Ward on the Line

For over a decade through the 1970s and 80s ‘Rail News’, the in house staff magazine for British Railways, featured an increasingly popular series of cartoons penned under the name ‘Ward’. The Ward drawings bridged the gap between day to day life, politics, news of the day and in-house situations over a period of tremendous change on the railways – covering topics of the day such as the Red Star parcel service and High Speed Trains. Any railway worker or rail passenger of this era will recognise many of the scenes and situations depicted with gentle, but surprisingly subversive humour. ‘WARD on the line’ is an entertaining insight into the days of BR when the everyday slogan was “We’re getting there”- trouble was, no-one ever found out where ‘there’ was!