Important Announcements

Friends Meeting House, Manchester

The 72nd Annual General Meeting of the Railway & Canal Historical Society will be held at The Friends’ Meeting House, 6 Mount Street, Manchester M2 5NS at 12:00pm on Saturday 12th September 2026. The morning will commence at 11.30am with signing-in formalities and refreshments. In order that all members have the opportunity to attend, the meeting will also be accessible using the facilities of Zoom. The Notice of the AGM was included in Bulletin 522 (July 2026)

All members will be able to vote for motions included in the agenda using either an online facility available from 21st August to 9th September, or by post on request. Members may submit a notice of motion which they wish to move at the AGM. These motions must be received by the Secretary  (secretary@rchs.org.uk) by Friday 31st July (Article 12 of the Articles of Association)

The Annual Report and Accounts will be presented to the meeting and questions invited from those members attending in person.

The final agenda for the AGM and related documents will be available from 21st August.

After a break for lunch, starting at 2:00pm, Bill Froggatt, Heritage Adviser at Canal & River Trust will give a talk ‘Building the Lancaster Canal’. 

Bill adds ‘I have been a heritage adviser for the Canal & River Trust for 12 years focussing primarily in the northwest. The talk will be about the construction of the Lancaster Canal, an opportunity to highlight some of the lesser know people that built the canal, including such majestic structures as the Grade I listed Lune Aqueduct’.

Bill Froggatt in front of Stainton Aqueduct, 1816, engineer Thomas Fletcher, contractor John Airey. © Steven Barber

The Lune Aqueduct, 1797, built by engineers John Rennie, Archibald Millar and William Cartwright and contractors Alexander Stevens Sr and Alexander Stevens Jr

Non-members are invited to attend this talk.

The July 2026 digital edition of the Journal is available from the Members Area of the website.

The July Bulletin has been published and is available from the Members Area of the website. The print edition will be despatched during w/c 6th July.

As well as including details of future events (including the Autumn & Winter meetings programme) this edition of the Bulletin includes details of the 2026 AGM and a report on the 2026 Transport History Book of the Year Awards presented on 30th May. The usual item on the RCHS Online Media Archive (ROMA) is differs from past items in that it includes a request from Nick Higton for members to complete the captions for some images in the archive and Adrian Moss reports on the challenge of enhancing faded 35mm slides.

The Miscellany section includes details of an Online Library Archive Links Directory created over many years by Tim Leffler. Also in the Miscellany section is an illustrated item on the Oxford Canal Loops between Newbold and Brownsover written by Roger Brice prompted by a walk organised by members of our West Midlands Group,

“The Puffing Billy of the Hedgerows – The politics of the Somerset & Dorset closure, ca 1951-67” a talk given by Prof Colin Divall at a SW Group meeting on 4th June 2026.”. To view the recording Click Here

In this 60th anniversary year of the final service trains, Prof Divall investigates the background, controversy and intrigue behind the closure of the S&D, one of the most bitterly fought Beeching cuts in the south west. Accusations of fiddled stats, poor marketing and useless timetables led to suggestions of a valuable N-S link being sabotaged by short-sighted railway managers and uncaring mandarins. But the line was in deep financial trouble by the early 1950s. Prof Divall concludes modernization could never have saved the route.

Colin Divall is emeritus Professor of Railway Studies at the University of York and former Head of the Institute of Railway Studies founded jointly by the University and the National Rail Museum. He is a RCHS member.

For a full list of recordings of RCHS online talks visit 2020-2026 online meetings.  Selected recordings are also available on the RCHS YouTube Channel

RCHS Annual Clinker Memorial Lecture.

The 2026 lecture “Legacy Railway Structures: Assets or Liabilities”  was delivered by Graeme Bickerdike at the Met Hotel, Leeds on Saturday 30th May 2026.

