100 up for Freightmaster

January 2021 sees the very last printed edition of the popular Freightmaster publication after 25 years and 100 editions. Publisher and managing editor Martin Buck describes how a chance meeting led to the enthusiast’s guide to rail freight services, and what now lies in store for the future of the product.

- Martin Buck

FREIGHTMASTER was the brainchild of Mark Rawlinson, who was bornin the seaside town of Morecambe and initially worked in the booking office at Lancaster railway station, where his interest in timetables was ignited.

He then moved close to Hest Bank with his garden backing onto the West Coast Main Line where it skirts Morecambe Bay. At the time, he was producing videos for a retail customer, more of a hobby than anything resembling a business. In fact, the nearest thing to resembling Freightmaster was a simple timetable he compiled (out of pure interest) of the passing times of freight traffic on this stretch of the WCML between Carnforth and Preston.

A friend was impressed with the detail and asked Mark if he could produce a few more timetable locations on a request basis. As a result, Mark cobbled together a small number of locations and printed them off in a card jacket – a very simple affair, home produced, with no idea of where this basic idea would lead.

FROM SMALL ACORNS

I had been away from the railway scene for about five years when, by chance, I happened to be at Milford Junction observing a constant stream of Class 56s working Merry-Go-Round coal trains between Gascoigne Wood Mine and the Aire Valley power stations.

As the day panned out, however, it was not the trains that fascinated me but a small booklet to which other enthusiasts were constantly referring. Entitled Freightmaster, this little booklet would ultimately change the working life for Mark and myself for the next 25 years; I was, quite simply, in the right place, at the right time.