My interest in railways was kindled in the late 1940′s with trips on the pillion seat of my father’s BSA motorcycle to lineside locations.    I joined British Railways in the days of steam and became Assistant Controller under the auspices of the Rugby Control Office, but based at Roade Junction signal box.

  After closure of the signal boxes on the West Coast Main Line, due to the introduction of multiple-aspect colour-light signalling, I went “on the relief”  in an area bounded by Coventry, Nuneaton and Bletchley. At my home station of Northampton I was also responsible for some 150 guards’ pocket watches.

  So my interest in railway clocks and watches began over 50 years ago, when I saw them in stations and signal boxes, where their grimy and oily condition usually gave them the dubious honour of being the dirtiest items there.

  After leaving railway service through redundancy in 1975 (Northamptonshire has lost more stations than any other county),  I changed course, re-qualified and became Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages for Kettering, Northamptonshire where we still reside.

  My book   Railway Clocks  is the only detailed study of the mechanical clocks used by the railway companies of England, Scotland and Wales. An introductory chapter describes how the demands of the railways brought about Greenwich Mean Time which replaced local time, and how this was transmitted to stations and signal boxes throughout the country.  There is much information on the clocks used on our railways, who made and supplied them and how they were maintained.   The development of the Great Western Railway repair shops at Reading and those of other companies is described along with period photographs of maintenance work in progress.   Separate chapters discuss in detail the clocks owned by each of the “Big Four” railway companies formed in 1923 and their constituent companies, with numerous illustrations to show both typical timepieces as well as rare examples.  The clock numbering systems used by the various companies are explained with illustrations of the different types of number plates and other means of identification as well as tables of known numbers and locations.  This information will enable the collector to feel confident when buying a clock and help distinguish a fake from the genuine article.   There is information on the disposal of railway clocks through Collectors Corner at Euston and other retail outlets as well as the censuses of railway clocks taken after Nationalisation in 1948. 

  Appendices include details of those firms known to have made and supplied railway clocks, clock contracts on the Southern Railway, London Midland Railway and the Isle of Wight; the clock registers of the London & North Eastern Railway; an inventory of the hundreds of clocks located at Liverpool Street station, London; clocks at the L.& N.E.R. hotels and at the Great Western Railway’s Swindon Works; an analysis of the clocks of the Southern Railway as well as extensive extracts from the records of Messrs. Thwaites & Reed relating to railway work.

   This book is based on detailed original research on the clocks themselves, their makers and suppliers, much of it published for the first time.  There are over 750 illustrations as well as archive illustrations of clocks in their working environment and also of important documents.  It will be of interest not only to collectors of railway clocks but also those interested in clocks of all types.