Journal of the Railway & Canal Historical Society Volume 35 Part 3 No 193 November 2005 The Railway & Canal Historical Society President: Hugh Compton Vice-Presidents: Dr A L Barnett, G J Biddle, G A Boyes, R Christiansen, J V Gough, A A Jackson, Dr M J T Lewis, K P Seaward Chairman (Managing Committee): Roger Davies Hon Secretary: M Searle, 3 West Court, West Street, Oxford 0X2 ONP Hon Treasurer: R 0 Welton, Wynch House, Ashton-u-Hill, Evesham WR11 7SW Membership Secretary: R J Taylor, 16 Priory Court, Berkhamsted HP4 2PD Local Group Secretaries East Midlands: S Birch, 34 Cotes Road, Barrow-on-Soar, Loughborough LE12 8JS London: M Thomson, Flat 5, 28 Blakesley Avenue, London W5 2DW North East: D B Slater, 8 Grainger Avenue, Acomb, York Y02 5LF North West: G Leach, 5 Tabley Close, Knutsford, Cheshire WA16 ONP South West (acting): A Richardson, 25 Boscombe Crescent, Downend, Bristol BS16 6QR West Midlands: R M Shill, 100 Frederick Road, Stechford, Birmingham B33 8AE Co-ordinators of Special Interest Groups Air Transport: P L Scowcroft, 8 Rowan Mount, Doncaster DN2 5PJ Pipelines: T Foxon, 2 Oldfield, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire GL20 5QX Railway Chronology: E H Cheers, 7 Wealden Hatch, Bushbury, Wolverhampton WV10 8TY Road Transport: P L Scowcroft, 8 Rowan Mount, Doncaster DN2 5PJ Tramroads: Dr M J T Lewis, 60 Hardwick Street, Hull HU5 3PJ Waterways History Research (including Docks & Shipping): P E Jones, 27 Bexley Avenue, Denton Burn, Newcastle NE15 7DE The Railway & Canal Historical Society was founded in 1954 and incorporated in 1967. It is a company (no 922300) limited by guarantee and registered in England as a charity (no 256047) Registered office: 3 West Court, West Street, Oxford, OX2 ONP RCHS Journal Editor: Peter Brown, 34 Waterside Drive, Market Drayton TF9 1HU E-mail: p@peter—quita.demon.co.uk Reviews Editor: Dr M Barnes, Cornbrash House, Kirtlington, Oxfordshire 0X5 3HF E-mail: [email protected] (to whom all books etc for review should be sent) Distribution Officers: D &J Grindrod, 47 Lark Hall Crescent, Macclesfield, SK10 1QU (to be notified about non-delivery or defective copies of the Journal) The Editor welcomes the submission of interesting relevant articles. Potential contributors should contact him for a copy of the Guidance on writing for the Journal, including the style sheet. Statements in the Journal reflect the views of the authors, and not necessarily those of the Society or Editor. Copyright is vested jointly in the author and the RCHS. No article may be reproduced in whole or in part without the express permission in writing of both the author and the RCHS. Requests to reproduce articles should be addressed to the Editor. Printed by Counter Print. 17 Browning Street, Stafford ST16 3AX ISSN 0033 8834 Journal of the Railway & Canal Historical Society Volume 35 Part 3 No 193 November 2005 Contents Writing for an Academic Journal — John Armstrong 150 Railway History in Solicitors' Papers — John Goodchild 154 From the RCHS Photographic Collection 155 Wappenshall Wharf 1835-50, Part 2: the trade and the carriers — Peter Brown 156 Clement E Stretton: railway engineer, historian and collector — Stephen Duffell 162 The Maintenance of Pontcysyllte Aqueduct — Stephen Priestley 170 Perceptions and Statistics: measuring the LNER's public relations success — Andrew Dow 175 Richmond Half-Tide Lock — Grahame Boyes 178 The Great Eastern Railway's Woolwich Ferry — Rodger Green 186 The Patents of William James and William Henry James: 1. Introduction; 2. Hollow cast•iron rails — Miles Macnair 194 A Shooting at Marple Wharf Junction Signal Box — Brian Lamb 196 Correspondence 199 Reviews 203 149 Writing for an Academic Journal John Armstrong, Thames Valley University The second in a series of articles about writing for publication This article aims to help members to write quality sources (company papers and government reports transport history and have it accepted for publication contemporaneous with the events). The idea is that in an academic journal. The author has had experi- other researchers can go back to those sources to see ence of editing one academic journal for more than if they agree with the author's interpretations or to a decade, and has also been on the other side of the see if there is other material relevant to their particular equation, submitting articles to numerous learned interest. This is equivalent to the scientific idea of journals. There are certain, usually implicit, rules repeatability whereby the researchers describe their and conventions about academic publishing and this experiment in such detail that other scientists can article will make them explicit, so revealing hidden replicate the exact conditions and, hopefully, obtain obstacles and discussing tactics to overcome the the same results. To make life a little easier, most obstacles and achieve a publication in