Ian was born at Christ’s Hospital (CH) in 1922, son of the school’s Clerk, G.A.T. Allan. While he did not attend CH, he became a publisher of railway books,  founding and championing the CH Railway and Model Railway Club from the 1940s onwards a CH Governor, Almoner, President, and Secretary of the Amicable Society of Old Blues he was a generous supporter of CH for 66 years. 

photo reproduced with permission Ian Allan publishing

Ian was a railway enthusiast from a young age with dreams of becoming a stationmaster and general
manager.

In 1937, aged 15 he had an accident during army training which led to him losing a leg. Now
technically disabled he couldn’t become an apprentice on the railways and fulfil his ambition. And yet, his
enthusiasm got him an office job at Waterloo in 1939, in Southern Railway’s publicity department, where he
learnt about print production. He was tasked with fielding locomotive-related enquiries from rail enthusiasts
that he saw a market for published lists of locomotive names and numbers. Southern weren’t interested so he
self-published. His first edition came out in 1942, the pocket-sized ‘ABC of Southern Locomotives’, selling
2000 copies. New editions soon followed, and within a year he’d added all major railway locomotives and
London Underground trains, trams, buses and trolleybuses. Trainspotting was born.
He left to set up his own publishing company and also founded the Locospotters’ Club. In 1946 he watched
Laurel and Hardy reopen the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway. By the 1960s his company, whose
boardroom was a Pullman carriage beside Shepperton Station, published books and magazines on all types
of transport. Still in his early 40s he was able to acquire a private 7¼in gauge railway that he relocated to
Chertsey and named Great Cockrow Railway. It was to carry children of all ages at express-like speeds
along its two miles of track – and still does, boasting a fleet 45 steam locomotives! Ever the entrepreneur he
started selling Miniature Railway Supplies, he bought hotels, manufactured masonic and military regalia, a
small chain of garages, and even an organic seed and seaweed feed company.
NOTES/LINKS
GUARDIAN: Ian Allan obituary https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/05/ian-allan