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Brooklands driver and engine driver by Tony Hutchings


Surprisingly there seem to be very few photos of John Howey at Brooklands. This is the only one we could find and it shows him in a Leyland (number two, on the left) leading Eldridge in his Fiat in 1924 (Brooklands Society Archive).


‘The Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch – the World’s Smallest Public Railway – has given pleasure to countless numbers of all ages since the 1920s. The 15-inch gauge line, running 14 miles across Romney Marsh – linking Hythe, Dymchurch, New Romney and Dungeness – has many special attractions. It is, for example, a main-line railway in miniature, largely double-track, with more trains stopping at more stations than almost any other steam line in Britain. And it was largely the creation of a single individual.’


One Man’s Railway – J E P Howey and the RH&DR


everything to do with that ‘single individual’ and his friends who regarded miniature railways with the very same enthusiasm they had for racing powerful cars. John Howey was the founder of the railway, whose racing career at Brooklands spanned the years between 1923 and 1929. His brother, Richard, also raced on the Track in 1925 and 1926 before being tragically killed at the wheel of his Ballot at Boulogne during the 1926 Speed Week. Then we have Louis Zborowski, driver of the famous ‘Chitty Bang Bang’ cars and who would have become a partner of Howey had he not lost his life racing in the 1924 Italian Grand Prix at Monza. As The Autocar (26th March 1937) recalls, he did leave a legacy: ‘...machine tools once belonging to him – he had one of the finest work- shops in the world – now attend, among others, to the construction and overhaul of the locomotives of the RH&DR’. Another personality well-known in the world of racing and record breaking was Kenelm Lee Guinness who provided encourage- ment to Howey during the planning stage, together with official support when he was appointed as a Director of the RH&DR in 1927. He served on the board until 1931.


W 33


hat you may ask has the RH&DR got to do with Brooklands? The answer has


However, to begin at the beginning. In 1837 a young English sheep farmer named Henry Howey, who had settled in New South Wales, Australia, decided to invest in some land being auctioned off in the new city of Melbourne. A year later he and his family left by sea to live in the city, setting off from Sydney by sailing ship. They and the vessel were never seen again. In due course, Henry's bachelor brother inherited his estate, which by 1871 when he died, was worth over one million pounds. In turn it was passed to a nephew, John Edwards Howey, an Indian Army officer who in due course returned to England to settle at Melford Grange near Woodbridge in Suf- folk. On 17th November 1886 John Edwards Presgrave Howey was born, followed by another son, Richard, in 1896. JEP grew up surrounded by his father’s cars, a steam launch and a gauge- one model railway, all of which activated in him an interest in all things mechanical. Although his technical education made little progress during his years at Eton, it did not stop him becoming an apprentice at Vickers, but with little success.


Nevertheless, as a young man of no little wealth, his interests developed into practical outcomes, with the commissioning of a 60hp Napier car and the delivery of a 9½-inch gauge


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