Backtrack

Editorial

In a guest editorial this month JOHN SCHOLES, compiler of the detailed captions for our industrial railways photograph features, shares some philosophical thoughts.

‘History is bunk’ is an oft misquoted section of a 1916 lengthy interview with Henry Ford by the . The missing words ‘more or less’ changed the context, moving him ‘historically’ from hero to villain. Keen to see aspects of the past preserved, he opened a museum in his home town of Dearborn thirteen years later. Rail featured with other exhibit; he commissioned Darlington locomotive builders, Robert Stephenson & to as near original as known and used it on rails round the museum until laid up in 1949.

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