WILLIAM A. WILLOX
Lived in Oxted
1891 – 1970
EDITOR OF THE RAILWAY MAGAZINE
Est. in 1897 the monthly magazine continues today. William, a civil
engineer of railways like his father, was its editor from 1932-42
Launched in 1897 by two former railwaymen suspecting a market amongst
fellow rail enthusiasts. The Railway Magazine was well illustrated on good
paper. The first editor George Nokes grew the circulation to 25,000, until
1910 when he fell out with the founders and started a rival magazine of his
own. Both were bought by the Railway Gazette and then amalgamated into
The Railway Magazine.
Articles covering specific locomotives and carriages to major railway lines, junctions, tramways and
light railways and how they funtion, to unique railway uses such as Brookwood cemetery railway,
milk trains and Queen Victoria’s funeral. New technologies such as electrification and signalling,
and reminiscences about steam and lost lines.
William Willox was its third editor from 1932-42. Born in Scotland in 1892 to Elizabeth and
William, “a popular railway maker” who was chief engineer of the Metropolitan line fror example,
and whose work took him and his family abroad for periods of time since two of their daughters
were born in the Philippines. By 1901 the family were in Croydon, in 1911 they were in Dorset,
where William Jnr was a civil engineering student. In 1921 William was in a guest house on Station
Road in Oxted where he was based as a civil engineer for the LB&SC railway. Still in Oxted when
he took on editorship of the magazine in 1932, in 1939 he was living with the Watsons, an architect
and his wife on West Hill.
NOTES/LINKS
https://www.railwaymagazine.co.u
