NEW SEPTEMBER 2021. This is Issue No. 1, dated June 1927. Its compiler was Lt. Col. W Mansfield, FRCI, MIMechE, MInstT. It had Bradshaw as a competitor, but its pages are much larger and less cramped (around 12 inches tall and 9½ inches wide – considerably bigger than A4) and contain a huge amount of information clearly set out. These timetables are very rare nowadays. The National Archives have a copy, but none is available to purchase second-hand at the time of writing these notes (though a copy did once sell on eBay for £50 in the past). This implies that few might have been sold originally: there is no evidence that Issue No. 2, scheduled for the following month, ever appeared.

It concentrates on the railways of England and Wales, apart from the inner-suburban ones. Included are timetables of even the smallest branches with a passenger service, as well as minor independent railways such as the Southwold Railway, the Bishops Castle Railway, the East Kent Railway and even the Snowdon Mountain Railway timetable. You can see the full list of such lines covered HERE.

Scotland does not get such a treatment. Through services from south of the border are given in full, even to destinations as remote as Fort Augustus and Thurso. There are a few tables which give services entirely in Scotland (e.g. Glasgow-Perth-Aberdeen), but none of the smaller lines and branches feature.

The final page of tables briefly summarises through routes that involve a journey by boat – to the Continent, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and Ireland.

In addition to the tables, the book is full of information. Notable are the 51 street maps depicting places which have more than one station: in our area these include Felixstowe, Lincoln, Norwich, Peterborough and Yarmouth. In each case the distance between the stations is indicated.

A big folded map of England and Wales was simply tucked loosely into the book, but miraculously it has survived. It proved impossible to record it as a single file, but by making multiple scans and stitching them we have been able to provided it as three horizontal strips.

This is an item in a personal collection. Like the 1929 Roadways bus timetables which we scanned earlier (available as BUS.DL) the publication was only meant to last a month, and after nearly a century the paper is decaying – the scanner had to be swept regularly to remove all the paper dust and small browned fragments.

Nevertheless the scans of the book are generally clear and complete. The map was badly worn, however. Most of it had parted at the creases, and the edges of the folds now have bits torn from them. This resulted in some unavoidable gaps in the map file – lines around Colchester are frustratingly missing, for example.

You will download three files: some notes on the publication; the main 294-page file of the timetable itself; and the map.

The main file has bookmarks and is word-searchable. All the files will be available to download as soon as payment has been made. You go to your account and click on ‘Downloads’. New customers create an account as they place their order.