Important Announcements

The 72nd Annual General Meeting of the Railway & Canal Historical Society was held at The Friends’ Meeting House, Manchester on Saturday 12th September 2026.

The 2025 Annual Report and Accounts were presented to the meeting and questions invited from those members attending in person. Both the Annual Report and the minutes of the AGM are available from the members area of the website.

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

Following the AGM Bill Froggatt, Heritage Adviser at Canal & River Trust, gave 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 north west. The talk will be about the construction of the Lancaster Canal, including an opportunity to highlight some of the lesser known people that built the canal, including such majestic structures as the Grade I listed Lune Aqueduct’.

Bill has agree to give the talk again, online during November. The date will be added to this notice and sent to members by email as soon as it is available.

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. Details of the shortlisted books and the winner as decided by the judging panel, along with the judges report are available 2026 RCHS Transport History Book Awards

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.

The six short-listed books for the awards 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

The digital edition of the September 2026 Bulletin is available from the Members Area of the website. The print edition will be despatched to members during w/c 31st August.

As well as including new and updated 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 progress with ‘Survive & Success programme on the future of the Society. The usual item on the RCHS Online Media Archive (ROMA) includes the answer to the question, posed in the July Bulletin, of the location of the  two vintage buses as well as posing a similar question for two other images in the archive where the date and location are not known.

The Miscellany section includes an illustrated item ‘A Brief Chronology of Supplying Water in Manchester: 1809-1968’ prompted by a discussion during a  recent walk organised by members of our North West 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 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.