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TV APPEARANCE
NOT TO BE MISSED!
Adrian will be appearing on the Channel 4 programme
Men of Iron at 9 p.m on 9th, 16th and 23rd February
2004.
Adrian Vaughan, Brunel's biographer, railway
historian, lecturer and supplier of historic railway
images. His specialities are the history of the
Great Western Railway in general and the life
of I.K Brunel in particular. He has had published
his biography of Brunel (John Murray) and has
appeared on several television programmes about
Brunel.
Biography
Adrian Vaughan was born in Reading
in January 1941. He grew up on Reading stations,
mainly the GWR one but also the Southern. He began
his experience of signal box work in 1950 or '51
spending sometime, nightly, in Woodley Bridge signal
box, in Sonning Cutting.
In 1953 his family moved to Childrey near Wantage
and he moved into honorary membership of the station
crew at Challow whose signal box had 51 levers!
At Challow he began driving on the local goods trip,
aged 12 and also fitted in a schoolboy career with
horses. He then joined the Army in 1956 because
of the many train journeys to Plymouth that this
would entail.
In 1960 he re-joined Challow station crew - for
wages to work as a signalman, and carried out thousands
of miles on the footplate as an amateur fireman.
When Western Region lost its tsea, he made almost
weekly visits to the Festiniog Railway for firing
work and 'discovered' for himself the Oxenholme
- Shap and the Ribblehead to Air Gill lines. He
operated the signal boxes and rode on the engines
until 1968.
In 1971 he published his first book, "Great
Western Portrait' , married Susan in 1972 and turned
out three more books 'Kenning Collection', 'GWR
Signalling' and 'GWR Architecture' before the onset
of yet more automated signalling forced him to escape
to Ireland in 1975.
In Ireland he and Susan built a house and explored
the signalling from Tuam to Cobh and from Galway
to Portarlington. More books - and two children
-followed and in 1982 they came back to England
to be closer to the sources of research. They landed
in East Anglia, a province entirely unknown to them
with a railway history a closed book. It was also
relatively full of mechanical signalling. Adrian
set out to photograph the signalling from Ipswich
to Yarmouth, Lowestoft to Leicester, Norwich to
Hull and to study the history of Norfolk railways
and the M&GNJt. in particular. Meanwhile their
third daughter was born and he wrote more books,
including the first really objective biography of
I.K Brunel, lectured at York and Cambridge Universities,
scripted and presented a documentary on Swindon
railway works, appeared in other documentaries on
Brunel and became a Tutor for the Workers Educational
Association in 1991.
In total he has produced about 24 titles, only one
of which, a biography of Samuel Morton Peto, has
failed to become published. To the present he continues
his research and writing on the railway history
that interests him.
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