When convoy HX 84 assembled at Halifax, Nova Scotia during late October 1940, it comprised 30 merchant ships escorted by the Royal Canadian Navy Town class destroyers HMCS Columbia (ex USS Haraden) and St Francis (ex USS Bancroft) and his majesty’s armed merchant...
We’ve all heard of gun runners, drug runners, booze runners, ciggy runners, and so on. A friend of mine even told me of his tee-total, staunch Methodist, aged great uncle whose weekly ‘running’ consisted of taking a bottle of Irish Whiskey to his equally aged, though...
You are going to be disappointed if you think this article might be a review for a new movie in the Iron Man Franchise from Marvel Studios. Our iron man isn’t Robert Downey Jr. It is in fact Freddie Steele who became one of Port Vale’s most loved and respected...
Douglas Earle Marshall, Locomotive, Carriage & Wagon Superintendent of the London Brighton & South Coast Railway was on a roll. The company was pleased with the success of his I3 class 4-4-2 tank engines, so much so that Douglas was given free reign to design...
In this case the last loco was not some last of its class high-performance main line express engine that once grabbed the headlines but a lowly tank locomotive that attracted little attention. On week ending 16 February 1952, British Railways officially withdrew...
The September 1939 mass evacuations of UK towns and cities under Operation Pied Piper is well known. However, Benito Mussolini’s decision on 10 June 1940 to take Italy into the war on the side of Nazi Germany, led to evacuations of a different type. By taking Italy...