Works. What exactly this means I am not sure but if it means the NBL Hyde Park Works, it cannot be right, because the NBL Hyde Park Works maker’s plate was diamond–shaped. The maker’s plate is certainly a Beardmore  plate – small oblong – and the loco number shows it to be a Beardmore engine, 258, built, according to Baxter , in 10/1921. But the main thing about this picture is that the loco, though in undercoat, has been lined out with crest. So far as I know all Beardmore Princes were finished in plain black with crest, so why this different finish?

Ted Talbot

[I am grateful to Ted for pointing out the error in this and one other caption which confused NBL and Beardmore engine. The error was mine, not Philip Atkins’ – Ed]

WOMEN & OVERLOOKERS

Dear Mike,

I am sure that Mary Forstyth is right to assume that an ‘overlooker’ was a foreman. The term was in everyday use in the Lancashire cotton industry, where an overlooker would supervise a group of workers or a particular stage in the processing of the cotton.

Perhaps the Railway Women’s Guild was similar to the Women’s Guild established by the Co-Operative movement in 1883. By 1908 the Co-Op Women’s Guild had more than 500 branches and 25,000 members.

Its objects were to spread knowledge of the benefits of cooperation, to promote education, handicrafts, practical housekeeping and child welfare.

Graharn Hardy

Dear Mike,

Brief enquires of the Working Class Movement Library, City of Salford, brought forward information that the Railway Women’s Guild was an offshoot of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS). Library files of the ASRS ‘Railway Review’ start in 1897 from which date there are references to the Guild’s activities in numerous locations dotted about the country.

RWGs were active in promoting social activities including ‘smoking evenings’ in which their members did not participate.

Pat McCarthy