Description

Chapters include Short History of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, Liverpool in 1830, Manchester in 1830, Liverpool & its Transport Facilities, Railway Exhibition in St George’s Hall, Street Decorations, Railway Fair at Wavertree Playground, with list of Exhibits, Programme of Amusements and Fireworks, Centenary Celebrations Hour by Hour, Book of the Pageant of Transport, with Programme of Incidental Music and Descriptive Notes.

There is a description of the replica train running on a circular track at Wavertree, hauled by the then recently restored “Lion”. The static exhibits, 34 locomotives and items of rolling stock, mainly LMS, but token exhibits from the LNER, Southern, and GWR included, are catalogued  and described. It is of interest to note that some locomotives from private builders, possibly because they could be exhibited a Wavertree en route to the docks for shipment. There were two from each of The Hunslet Engine Co. and W.G. Bagnall.

In 1925, when the LNER celebrated the Stockton & Darlington Centenary, the development of the wheel was illustrated by a series of tableaux, staged on bogie flat wagons in the procession, with a few amateur actors in appropriate costume. At Liverpool the broader theme of the development of transport was tackled in a Pageant with literally thousands of performers in costume, all of whom are named in this book. (A way one imagines of boosting sales!) WAS ONE OF YOUR PARENTS OR GRANDPARENTS A PARTICIPANT? When as an adult I became seriously interested in railway history, I asked my parents if they had seen this extravaganza they replied “We did not go, it absolutely poured down…”

There are, as usual in a publication of this type, several pages of adverts. This selectionis wonderfully nostalgic, with period adverts for Hendersons, Bon Marche, Pain’s Fireworks, Reece’s Restaurant, Lewis’s Tudor Restaurant, George Henry Lee, The Overhead Railway, Cottle’s Famous Restaurants, Mersey Railway, Irwin’s, Bunney’s, Blackler’s, Owen Owen, and many others. This is an informative and interesting item.