Clinker, Charles Ralph., 1906-1983

The Transport History Collection consists largely of two substantial bequests relating to British railway history, namely the Clinker collection and the Garnett collection. Charles Ralph Clinker was born at Rugby in 1906 and joined the Great Western Railway from school in 1923 as a passenger train runner. By the time of the outbreak of World War Two he had risen to become liaison officer for the four major railway companies with Southern Command HQ, and as such was involved in the planning and execution of the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940 and the D-Day Landings in 1944. He left railway service in 1946 and devoted the rest of his life to research and lecturing on railway history, a taste which he had acquired when seconded to assist E. T. MacDermot in the preparation of his History of the Great Western Railway (London, 1964), and which Clinker subsequently revised for publication in 1982. Clinker wrote numerous books and pamphlets on railway history; his Clinker's Register of closed passenger stations and goods depots in England, Scotland and Wales, 1830-1977 (1963, revised 1978) is widely regarded as his magnum opus. He died in 1983.

David Garnett was born near Warrington in 1909 and as young man qualified as a chartered electrical engineer, soon afterwards completing his training at the Brush works in Loughborough. He then worked at the lift manufacturer Waygood-Otis, and during World War Two served with the National Fire Service, then at the Admiralty. In the 1950s he began to build a collection of railway and other maps which at the time of his death in 1984 was one of the finest such collections in the country.

Chris Wookey was born on 2 Aug 1957 and was a student at Brunel University, 1975-1979, obtaining an honours degree in Applied Biochemistry. He was a keen railway photographer and Chairman of the Brunel University Railway Society for two years. After leaving Brunel he taught Chemistry for almost ten years at Ryden's School in Walton-on-Thames. He died in 1989.

From the guide to the Transport History Collection, c1811-1990s, (Special Collections, Brunel University Library)