LETTERS
Letters to the Bulletin on any topic connected with Brooklands – past, present or future, or about the BTM, are most welcome. Please send them to Chris Bass via
chris@chrisbass.co.uk or 2 Riverside Close, Brookwood, Woking, Surrey GU24 0AP.
Vickers Vildebeest Dear Chris,
Re Peter Guest’s e-mail on Page 51 of the March-April Bulletin. He mentioned ‘they are in the early stages of rebuilding a Vickers Vildebeest’ at the Royal New Zealand Air Force Museum at Wigram in Christchurch. I have a book that was being sold off by my local library entitled Veteran and Vintage Aircraft... it cost me £1. It lists all preserved aircraft, including those under restoration and reconstruction, in all countries of the world. Under New Zealand, at the Museum of Transport and Technology, Western Springs, Auckland there is an entry for ‘Vickers Wildebeest III under restoration from various parts found in New Zealand and will probably become NZ102 or NZ105’. The book was printed in 1974, so it looks as though Auckland must have given up on their early stages of restoration at some stage over the past 43 years!
Regards, Gerald Rickwood, via e-mail
Editor’s note: Another member, David Wright, contacted Peter Guest saying, ‘My father Ralph Edwin Wright was involved with the Vickers Vildebeest as flight engineer accompanying the pilots as they travelled the world demonstrating the Vildebeest to air forces in the late 1920s early 30s. I have some 20 or 30 photographs plus other interesting jottings.’
‘Brooklands driver and engine driver’ Dear Chris,
As a life-long supporter of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway, I was very interested in Tony Hutchings’ article about Captain Howey in the March-April Bulletin. I wonder if I might make a few comments on the contents? Although the name ‘Staughton Manor’
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appears in some of the photo captions, I couldn’t find any reference to it in the article. This house, near Huntingdon, was leased by Howey in late 1912 and it’s thought that he and his wife, Gladys, moved there that November. He bought it because it had sufficiently large, level grounds to permit a railway with a longer, continuous run for his 9½-inch gauge GNR Ivatt Atlantic. The Howeys left Staughton Manor after the First World War.
Howey’s 15-inch gauge Pacific was originally
named John Anthony after his two-year old son – who was actually Anthony John Edwards Howey. (Tony Howey lost his life in 1943 while serving in the Fleet Air Arm.) The tender sides carried the words ‘Staughton Manor Railway’ in full. It seems that Bassett-Lowke adopted the class name Gigantic in the hope that they might receive further orders and the coloured picture of John Anthony was suitably doctored for marketing purposes. The loco was re-named Colossus when it was purchased from Howey for use on the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway in 1916. Finally, the story that Howey lit-up the 10¼- inch gauge model of Royal Scot in the living room at Red Tiles while his wife was away is a Romney myth. The story appears in the late John Snell’s book One Man’s Railway but he later admitted to George Barlow (who would have been aware of the incident if it had happened) that he had no evidence for it at all – “but it made a good story for the book”.
Yours sincerely, Paul Ross, via e-mail
Editor’s note: Tony Hutchings cannot be blamed for ‘Staughton Manor’ appearing in the photo captions or for the story about Royal Scot in the living room – the information for all the captions from the RH&DR photos came from the RH&DR Association Heritage Group.
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