L. T. C. Rolt
Lionel Thomas Caswell Rolt (usually abbreviated to Tom Rolt or L.T.C. Rolt) (1910–1974) was a prolific English writer and the biographer of major civil engineering figures including Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Thomas Telford. He is also regarded as one of the pioneers of the leisure cruising industry on Britain's inland waterways, and as an enthusiast for both vintage cars and railways.
Biography
Born in Chester, Rolt studied at Cheltenham College and then trained as a mechanical engineer, before taking up an engineering post at the Kerr Stuart locomotive works in Stoke-on-Trent.
Rolt produced many works about subjects which had not previously been considered the stuff of literature: civil engineering, canals, railways, etc. His first book, Narrow Boat, was an account of his and his first wife Angela's honeymoon journey around the canal system of the English midlands aboard a 70ft long wooden narrowboat named 'Cressy'.
He spent 12 years living afloat. He was a co-founder and the first honorary secretary of the Inland Waterways Association. A bridge on the Oxford Canal in Banbury bears his name, as does a centre at the boat museum at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire.
He was also a founder member of the Vintage Sports Car Club.
During the early 1950s, Rolt was general manager of the Talyllyn Railway — he founded the Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society, the world's first preserved railway — near Tywyn in mid-Wales, where a locomotive 'Tom Rolt' was later (1991) named in his memory. His book Railway Adventure recalls this period.
As a writer on the history of engineering and technology, he was vice-president of the Newcomen Society, a member of the Science Museum Advisory Council, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Rolt was the subject of a biography (Tom Rolt and the Cressy Years) by Ian Mackersey in 1985, and a bibliography by Ian Rogerson in 1994.
Bibliography
Rolt's work (arranged by topic) included:
Waterways
- Narrow boat (1944)
- Green and silver (1949)
- The inland waterways of England (1950)
- The Thames from mouth to source (1951)
- From sea to sea: the Canal du Midi (1973)
Railways
- Lines of character (1952)
- Railway adventure (1953)
- Red for danger (1955)
- Patrick Stirling's locomotives (1964)
- The making of a railway (1971)
Motoring
- Horseless carriage: the motor car in England (1950)
Industrial History
From the period of 1958 onwards, Rolt was commissioned by many engineering companies to document their history. Many of these are unpublished internal documents; only the published works are listed here.
- The Dowty story (part I 1962, part II 1973)
- A Hunslet hundred: one hundred years of locomotive building by the Hunslet Engine Company (1964)
- Tools for the job: a history of machine tools (1965)
- The Mechanicals: progress of a profession (1967)
- Thomas Newcomen: The prehistory of the steam engine (1968)
- Waterloo Ironworks: a history of Taskers of Andover, 1809–1968 (1969)
- Victorian engineering (1970)
- The potters' field: a history of the South Devon ball clay industry (1974)
Biography
- Isambard Kingdom Brunel: a biography (1957)
- Thomas Telford (1958)
- The Cornish giant: the story of Richard Trevithick, father of the steam locomotive (1960)
- George and Robert Stephenson: the railway revolution (1960)
- Great Engineers (1962)
- James Watt (1962)
Other works
- High horse riderless (1947)
- Worcestershire (1949)
- The clouded mirror (1955)
- Landscape with Machines (1971 — the first part of his autobiography)
- Landscape with Canals (1977 — the second part of his autobiography)
- Landscape with Figures (1992 — the retitled third part of his autobiography)
The Landscape Trilogy (2001) combines all three parts of his autobiography in one volume.
He also wrote ghost stories and two collections of his work were published:
References
- Rogerson, Ian (1994). L.T.C. Rolt: a bibliography. M & M Baldwin. ISBN 0-947712-04-6.