According to GB Shaw, ‘those who can, do, those who can’t teach’, a remark that was not intended to be taken seriously but which for the last 30 years has been used by corrupt politicians to beat the teaching profession. This Les Summers knows, having been a teacher for more than 30 years and a ‘doer’ long before becoming a teacher, having been writing for magazines since 1972.
The following are a selection of his recent magazine articles -
G.J.Churchward & his contemporaries - 1992
Early Footplate Days on the Great Western - 1993
The Great Western at Didcot - 1995
Were the Standard Steam Classes Really Necessary? - 1995*
British Built locomotives in Western Australia - 1998
Modernisation on the WR - 1998 (with the late A.W.Summers)
A Case of too much History - 1999 (highly regarded guest-editorial in Backtrack)
Fact, Speculation & Fiction in the case of Mr Hawksworth's pacific - 2000
The GWR's Bonniest Engines (about the MSWJ 4-4-0s) 2000
The Great North of Scotland Railway in the 1960s - 2001
A 1920s Journey of a Lifetime (about the GWR WofE services) - 2002
How the GWR Threw Away the Churchward Legacy - 2003
Weird & Wonderful Creatures & Their Fabulous Offspring - 2004
(ground breaking article about the GWR 4-2-4T of 1881)
Was the Riddles Team Too Conservative? (Steam World) 2005
But Can You Prove It..? 2005 (challenges railway historians to write articles that are based on referenced primary sources)
The View from Paddock Wood - 2005
One Thing Leads to Another - 2006 (networking engineers)
At the End of the Day - 2007 (end of WR steam)
The GWR Steam Rail Motors - Transport for the masses
Coming up shortly - The facts in the case of Jane Shannon (Wantage Tramway)
* This article has been used as a standard text for students taking courses from the Institute of Railway Studies, University of York.
Additionally articles about the railways of Poland, Australia, Austria, Spain and Malaya have appeared in the Locomotives International magazine since 1999. Les is engaged in long term research on the real costs and benefits of BR modernization programmes (1948 to 1973) and would be happy to hear from anyone with source based information or observations.
Many of the articles listed above form the basic ingredients of the new book -
A New Update of Swindon Steam
written by Les Summers and published by the Great Western Society in January 2007. Considerable further research has been undertaken to produce not just another history of Great Western locomotives but a re-examination of both the long accepted details of Swindon’s locomotive history and some of its mysteries revealing surprising new facts about one of Britain’s greatest railway works. In his Introduction Les Summers writes:
According to the RCTS Railway Observer it was some time during August 1949 and according to family recollection, around August 30th. My father having a rostered rest day from his occupation as a WR engine driver at Didcot decided that we would have a family day at Western Super Mare. We caught the 0530 Paddington at 0649 from Didcot to Bistol where we could change onto the Trowbridge-Taunton local train to continue to our destination. However, it was somewhere west of Didcot possibly at Wantage Road or Challow where the platforms were served by loops off the main line that we passed a light engine going west. Being not quite six years old I was confused about the interest that my father and elder brother took in the engine and recalled that it was Swiss. Nonsense of course but easy to understand the error because this was the time when the Brown Boveri gas turbine was first at work. In any case I remember that it was a steam locomotive and in my mind’s eye I can still see its smoke rising above the boiler. So what engine aroused this interest? It can only have been Duke class 4-4-0 9083, Comet, the first engine that my father drove when he became a driver in 1941 and which around that date was sent from Didcot to the stock shed at Swindon from which it sallied forth, only once for a few days in November 1950 before returning in January 1951 from Machynlleth and being withdrawn.
We all have memories like this. O.S.Nock recalled in vivid detail seeing a Dean 4-2-2 flash over the level crossing between Theale and Southcote Junction and Hamilton Ellis had a similar experience in 1920 only to discover that the last 4-2-2 had been withdrawn five years earlier! He was convinced that what he had seen was not a Barnum 2-4-0 as was gently suggested to him and claimed some authority for his belief when he discovered that the last example was still to be seen in Swindon dump even then. These sightings were recalled in the first railway books that in later years I took out of the library. Both gentlemen were very readable, especially CHE who could craft a description of a locomotive or a railway scene as no one else before or since.
Over 40 years of subsequent reading of engineering papers, original railway records, books and magazines have evoked reactions which would themselves fill a book but two at least have been the impetus behind my writing this volume. Already by the late 1950s the histories of our railways had become like cliches, set in the mind, accepted and unchallenged, repeated time and time again, often by the same writers, sometimes by new entrants to the genre who were just saying the same thing in a different way. Biographies of locomotive engineers tended to be an account of their design work with a bare minimum of personal data grafted on. An understanding of the importance of background and personality as contributing to actual design work seems not to have been very widely recognised. The GWR is a very popular railway among enthusiasts but unfortunately too many of them are following legend rather than reality, worshipping a kind of Camelot built around well-designed and usually high performance locomotives that, in their minds' eye, they see gleaming in the sun as popular fiction sees the Knights of the Round Table and providing a public service of fast and always punctual trains from architecturally stimulating and convenient stations.
