Pictorial Soft Cover, 15"x 12" pp. 50, inc covers, text and and photogravure photographs. Produced for BR in 1951, Festival of Britain Year. Superb photographs showing the range of British Railway's activities, modern rolling stock, etc.
After nearly six years of peace, rationing was still in force, further economies were needed because of involvement in the Korean war, the National Health Service was proving far more expensive to run than had been anticipated, and the nationalisation of transport was failing to produce the integration and economies that had been hoped for. Indeed the way in which the process had been carried out, with a British Transport Commission overseeing, and supposedly coordinating, the activities of "Executives" including the Railway Executive, had made the situation worse. The railways had been stripped of the road haulage companies, bus companies, canals, docks and harbours (except "packet ports") which they had owned, all of which had been placed in the control of other "Executives". This significantly diminished the railway's "bottom line", and destroyed a substantial measure of transport coordination which had been achieved without government interference.
– while a ship board exhibition toured major ports. Events were all branded with an easily recognisable logo, and a palette of bright colours was deployed in advertising and displays. This last feature was amongst the most important. We tend to forget what a monochrome world post war Britain was. Few business premises had seen a lick of paint since the 1930s, may large industrial buildings still bore the faded remains of drab green and brown camouflage paint, and most of the new buildings going up on the bombed out city sites suffered from shortage of money and materials, and lack of imagination in their design.
British Railways took part in the South Bank exhibition with locomotives exhibited on a siding on Waterloo Bridge, but what was not made clear that no main line diesel electric locomotives had been ordered since nationalisation. Because R. A. Riddles, the mechanical engineer on the Railway Executive could be afforded in the foreseeable future (when done, it took place in stages, as investment became available) and would have nothing to do with diesel electric traction. The LNER had invited tenders for a squadron of around 20 main line diesel electrics, to take over from Pacifics on London – Scotland services. Experience with these would have been invaluable, but Riddles quietly stifled the project, and insisted on embarking on new "standard" steam locomotives with a notional life span of 30 years. These cost tens of millions, were all scrapped by 1964, and delayed the modernisation of British Railways by a decade.
All was not in fact well with British Railways, but one would not guess so from this publication; readers were at least spare flattering portraits of those responsible!