The cover of the original 1944 booklet - 15KB

JUNCTION 'X'
BY
CECIL McGIVERN

THE SCRIPT OF AN OUTSTANDING
B.B.C. FEATURE BROADCAST



A dramatisation of events that occurred at a vital
crossroads on the path to victory on a certain day
in 1944 between the hours of 10 a.m. and 10 p.m.


A broadcast showing how British Railways are
successfully carrying out their vital and gigantic
war task in conditions of unparalleled difficulty.

Written and Produced by

CECIL McGIVERN

with the full co-operation of the L.M.S., L.N.E., G.W., and Southern Railways

 

THE CAST
Narrator  . .   . .   . .   . .   . .   . .
. .   . .   . .   . .   . . REGINALD TATE
The Listener  . .   . .   . .   . .   . .
. .   . .   . .   . .   . . EDGAR NORFOLK
Divisional Superintendent  . .   . .
. .   . .   . .   . . RICHARD WILLIAMS
Gordon  . .   . .   . .   . .   . .   . .   . .
. .   . .   . .   . . JAMES R. GREGSON
Stationmaster  . .   . .   . .   . .   . .
. .   . .   . .   . .   . .   . . TOM JONES
Mr. X  . .   . .   . .   . .   . .   . .   . .
. .   . .   . .   . . LAIDMAN BROWNE
War Office  . .   . .   . .   . .   . .   . .
. .   . .   . .   . .   . . CYRIL GARDNER
Soldier's Wife  . .   . .   . .   . .   . .
. .   . .   . .   . .   . . MOLLY RANKIN

ROY EMERTON, PHILIP WADE, ERNEST SEFTON, FOSTER CARLIN, DUNCAN McINTYRE,
PHILIP CUNNINGHAM, BASIL JONES, E.A. NADEN, GLADYS SPENCER, FREDA FALCONER

 

Published through the courtesy of the B.B.C.

 

The author dedicates this book to
The Railwaymen of Great Britain--
Front Line Fighters

 

 

All that you have read above that line, and all that you will read if you follow the links below, is the text of a booklet published (at a price of one shilling) by the War Office in June 1944. The booklet was itself a transcript of a radio programme broadcast that year by the British Broadcasting Corporation - the B.B.C. It was intended to inform its listeners about the importance of the railways in the war effort, and to explain to them why conditions for passengers were so difficult. It remains a wonderful piece of "talk radio" and a marvellous evocation of a different era - as older railwaymen would say nowadays, "that was when the railway was a railway!"

Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Radio Critic of The Sunday Times, was quoted at the end of the booklet:

".................."Junction X", a beautiful piece of radio with the grasp and emotional power of a good film documentary. I wish I had more space to dwell on the facilities of this picture of British railways under the stress of war; the complicated, interlocking organisation, the superficial 'flap', the fundamental calm. Little as I know about railways, "Junction X" rings true; furthermore, it is grand entertainment and first-rate propaganda for the man on the platform. Such a feature deserves not one, but half a dozen repetitions."

And it most assuredly deserves preservation and propagation to a new audience at the start of the 21st century. I regret that I have not been able to establish who has any copyright to this material. If anyone can help me find out, I would be glad if they would mail me.

The booklet itself extends to 60 pages, each 123mm x 185mm (slightly less than A5), with a handful of black and white photographs. This may be too much to download at once so I have broken it up into six "scenes", each on a different page. Scans of the original black and white photographs are included in approximately the places they occur in the printed book. For the full impact, you should really read the scenes in the order that they were broadcast, and so the links from this page take you only to:

the Foreword by Lord Leathers, Minister of War Transport (3KB)
the Preface by the writer and producer, Cecil McGivern (7KB)
or straight to the first "scene" of the broadcast. (13KB)

If you prefer, you can download the whole lot in one go, without the photographs - but it adds up to some 92 kilobytes.

It is not my usual custom to specify font faces and sizes in hypertext documents, but I have done so here in an attempt to reproduce the style of the original booklet. The HTML tags on this site have been set to show all the original text in a serif face, black on a white background, just as they appear in the original booklet. The only colour used was red, and only on the cover, so I have used this (with a similar sans serif face) for the titles to each page. Where text appears in blue, as this paragraph should do, it shows that they are my own words.

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This site is maintained by Neil Worthington. Please send any comments or corrections to me at jx@neilworthington.com. This page was last updated on 24th October 2004.