Fire and Steam (67 page)

Women railway workers replaced many men on the railways in both world wars. Here they are working on gas lamps at the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway's Horwich works in Greater Manchester in May 1917.

Ambulance trains with extensive medical facilities, including a pharmacy, were widely used in the First World War, carrying a total of 2,680,000 soldiers.

This spectacular accident at Penistone, south Yorkshire in 1916 did not result in any casualties because the subsidence which caused it started relatively slowly.

Strike-breaking staff and volunteers posing on a London, Midland & Scottish locomotive at St Enoch Station, Glasgow during the General Strike of 1926.

The railway companies were keen to advertise their facilities for travellers wishing to venture further a field. This poster produced for the Southern Railway in 1926 promoted rail services that linked with Atlantic Ocean crossings by the White Star, the world's largest liner at the time.

This painting by Leonard Campbell Taylor of the interior of a London, Midland & Scottish dining car in the 1920s shows the lavish dining facilities available – at no great cost.

Railway poster art flourished between the wars. This 1932 London & North Eastern Railway advertisement made an oblique reference to a similar Southern Railway poster, emphasising the LNER's more exciting services.

The electrification scheme of the Southern Railway attracted vast numbers of extra passengers onto the railways.

The streamlined A4 Pacific locomotives were the elite fleet of the LNER, one of which, No 4468
Mallard,
broke the world speed record for a steam engine in 1938.

Mail was carried by the railway from its earliest days and from the 1860s special mobile sorting offices like this one were introduced. This scene of postal workers dates from 1935.

The railways were a labour-intensive industry, as evidenced by the large number of men in this repair gang replacing a rail in 1940.

The mass evacuation of children from British cities presented an enormous logistical problem in the early days of the Second World War. The railways rose to the occasion, however, and the scheme was carried out with remarkable success.

During the Second World War the government produced posters emphasising the primacy of the war effort for the railways. It even tried, unsuccessfully, to dissuade people from using the system.