Introduction

Edward Hopper started his career in the Southern Railway in 1926 and retired from British Railways in 1968. His career included the transition from a privately owned, stylish, forward-thinking, cost controlled, profit making railway with an excellent public relations department to a large publicly owned industry where many problems came home to roost. It was also a transition from the railway with the smallest territory of the ‘Big Four’ railway companies, to the Railway Executive under the British Transport Commission (BTC) that brought together all Britain’s transport undertakings. After the BTC was dissolved his career continued under the British Railways Board that became responsible for the management of the state owned railway.
     Father was a great raconteur, his yarns having a thread running through them that illustrated his attitude to some aspect of life, especially his life on the railway. These anecdotes were told in a variety of settings. Some were told on train journeys and family holidays. Some were told to politely listening relatives at family gatherings and others were told at Scout troop meetings or over a campfire on a starry night. Picking out a spiritual or moral point, they were also adapted for use in Sunday school classes. Occasionally they were told during rare visits to country pubs, the unexpected venue for his final contribution on the topic of Edward Hopper and ‘The Railway’ just a few weeks before he died in 1991. No doubt many of these stories were recounted as part of his work with railwaymen. Many, but not all, of the stories related to what he had done or how he thought things should be or indeed, should have been done on the railway.
     While I am not an historian, I realise that this story is an account of the past as seen from the present. It is therefore inevitable that some of the memories here are seen through the prism of time and may be a little distorted. However this work is more than just a collection of memories. It is a mixture of memory, reference to his papers and research. The memories have been authenticated in discussion with other members of the Hopper family. His papers, mostly post-retirement lecture notes, have been a valuable source and provided much of the structure behind the book following many of his headings. The research was twofold. First by recourse to further written material, especially British Railways papers held in the National Archive (including some of my father’s own notes and letters) and secondly in conversations with some of his former colleagues. This along with further research in published materials, both contemporary and modern, has done much to authenticate the railway record. In research terms many of the topics have been triangulated, with the memories being juxtaposed with the paper evidence and with personal comments. In this way each chapter is a melange of memory, researched information and authentication. In some chapters there is also a degree of speculation about how his views could be applied to the railway of today.
     It has been a joy to travel again parts of the journey he made and to visit for the first time some of the places he mentioned and to meet some of his former colleagues during my research for this book. While I had intended to record the stories nearly twenty years ago, I left it too late, the purchase of a small tape recorder being on my list of things to do when he died. The idea was rekindled on finding some private letters about my father’s time at Waterloo following the death of my mother at the age of one hundred and two in early 2010.
     This could have been a history laden with numerical information. However, the more numbers reign supreme the less of a story there is to tell. It is the desire to gain a greater understanding both of his work and of railway management by telling the story that is the focus here. The reader will find some personal recollections tucked into the story of my father’s career and the expression of his views on railways. These illuminate the man and the contemporary scene and show how his family were drawn into his life on the railway. It seems appropriate when writing about one so steeped in railways that some of the early sketches for this work were drafted while travelling on trains in both Britain and Europe. This has also allowed the occasional contemporary comment about travelling by train in 2010 to be added, the sort of comments that he would have made if he was still able to travel with me…
     Note: The use of the term ‘railwayman’ or ‘railwaymen’ reflects the context of the events, as indeed does the naming of railway officers by their surnames. The author recognises that such usage has become archaic.