Cecil J. Allen

Cecil John Allen^[1] (1886 – 5 February 1973^[2]) was a British railway engineer and technical journalist and writer.

Work

Allen qualified as a civil engineer and joined the Great Eastern Railway in 1903, later working for the London & North Eastern Railway retiring in 1946.^[3] He inspected new rails for quality.

Allen also was the second contributor to the long-running British locomotive practice and performance article series in The Railway Magazine from 1909 to 1958,^[4] He was concurrently editor of Trains Illustrated in the 1940s, and was succeeded in that position by his son, Geoffrey Freeman Allen, in 1950.^[5]

Allen was a committed Christian and an accomplished organist, writing a chorus "The Lord has need of me". He was offered a place on the train when Mallard broke the world speed record in 1938, but declined the offer as the run was scheduled for a Sunday morning and clashed with his regular church (Christian Brethren) attendance.^{[citation needed]} He died on 5 February 1973.^[6]

Bibliography

He wrote numerous books on locomotives, and railway company histories, as well as an autobiography "Two Million Miles of Train Travel":^[4]

Locomotives

• The locomotive exchanges. Ian Allan Publishing. 1949.
• Locomotive practice and performance in the twentieth century (2nd revised impression ed.). Heffer, Cambridge. 1950.
• The Stanier Pacific of the L.M.S.. London. Ian Allan. 1950.
• The Gresley Pacifics of the LNER. Ian Allan. 1950.
• The Bulleid Pacifics of the Southern Region. Ian Allan. 1951.
• British Pacific locomotives. Ian Allan. 1962.
• British Atlantic locomotives. Ian Allan. 1968.
  • —; revised & enlarged by G. Freeman Allen (1976). British Atlantic locomotives (2nd ed.). Ian Allan.
• Cecil J. Allen; et al. (1972). The Deltics : a symposium. Ian Allan. ISBN 0-7110-0322-X.^[7]

Railway company histories

• The Great Eastern Railway. Ian Allan. 1955.
• The North Eastern Railway. Ian Allan. 1964.
• The London & North Eastern Railway. Ian Allan. 1966.

General railways

• The Iron Road: The Wonders of Railway Progress. John F. Shaw & Co. Ltd. 1925.
• Railways of To-day: Their Evolution, Equipment and Operation. Frederick Warne & Company. 1929.
• "The Coronation" and other famous L.N.E.R.trains. Nicholson & Watson. 1937.
• Titled trains of Great Britain. Ian Allan. 1946.
• Switzerland's Amazing Railways (4th revised ed.). Thomas Nelson & Sons, London. 1965.
• The Steel Highway. Longmans, Green & Co, London. 1928.
• Modern railways: their engineering, equipment and operation. Faber. 1959.
• Two million miles of rail travel: the autobiography of Cecil J. Allen. Ian Allan. 1965.
• Salute to the Great Western. Shepperton: Ian Allan. 1970. ISBN 0-7110-0181-2.

Other

• Hymns and the Christian faith. London, Pickering & Inglis. 1966.^[8]

See also

• Geoffrey Freeman Allen, his son, also a writer on railway topics, and first editor of Modern Railways

References

1. "Allen, Cecil J., 1886-1973" at Library of Congress Linked Data Service.
2. Obituary in The Times 7 February 1973
3. Mr Cecil J Allen The Railway Magazine issue 566 November 1946 page 389
4. "Cecil J. Allen". www.steamindex.com.
5. Roger Ford (16 August 1995). "Geoffrey Freeman Allen: The model railway writer". The Guardian. p. 10.
6. Cecil J Allen The Railway Magazine issue 872 March 1973 page 189
7. "The Deltics: a symposium by Cecil J. Allen and others". catalogue.nla.gov.au. National Library of Australia.
8. "Hymns and the Christian faith 1 edition, By Cecil John Allen". www.openlibrary.org.