Connor Law, as you can see from his picture below, is clearly like a railway buff, so he picked the right dissertation supervisor in our own ‘Mr Trains’ Dr Mike Esbester. His dissertation looked at imperatives to modernise the British railway system after a period of stasis during the war.
My dissertation was an analysis of the scope of modernisation on the railways of Britain as the zenith of steam came to a bitter end in 1939 at the start of the Second World War, to the eventual end of steam in 1968. The main argument this study sought to lend support to was that, overall, modernisation on Britain’s railways was a long-standing process dating back as far as the late Victorian era, and having been hindered but not halted by WW2, was proliferated from 1948 onwards by the newly nationalised British Railways, but these later attempts were met with varying degrees of success. The chosen topic may have seemed incredibly technical, but I approached it from an analytical perspective to shed new light on existing information.
Much of the primary source material used in this dissertation came from records held by The National Archives, and included meeting minutes from the Great Western Railway’s Locomotive Committee, financial records from both the GWR and British Railways, correspondence from the Railway Executive Committee. Also included were various publications from British Rail which promoted their aims and achievements with regards to creating a modern and future-proof railway system, one major source being the Modernisation Plan of 1955, which outlined all of the proposals for said modern railway. Also featured were a number of posters produced during the war to dissuade people from travelling so that higher priority services to help the war effort could run unaffected.
Following on from the historiographical chapter, the dissertation was divided into two halves, firstly analysing the effect of the war on locomotive policy in three areas, firstly from the government, which subsequently mandated the construction of ‘Austerity’ locomotives as an inexpensive substitute, alongside policies on the Great Western Railway and the Southern Railway. On the former, under Frederick Hawksworth as the new Chief Mechanical Engineer, it was apparent that their locomotive policy continued just as it had during the interwar period, with the major development being the introduction of a modified version of Hawksworth’s predecessor’s Hall Class of 1929, and the new Modified Halls proved to be just as good as its older contemporaries, commentators noting that while it looked outwardly almost identical, internally it was completely different. Similarly, the Southern Railway took a turn under Oliver Bulleid, who essentially tricked the SR’s directors into allowing him to produce a brand new express passenger locomotive by claiming it to be capable of passenger and goods work. This section demonstrated that the Second World War in fact had very little impact on the process of modernisation on the four private railway companies (the other two being the London Midland & Scottish Railway and the London & North Eastern Railway), and that the ‘Austerity’ locomotives built for the War Department would pave the way for future modernisation following nationalisation.
Above: One of Hawksworth’s Modified Halls, No. 7905 “Fowey Hall” departs from Didcot with a Paddington to Carmarthen service on 26 March 1959. Ben Brooksbank.
Above: An unidentified WD ‘Austerity’ 2-8-0 at the head of a goods train at Birkenhead on 1 April 1960. Alan Murray-Rust.
The second section of my dissertation focused on the 20-year period that steam locomotives continued to be used on the railways under BR, from 1948 to 1968, delving firstly into the Standard range of locomotive produced from 1951 to 1960 as a result of a set of trials carried out across the country in 1948, and secondly looking into pre-1955 experiments with new forms of traction, primarily the use of gas-turbine locomotives, and later the comparisons between hydraulic and electric transmission for new diesel locomotives, of which the latter was favoured to replace steam traction by the end of the 1960s.
Above: An unidentified BR Class 42, only 6 years old in this picture, sits in a platform on the left at Waterloo in 1967, with a Standard 5MT sat in the platform on the right behind the coach.
My first draft was well received by my supervisor, who said that the level of detail and the use of an extensive range of primary and secondary sources were excellent, but he also told me that the whole draft was lacking in the realm of analysis and scholarly writing. I took this on board when creating my second draft, managing to balance out the amount of detail, including removing any sentences with were either too long or were of little value to the main argument, with an equal amount of analytical discussion and debate to help to support the main point of the dissertation.
In light of having successfully researched and written a dissertation, here are my top tips for how to make the most out of this experience:
- Take breaks often – writing 10,000 words, and indeed researching the topic, can be a tiring process. Personally, I found that working in small stints was far healthier for me than attempting to write an entire chapter in one or two days.
- Take things steadily – you have the whole academic year to write your dissertation, which, while it may not seem like such a long time, is plenty of time to allow you to write to the best of your abilities, and you will always be able to contact your supervisor for support.
- Choose a topic that you’re interested in – if you are struggling to choose a topic, see what you’re interested in the most, and will have the most fun researching.
- It is enlightening – I’ve found that researching and writing a dissertation, as well as responding to my supervisor’s feedback, has helped me to gain a wide range of research and analytical skills which I can apply to possible scholarly work in the future.
I would say the greatest advice of them all is, you’ve got this! A dissertation, while it may seem daunting at first, is designed so that you can have fun with it, as you have complete control over our chosen topic as well as independence in the researching and writing processes.
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