In the 1970s I became a teacher trained to examine evidence for the reality of historical fact... researchers increasingly show that the long accepted ‘facts’ of history, our national history no less than that of our railways are sometimes almost pure fiction in their representation of what happpened... Over the last 15 years it has become accepted that there is still a great deal to discover and that the histories of some railway companies will come out of this process much altered. Unfortunately some people refuse to accept the evidence as with the correspondent who wrote to me three pages of close long hand to explain why my years of research among the primary sources was actually wrong and the old myths had been true all along!
The GWR was once described as being ‘neither great, nor western or even a railway,’ an unfair comment even when it was made. Sometimes but not always it had the best locomotives in Britain, occasionally in the world. But as H.A.L.Fisher said many years ago the advances of one generation can be lost by those succeeding it. The surpemacy of Gooch’s broad gauge locomotives was soon lost to the advanced technical innovations of the narrow gauge and not until the 1890s did the GWR once again reassert its strength, beginning that remarkable 30 year period in which the GWR was so improved as to be at least 15 years ahead of anything being done elsewhere in Britain and, arguably, in the world. There followed another awful period of decline which despite talented design engineers went on almost unchecked until nationalization. And behind that story are the personalities that bequeathed this situation to history. Not just the chief engineers, not just the shop fitters, the engine drivers or shed cleaners but the company’s departmental heads and directors, for such a large organisation did not run on the reputation of one man or even of one department. If the Churchward locomotive was a world beater - and it was - it was the intricate network of the other departments that created the opportunity for that superiority to be displayed, or not, as the case was in some respects...
A New Update of Swindon Steam is 156 pages in length and contains well over 100 illustrations many of which have either never appeared in print or have not been seen for many years. It retails at £12.99 and is available only from the Didcot Railway Centre bookshop either in person or by post.
In preparation - Les Summers' new book Steam Pot-boilers - words and pictures about railways, trains and engines in Britain and around the world. See details here soon.
Les Summers is willing to consider commissions for written work on agreed subjects; he will also undertake remunerated research for authors. Please use the the Contact page for an early response.
Les Summers does not claim to be a great railway photo-artist but he has built up a library of photographs of railways taken in the UK and abroad between 1963 and the present, some of which are worth more than passing interest.
The main collection includes the following -
British Railways - WR 1963 - date last GWR steam, diesel hydraulics/electrics,HST
LMR & Sc 1965 to date last LMS/Standard steam, diesels, electrics
E & NE & Sc 1965 to date last LNER steam, diesels, HST, IC225 to privatisation.
SR 1964 to date Bulleid pacifics, BR Standards, electrics, Eurostar to pricatisation.
Preserved railways and main line steam operations 1966 to date
Various stations, loco-sheds etc photographed during the same period.
Foreign Railways -
Malaya 1964-1968 mainly Singapore/JB - steam, diesel
Hong Kong - 1964-1968 diesels on British section HK&C
Japan - 1964 - steam at Nara, also diesels, electrics, original New Tokaido line.
Australia
Western Australia 1964/68 - comprehensive of extant steam & diesel at work - also current operations 1995 & 2001.
Victoria - 1995/2001 - mainly N Williamstown museum; also preserved rail operations and some current operations including standard gauge trains.
NSW - 1995/2001 - Thirlmere museum, also 3801/30 working on main line; current operations
Northern Territory. - 1995 - preserved stock at Pine Creek/Katherine
Queensland - current operations 2001; also preserved ARHS sites
South Australia - current operations 2001; also Port Dock Museum stock.
South Africa - 1968 - steam on shed at Cape Town
USA - 1969 - east coast diesels/electrics, experimental turbo-train
France 1968 - 1973 steam, diesel, electrics - also 1990s current operations
Germany (West) 1969 - 1988 steam, diesel, electrics
Spain & Portugal 1971 steam mainly, including Porto narrow gauge and Ponferrada
also, in 2005/6 preserved steam at Villa Nova and RENFE around Barcelona
Italy 1970 mainly steam, including Sardinia, mostly on shed but comprehensive of extant stock, also Milan museum
Austria - 1970 Heiflau - impressive snow/ steam scenes
Denmark - 1970 - steam at Fredericia/preserved steam in store at Odense
Belgium - 1988/99 - diesels, electrics, CdfTV, Treignes museum
Holland - 1993 - diesels, electrics, Utrecht museum
Poland - 1998/9 & 2004 - Wolsztyn & Krakov steam in action, also various museums and current operations.
Stations, loco-sheds and other installations photographed in most of these countries.