DEEDS OF A GREAT RAILWAY [Illustration: Portrait of C. J. Bowen-Cooke, Esq., C.B.E., followed by his signature. [_Frontispiece._ CHIEF MECHANICAL ENGINEER, LONDON AND NORTH-WESTERN RAILWAY.] DEEDS OF A GREAT RAILWAY A RECORD OF THE ENTERPRISE AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE LONDON AND NORTH-WESTERN RAILWAY COMPANY DURING THE GREAT WAR BY G. R. S. DARROCH (CROIX DE GUERRE) ASSISTANT TO THE CHIEF MECHANICAL ENGINEER L. & N.W.R. WITH A PREFACE BY L. J. MAXSE _With Illustrations_ "The Railway Executive Committee have been too modest, the public do not know what they achieved."--_Engineering._ LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1920 _All rights reserved_ ERRATA. Page 120, footnote, _for_ said the Tsar, _read_ said of the Tsar. " 149, line 22, _for_ Walschaerte valve appertaining, _read_ Walschaerte valve gear appertaining. " 162, line 23, _for_ mileage of permanent available _read_ mileage of permanent way available. FOREWORD "Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent," is a golden and an olden precept, one moreover that may, or may not, impel the aspiring rhetorician to beware the pitfalls which ever and anon threaten to ensnare his footsteps; and in compiling this little work the present Author has not been unmindful of at least two dilemmas with which he has felt himself to be faced; one, the danger of toying with that "little knowledge" which in the course of his professional duties he has been at pains--in fact could hardly fail--to acquire; the other, the debatable policy of presenting to a public, however indulgent, a subject of which, at the moment of writing, and in common with the majority of people, he is heartily tired, namely that of Munitions of War. Prompted, however, by an ardent and innate love, dating from his earliest school-days, for railway-engines, trains, and everything appertaining thereto--a love, moreover, so compelling that at the romantic age of thirteen he applied for an engine-pass with which joyously to ride home for the holidays, and without which, owing to a polite but firm refusal, he suffered many a pang of disappointment--feeling, too, that railway enthusiasts, whether amateur or professional, cannot fail to evince a certain degree of interest in the truly amazing rôle enacted during the war by the locomotive departments of the great railway companies of the country, he has ventured to touch upon what may best, perhaps, be termed the "war effort" of the London and North-Western Railway, the premier British line, of which the locomotive G.H.Q. are, as is well known, to be found at Crewe.