Another vintage magazine as a present: The Railway Magazine, March and April 1946, price 2s.
Lots of nostalgic pictures of steam trains. The first plate shows No. 6021 ‘Princess Elizabeth’ (not one of the four ‘Princess’ Class locomotives I saw in my days as a train spotter) passing Edge Hill, Liverpool – picture by Rev. E Treacy. Editorial matters cover: carpeted waiting rooms for nationalised railways; the re-emergence of international trains in Europe; railways on the Isle of Wight; electrification of London suburban services; railway maintenance and safety; the restoration of restaurant and buffet services on some services; and LNER locomotive renumbering. Features include ‘Euston to the North-West’, ‘Across the Great Salt Lake’, ‘Factors Governing British Locomotive Design’, ‘New Works for Wartime Traffic’, GWR Oil-Burning Locomotives’, ‘Top Link Drivers’, ‘Re-Railing the Locomotive at Bourne End’, ‘British Locomotive Practice and Performance’, ‘Old Brighton Line Signal Box’, ‘The Isle of Wight Central Railway, ‘Notes and News’ (10 pages of troop train routes, railways speeds in Java, Oxford University Railway Society etc.) and ‘The Why and the Wherefore’ (six pages on yardmasters, snifting valves, clack-boxes and more).
If much of this is of its time, the back page (opposite) with its excuse for late or crowded trains, has stronger echoes today. The wrong kind of coal has a more plausible ring than the ‘wrong kind of snow’.