EAR&H

“It is not uncommon for a country to create a railway, but it is uncommon for a railway to create a country.”

Includes Colour Supplement

Volume 2_1
February 1955

Volume 2_2
April 1955

Volume 2_3
June 1955

Volume 2_4
August 1955

Volume 2_5
October 1955

Volume 2_6
December 1955

Volume 2_7
February 1956

Volume 2_8
April 1956

Volume 2_9
June 1956

Volume 2_10
August 1956

Volume 2_11
October 1956

Volume 2_12
December 1956
Includes Colour Supplement

Volume 3_1
February 1957

Volume 3_2
April 1957

Volume 3_3
June 1957

Volume 3_4
August 1957

Volume 3_5
October 1957

Volume 3_6
December 1957

Volume 3_7
February 1958

Volume 3_8
April 1958

Volume 3_9
June 1958

Volume 3_10
August 1958

Volume 3_11
October 1958

Volume 3_12
December 1958
includes 2 Colour pages

Volume 4_1
February 1959

Volume 4_2
April 1959

Volume 4_3
June 1959

Volume 4_4
August 1959

Volume 4_5
October 1959

Volume 4_6
December 1959

Volume 4_7
February 1960

Volume 4_8
April 1960

Volume 4_9
June 1960

Volume 4_10
August 1960

Volume 4_11
October 1960

Volume 4_12
December 1960

Volume 5_1
February 1961

Volume 5_2
April 1961

Volume 5_3

MISSING

If you have this copy please let me know so that we can scan it and complete the series

Volume 5_4
August 1961

Volume 5_5

MISSING

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Volume 5_6
December 1961
Tanganyika Independence
Special Issue

Volume 5_7
February 1962

Volume 5_8
April 1962

Volume 5_9

MISSING

If you have this copy please let me know so that we can scan it and complete the series

Volume 5_10
August 1962

Volume 5_11
October 1962
Uganda Independence
Special Issue

Volume 5_12
December 1962

Volume 6_1
February 1963

Volume 6_2
April 1963

Volume 6_3
June 1963

Volume 6_4
August 1963

Volume 6_5
October 1963

Volume 6_6
December 1963
Kenya Independence
Special Issue

Volume 6_7
February 1964

Volume 6_8
April 1964

Volume 6_9
June 1964

Volume 6_10
August 1964

Volume 6_11
October 1964

Volume 6_12
December 1964

Volume 7_1
February 1965

Volume 7_2
April 1965

Volume 7_3
June 1965

Volume 7_4
August 1965

Volume 7_5
October 1965

Volume 7_6
December 1965

Volume 7_7
February 1966

Volume 7_8
April 1966

Volume 7_9

MISSING

If you have this copy please let me know so that we can scan it and complete the series

Volume 7_10
1966

Volume 7_11

MISSING

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Volume 7_12

MISSING

If you have this copy please let me know so that we can scan it and complete the series

92 magazines to this point if all were posted.

Was this the last Spear Magazine published?

Red denotes that a copy is required to scan. If you have this copy please let me know.

Contact craddock at west dot net

Thanks to the late Nigel Butterfield and to Alan T for providing many of the missing copies

As at 17 October 2021

Thanks to Nigel Butterfield and Alan Thompson for many of the magazines, and to Jace Barbour for the scanning, and also to the Blackburn family for providing some of the missing pages.

Posted by Anthony J. Craddock

Graduate of Southern Highlands School, Sao Hill, Nr. Iringa, Tanganyika. 1950-1954, which he attended as a boarder with his sister, who is currently resident in Perth, West Australia.

Now living in Santa Barbara, California, USA. Born Woking, UK, 1942. Both father and grandfather worked for the East African government. After one year in Mufindi working for the Tanganyika Tea Company, Dr. Craddock was for many years Chief Surgeon for the Colonial Medical Service in Tabora, Central Province, eventually moving to Kano, Nigeria to finish his career with the (then) Colonial Medical Service. Dr.Craddock and my younger brother drove across Africa from Tabora in a Peugeot 203 to the new posting. George Craddock (grandfather) was taxation adviser to the East African High Commission in Nairobi post World War II, having been seconded from the U.K. Civil Service after a similar stint in Egypt.

“My father and I originally flew out BOAC in the summer of 1950 on the once a week flying boat service from Southampton Waters to Nairobi on their Short Solent flying boat. Two of the four engines packed up over France, so we did a forced landing in the harbor at Marseilles, so, as the plane was unpressurized and flew low and slow, I got to be both airsick over France, and seasick while bobbing around in the waters off Marseilles, though no awards from the BOAC Junior Jet Club for this achievement! We subsequently limped on to Augusta, Sicily, our first scheduled stop, where we had a week in a hotel at BOAC's expense waiting for the next weekly service to bring us out some new engine parts. Then on to Alexandria, Khartoum, Kampala or Kisumu (I think) and Nairobi (Lake Naivaisha). I returned to the UK and boarding school on the ss “Rhodesia Castle” in 1954.

Having been brought up train-spotting at Paddington Station in London with my father while he was completing his medical qualifications at St. Mary's Hospital, moving to Tabora, the major rail junction, from Mufindi was serendipitous, as we only lived about a mile from the station (on Boma Road), an easy bike ride away.

Most of my school holidays I would spend hanging out at the station or the shed. I used to be fascinated by EAR&H, knew all the staff, drivers, firemen etc. and would regularly hitch-hike from one end of Tanganyika to the other on the goods trains, sleeping in the caboose. The Indian drivers would let me drive the trains (I was only aged 11 and 12) and I actually became very proficient at it, being able to take a heavy goods train out of a station without spinning the driving wheels and without the use of the sandbox, a feat which seemed to elude some of the “professional” drivers! Of course, I couldn't go up in the cab on the high profile passenger trains as it was necessary to observe the safety regulations with all those eyes watching.

One of my treasured memories is bringing a 700 Ton Goods train from Tabora down the Saranda Bank (1 in 30 grade) near Dodoma at night, and every time I applied the brakes, looking back from the cab of the 40 Ton 26 class loco and watching all the sparks fly off the brake shoes on all the wagons of the train which snaked behind us round the curve. (Technical note: on the Central line in Tanganyika we had vacuum brakes then, not the Westinghouse brakes used on the Kenya locomotives).

It was also good practice to keep checking the train behind to make sure that nothing had caught on fire during the hard braking (like the grease soaked cotton waste stuffing in an axle box)—plus of course to make sure that the wagons were all still connected!

Back in my day, the Central line engines were all wood burning (other than our diesel shunter 8101 with the albino driver at Tabora), so kuni (firewood) stops were quite frequent, with the kuni stacked up by the track in advance of our arrival ready to be loaded into the tender. I actually also became quite proficient as a fireman, and was quite adept at launching the logs into the bottom of the firebox in such a way that the whole bottom of the firebox under the boiler was fired by an evenly distributed blaze. Jack Summers Neil, a young white fireman from the UK (the only white fireman on the Central Line) taught me the tricks. A former sparring partner of the UK World Middleweight Champion boxer Randolph Turpin, he died young after cramping up swimming to retrieve a bird that he had shot.

Conversion to oil firing was in progress when I departed East Africa in mid-1954 after passing my Common Entrance Examination, which condemned me to six further years of boarding school in the U.K.