NEW MAY 2022. The Railway Times was a weekly newspaper. This edition, No. 586 dated 24 March 1849, has 24 pages. Each one is filled with three columns of tiny, sometimes miniscule, font - but it is all readable (more so than the original, unless you have the benefit of a good magnifying glass!). There are no illustrations other than the engraving which forms part of the heading, plus a few others included in advertisements.

In this issue a major article (almost three pages) reports on the half-yearly shareholders' meeting of the Newmarket Railway. The line had been opened the previous year as a branch off the Cambridge line at Great Chesterford through to Newmarket. An agreement had been made with the ECR to work the railway, but the revenue proved disappointing. The Directors suggested they should appoint a committee to investigate this state of affairs, and much of the subsequent discussion - often apparently quoted verbatim - was about who should or should not be on such a committee.

Elsewhere in the paper about a quarter of a page is devoted to something called the ECR Shareholders' Protection Society. There is a brief report on progress by the Eastern Union Railway, with their plans to move Ipswich station to a more convenient site to the north of the tunnel. A long letter, well over a column, comes from an Ilford shareholder complaining bitterly about the bad management of the ECR by "King Hudson and his Lord Lieutenant Waddington", particularly the latter.

At this time George Hudson's empire was starting to unravel. The paper has news of a committee which was investigating some of his dealings in the north of England, and that had concluded in his favour. The editorial section contains an article quite sympathetic to him concerning his work with the ECR.

Meetings of other companies, such as the York Newcastle & Berwick Railway, also feature. The two centre pages consist of tables of railway share prices and of official traffic returns where reported.

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