The LNER Encyclopedia

Hello, just joined.
I'm a 67 year old steam enthusiast, who sadly has lost what few b&w photographs I took in the 1950's and 60's, I was born in Leicester and my parents house backed onto the Great Central Railway, across a short field on the southern edge of the city. I travelled around and on a fair bit of the LNER during the late 50's early 60's when steam was still in use.
I found the site whilst doing a couple of bits of research, one into an area we used to go camping at High Dyke, at the northern end of the Stoke tunnel. I am also trying to follow up on a bit of old family history, I was told by a departed uncle that our family are related to the loco designers of the LNER, Wilson Worsdell and (I think)T.W. Worsdell, the name was my mothers maiden name.

Ay up!

Welcome to the crowd!!!

Welcome!

The Worsdells were brothers -so if you were related to one then you would be to the other, albeit a bit more distantly.
They were Quakers, if that helps with the family tree tracing?

Thanks for the welcome, I now live in Scotland, again close to a railway line, this time it's the East Coast mainline between Dundee and Aberdeen. We used to get an annual visit from the round Great Britain tour, but it seems the train is now diverted via Perth in both directions north, which is a shame.

Welcome to the forum. Our autocars were sometimes referred to as 'Mr Worsdell's self-propelled coaches', as they were constructed under his tenure, so another family connection there?

Thanks for that, one of my uncles is following the "traditional method of trying to do the family tree", I thought I'd try to find out more about the railway connection. All the male line has pretty much been involved with engineering, certainly going back to the Victorian era, sadly the elder members of the family have now passed on apart from one uncle and me and my younger brothers.

Thanks for the further information, I did a bit of googling last night(seems they can't touch you for it lol) and found out about a book "The Worsdells Quaker Engineering Dynasty" I shall try my local library to see if they can locate a copy.

The Worsdells book arrived from Amazon, not available in our libraries up here, quick squint confirms I am indeed a relative, talking to my Uncle, he actually communicated one of their sons in the 1950's. Some fascinating family, well travelled and involved with railways all over the world.