a learned journals will have their own style sheets, which can journal. Let us start with some of the more obvious be had on application to the editor, and which will and straightforward points. spell out their preferred practices. If the putative author is still in doubt, a look at recent back numbers should clarify the situation. Getting the scholarly Basic requirements apparatus in place can be time consuming, if not The article should be well written in terms of clarity particularly intellectually challenging, especially if of English expression, be grammatical, correctly spelt the author has not kept full details of the provenance and punctuated. It should contain sentences and of the various ideas and quotations. This rewards paragraphs (beware the one-sentence `paragraph'). the conscientious and methodical, and penalises the This is pretty obvious, but two exceptions to this rule disorganised. might be seen to exist. The putative article may be A third requirement of any academic journal in rough at the edges grammatically, on its first submis- the broad field of transport history is that each article sion, especially perhaps from a less-experienced should be fully contextualised. This means that the scholar, providing the editor is willing to polish the author has to show how his/her research fits into the draft. The other exception is for articles written by existing state of knowledge on this topic. To do that non-native English speakers whose expression is not the author has to have read the books and articles on always colloquial. Editors are normally willing to the subject and know where there are disagreements take time to improve such pieces, providing the topic and what areas are not covered at all. This allows covered is interesting and the ideas are novel or authors to show what is novel about their research, revisionist. how it fills a gap in the literature or revises an existing The second feature which is necessary and not too view. It is also a useful exercise to check that the difficult to achieve is the scholarly apparatus. This author is not re-inventing the wheel, that is, doing comprises endnotes or footnotes or some combina- something that has already satisfactorily been done. tion of textual signs and a bibliography at the end of There is no point in purely duplicating other people's the article. Sadly the precise conventions of each work. journal are usually peculiar to it and no two journals, A fourth, and often over-looked, ingredient in an even in a restricted field such as history, are precisely academic article, is a statement of intent. Normally the same. Thus if you write an article aimed at one near the beginning of the article, preferably in the journal and it is rejected, you will almost certainly first paragraph or two, this gives the reader a signpost have to re-arrange the referencing system. Remem- to the route to be taken. It also provides a benchmark ber the reasoning behind the use of references. It is against which the editor can judge whether the author essentially to make explicit the source material on has achieved his/her stated intentions. It should be which the author has drawn, both the secondary both precise and concise but give the reader enough literature (existing books and articles on the topic detail to appreciate the main thrust and context. written after the events described) and the primary 150 The thesis Onslow Canal appears an anomaly, a successful canal in an agricultural area, and hence answering the A fifth requirement is that the author is putting question as to why it was successful is a very valid forward some thesis or line of argument. This might activity. If the author could then advance a hypothesis be a brand new one or it might be a revisionist thesis, as to what explained its financial success — a large one challenging the existing orthodoxy. trade in charcoal for local iron forges or abundant Let us take the second case first. Until the 1960s oak timber needed for warship construction in nearby it was taken as axiomatic that the railways played a Portsmouth—then this might be an interesting article crucial role in developing the economy of the USA. because it is amending the current orthodoxy about Because it was a huge country with limited river what determined canal profitability. When the author systems, which did not always flow in the most is arguing a revisionist thesis, the importance of economically-important directions, then overland contextualisation becomes much clearer because transport by railway was seen as essential to get (s)he needs to set up the viewpoint with which they agricultural produce and minerals out to the east are going to disagree, and intend to amend. coast. In the 1960s that view was challenged by There is a variation on the theme above, that is Robert Fogel who argued that railways were not vital formulating a hypothesis.