order code (eg ‘M466’) will take you to the file in question. The digital version of N143, the index to Volume 16 of the Journal, is in a form which may be printed for binding. That for N142 is regularly updated as new issues of the Journal come out, so at present it extends from J101 to J161.