Railway Clearing House maps

[fairysdad]

I've been looking at some articles on Wikipedia, and am wondering why the maps produced by the Railway Clearing House seem to be rather random in the stations they've grouped together. This one, for instance, maps the lines around Widness, the lines around Barnstaple, and the lines around Mansfield. Why were these three areas grouped together onto one page? Or this one, where two areas on opposite sides of London have Evesham in the middle of them.

Why did the RCH seem to randomly allocate their maps in this way? On the Wikimedia Commons page, there are some that either have one page for one network, or have smaller maps for areas much closer together on one page (although still not entirely logical). Is it just an old-railway way of doing it or was there a good reason for it?

 

[Darren R]

I don't think it was the Railway Clearing House that grouped the maps together in the way you describe. The maps were collated and published as a hardback book called (appropriately enough!) British Railway Junction Diagrams. From memory the book was in landscape format, with the pages not much larger than a standard postcard. The maps were grouped together on the pages by the publisher in such a way as to reduce the number of pages needed.

The book has been out-of-print for at least thirty years, and I believe those useful maps on Wikipedia are in fact scanned pages from an incomplete volume of the book: hence many missing maps (alas!).

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Was there not a reissue of some of these maps in recent years by a publishing company in a hard-back A4 upright sized publication? I am sure that I saw such a book in the Ian Allen bookshop in Manchester.

 

[BlythPower]

The latest edition of the Pre-Grouping Atlas has a number of RCH junction diagrams in it.

 

[fairysdad]

I don't think it was the Railway Clearing House that grouped the maps together in the way you describe. The maps were collated and published as a hardback book called (appropriately enough!) British Railway Junction Diagrams. From memory the book was in landscape format, with the pages not much larger than a standard postcard. The maps were grouped together on the pages by the publisher in such a way as to reduce the number of pages needed.

I had a feeling it was something to do with saving print/paper when being published, but it still does seem like there are some odd groupings there - would it have been that hard to group them logically and still save pages?! One of those historical quirks I suppose, not a railway one but a publishing one! I guess a full-colour book would've been expensive to produce so the less pages the better.

 

[Darren R]

I had a feeling it was something to do with saving print/paper when being published, but it still does seem like there are some odd groupings there - would it have been that hard to group them logically and still save pages?! One of those historical quirks I suppose, not a railway one but a publishing one! I guess a full-colour book would've been expensive to produce so the less pages the better.

It was a very expensive book - it's about 30 years since I tried to buy a copy (that's when I found out it was out of print) and it was twenty-odd quid back then! But it contained every junction on the network, no matter how trivial or straightforward. From memory it also included Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. I'm really kinda hoping that someone will publish it again in its entirety.

 

[Bevan Price]

It was a very expensive book - it's about 30 years since I tried to buy a copy (that's when I found out it was out of print) and it was twenty-odd quid back then! But it contained every junction on the network, no matter how trivial or straightforward. From memory it also included Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. I'm really kinda hoping that someone will publish it again in its entirety.

David & Charles (I think) did a full reprint, and I have occasionally seen second hand copies at relatively reasonable prices. Original versions, as published by RCH, can be very expensive.

You can view the entire set of junction diagrams on line at:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Railways_Junctions_Diagram_1914

Personally, I wish someone would reprint the full series of RCH maps of UK railways - the versions including the distances between all stations and junctions. D&C reprinted the map for SW England, but I think they ceased trading before any more reprints were done.

Ian Allan also did an Atlas version reprint but unfortunately chose one of the versions that did not show distances; also the scale was rather small.

 

[essexjohn]

My Ian Allen "Railway Junction Diagrams - 1914" was not very expensive; I think I found it in a bookshop that sold "remaindered" stock. I believe it reproduces the pages as drafted by RCH; I'm sure that they, not Ian Allen, were responsible for the quirky arrangement over pages. It includes railways for all of Ireland. Note that it does not show every railway junction, just those between the different companies. These maps were used by RCH when apportioning revenue for inter company freight traffic which was based on the mileage travelled over each.