Malcolm Reid served his apprenticeship at Vickers Armstrong (Aircraft) Ltd. from ‘55 to ‘60 (latterly, the British Aircraft Corporation). Of course, he is a Brooklands Museum Trust Member and receives its quarterly Bulletin. The following article was published earlier this year and BTM permission to reproduce it in our website is acknowledged and greatly thanked. The BTM recorded its thanks to Andy Nash, Historian of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway Association Heritage Group, for most of the photos. Indirectly, the Westland and Yeovil District Model Engineering Society expresses its appreciation to him also. 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 What you may ask has the RH&DR got to do with Brooklands? The answer has 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 workshops 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 encouragement 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. 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 Suffolk. 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 withNevertheless, little success. 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-gauge Great Northern Railway Ivat ‘Atlantic’ locomotive, which he ran in the garden of his Woodbridge home. This was nothing however to compare with his experience in May 1911 at the opening of the Rhyl Miniature Railway which Howey attended as a guest of Bassett-Lowke, the company which had made his steam locomotive. Here he was able to drive a 15- inch ‘Atlantic’ at speed on a circular track Louis Zborowski in 'Chitty Bang Bang' I and where he ‘caught the 15-inch bug’. (Brooklands Society Archive) Royal Flying Corps Personal interests and hobbies were about to be put on hold as John Howey joined the Royal Flying Corps in 1914, flying as an observer for a year before being shot down and held as a prisoner of war. He was later declared medically unfit for military service and released on parole to Switzerland in 1917. After the war he took a house in Belgravia and became something of a socialite. He also had a house in Sunningdale where he built a large model railway in the garage. A new interest however was motor racing and, in particular, the attractions of the Brooklands circuit which lay just a few miles away in Weybridge. John certainly associated with the ‘right crowd’, which included Parry Thomas and Count Louis Zborowski. In 1922 Thomas had modified a short-chassis, two-seat Speed Model Leyland Eight to which he fitted a streamlined racing body which he raced on the Track. The following year a sister car emerged from Thomas’s workshop adjacent to his bungalow ‘The Hermitage’ on the airfield side of the Brooklands site. This car was to be raced by John Howey over three years between 1923 and 1925, including record attempts in 1923 which resulted in a World 10-mile record at 116.41mph, together with associated Class G records. Howey in his army uniform, taken from a newspaper cutting after his plane had been shot down. His pilot had been killed and Howey had to climb forwards over the dead man's body and land the plane, this was behind enemy lines and Howey at the wheel of 'Chitty' I (RH&DR Association he was captured and held as a POW (RH&DR Heritage Group Collection) Association Heritage Group Collection) John Howey had a Brooklands racing career which saw him take part in some 61 events between 1923 and 1929. It is difficult to be precise with regard to the Brooklands competition careers of John and Richard as complete sets of race programmes and entry lists for the 1920s are rare. Nevertheless, we do know that John raced the following cars on the Track – the Leyland Eight, Leyland Thomas Special. 'Chitty Bang Bang' I and III, Hispano- Suiza, Ballot and Mercedes. The race results which are available show that he achieved eight first places, two seconds and one third. His fastest lap around the circuit was at 118.02mph. His brother Richard had a similar racing career. He competed in 37 races between 1924 and 1926. There were also his Class C records taken in 1924 over five and 10 miles/kilometres as well as his standing and flying start records over the mile and For a painfully shy man Capt Howey liked kilometre taken in 1926 driving a five-litre Ballot. Richard also wearing hats! Here he is on a 'business drove Leyland, Leyland-Thomas, Lanchester, Rolls-Royce and trip' to Australia (RH&DR Association Heritage Bentley cars. His race results included seven first places, three Group Collection) seconds and three thirds, whilst his fastest lap was at 21.18mph. John Howey’s cars were famous in their day and for many years afterwards. The Mercedes built by Louis Zborowski and Clive Gallop in 1920 was fitted with a 23-litre Maybach aero engine and became known as ‘Chitty Bang Bang I’. It was sold to John in 1924. R G J Nash recalled that friends of his – Adrian and Denis Conan Doyle – purchased the Mercedes around 1933, having found it by the side of a locomotive shed on the RH&DR. It was later abandoned behind the T B Andre workshop in the Brooklands Flying Village and eventually broken up. Zborowski and Gallop produced two further ‘Chitties' – 'Chitty II', which was displayed at the Museum in its (the Museum's) early days but is now in the USA, and another, around 1921, this time powered by a 14,778cc Mercedes aero engine. This became known as ‘Chitty III’ or ‘The White Mercedes’ and was raced on the Track prior to Louis's death in 1924, when it became part of the Howey equipe. By 1929 it was being raced by Noel and Pole. When the BARC banned such ‘elderly vehicles’ from Brooklands, ‘Chitty III’ languished at the Thomson and Taylor works before being sold to Clive Windsor-Richards who used it as a touring car. It was last heard of in the hands of Lord Carlow. John Howey’s Leyland-Thomas would also fail to survive. By 1926 it was no longer used for racing and Dudley Froy rescued it and fitted the body from Leyland-Thomas number one. By 1932 it belonged to Elsie and Tommy Wisdom and in the September of that year Elsie took the Ladies' lap record at Brooklands at 121.47mph in the Leyland. They sold it in 1934 to Bill Black and in 1938 it appeared at the Brighton Speed Trials in the hands of E Sidebottom. It was probably scrapped during the Second World War.