The retrenchment of Britain’s railway network in the 1950s and 1960s left a lasting physical legacy in the form of thousands of disused structures scattered across the landscape. Most have heritage value as a reminder of our pioneering past, some have been reclaimed by nature to form wildlife corridors and many have the potential to be incorporated into future sustainable transport routes. For example, the National Cycle Network uses hundreds of miles of dismantled railways and their structures, but some bridges and tunnels still find themselves under threat. Do asset management regimes fully recognise the opportunities they present?

National Highways became the unlikely custodian of the Department for Transport’s Historical Railways Estate but, in recent years, has made a number of controversial decisions (some might say blunders), even driving through some demolitions without public scrutiny under misapplied emergency permitted development rights.

In his lecture, Graeme Bickerdike examines how National Highways got it so wrong, and looks at what has changed to hopefully prevent a recurrence. For 20 years, he has researched the history and recorded what is left of several hundred viaducts and tunnels on closed lines, from northern Scotland to Cornwall and Kent. This interest manifests itself online in the form of his Forgotten Relics website and a book called “Railway Wonders” which charts 100 of the UK’s most noteworthy disused structures. He is also a regular contributor to “Rail Engineer” magazine.

Graeme provides support to a community group seeking to repurpose the 1.4-mile long Queensbury Tunnel in West Yorkshire as part of what Sustrans has described as “an iconic and nationally significant” active travel network connecting Halifax with Bradford and Keighley, and is also a leading member of the campaign to resist National Highways’ attempts to infill or demolish dozens of legacy bridges, many of which have the potential to fulfil useful future transport roles.

A recording of the lecture may be viewed here: 2026 Clinker Lecture

The 2026 RCHS Transport History Book of the Year Awards were presented on Saturday 30th May 2026 at the Met Hotel, Leeds. 

Philip Brown presented details of those books shortlisted by this year’s judging panel and then announced the winners in each award category.

The Society’s annual Transport History Book of the Year Awards were launched in 2004 to recognise and encourage the writing of original, well-researched and well-written transport history books.  Each year up to four winning authors are presented with framed certificates and cash prizes.  One of the winning books is then chosen as Book of the Year and its author receives a further cash prize and the David St John Thomas trophy to hold for a year.  The prize fund was generously bequeathed to the Society for this specific purpose by our former President, David St John Thomas, author and co-founder of the David & Charles publishing house.

In no particular order, this year’s six short-listed books were:

John Curr: the man who revolutionised mining, by Charles P. Dixon
The Battle for the Railways: how Britain’s rail staff defied the Luftwaffe, by Matthew Richardson
Our Canal Heritage, compiled by Phil & Ros Prettyman for the Historic Narrow Boat Club
Midland Red – Evolution or Revolution? by Ashley Wakelin
William Thomas and a new appraisal of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, by Les Turnbull
The First Canal Guide: a translation of Hogrewe’s 1780 book on English canals, by Mike Clarke
Rise & Decline of the Grand Union & Erewash Canal Carrying Companies by Della Sadler-Moore & Lorna York

To view a recording of the event, click  2026 Transport History Book of the Year Awards 

The RCHS Bibliography for 2024 has been published: Click Here 

Each annual bibliography of books, theses and periodical articles, edited by Matthew Searle, relies on contributions from a number of RCHS members without which it could not be produced. The Bibliography for 2024 incorporates contributions from Philip Brown, Richard Coulthurst, Tim Edmonds, Ian Mitchell, Michael Perrins, Paul Reynolds, Geoff Smith and Michael Thomson, to all of whom thanks are due, as also to the Cumbrian Railways Association, Great North of Scotland Railway Association, Industrial Railway Society and Midland Railway Society for provision of complimentary copies of their journals.

Also now avaialable is Matthew Searle’s listing of Transport Anniversaries for 2026: Click: 2026 Anniversaries

Please note that the bibliography and anniversary listings are now being published only as online editions and in a form suitable for printing in full, or in part, at home. They are searchable and, therefore, are self-indexing.