Railton Eight Sports

The Railton marque was the result of collaboration between British car constructor Noel Macklin and the Hudson Motor Company of the USA. Macklin’s Fairmile Engineering Company manufactured the Invicta car at their works at Cobham, Surrey, a short distance from the Brooklands race track, but in 1933 Macklin sold Invicta and looked for another automotive project.

With its four-litre, straight-eight, engine the Hudson Terraplane had been well accepted in Britain the previous year, and so Macklin decided to take the chassis and engine, and add a lightweight body by coachbuilder John Charles Ranalah. The result was the Railton-Terraplane, a reasonably priced and powerful (100bhp) two-seat tourer that offered exceptional performance for the era. A saloon version followed.

In 1935, with the demise of the Terraplane model, Macklin adopted the Hudson Eight chassis and its larger (4168cc) engine of 113bhp for his new Railton Eight, which was available with a variety of sports and (primarily) saloon bodies from various coachbuilders, such as Carbodies and Coachcraft, as well as Ranalah.

Macklin introduced two new cars in 1937, the Railton Six with Hudson six-cylinder engine, and the much smaller 10hp which was based on the Standard Flying Nine chassis. In 1939, after around 1400 Eights had been made, the company was sold to Hudson who moved manufacturing to their Brentford, London works, but production stopped on the outbreak of war.

A few Railtons were made post-1945 on old chassis, but the introduction of a totally new design that proved too expensive to sell meant the company finally ceased production in 1950.

But why Railton? The name for Macklin’s car was that of Cheshire born designer and engineer Reid Railton who had been responsible for record breaking cars for John Cobb and Malcolm Campbell and was technical director of the engineering company Thomson and Taylor at Brooklands. It is not fully known how much input Reid had to the Macklin project (perhaps he assisted with the development of the Hudson chassis?) but we do know he took a royalty for each car made.

About this vehicle

Following an approach from Noel Macklin in 1933, Richard Shuttleworth bought a one-third share in Fairmile Engineering and was appointed chairman.

The Collection’s Railton sports was acquired – at discount - by Richard in 1934 as a bare engine and chassis and reputedly using for ‘farming duties’ on the Shuttleworth estate before, in 1939, he started to build it as a two-seater open sports car. After his death in 1940 his mother, Dorothy Shuttleworth, had the work completed by Blanchflowers, of Kettering.

The car was first registered as JNM700 with Bedford Council in 1950 and was then sold in 1952, passing through several Railton Club owners before, in 1975, being purchased at a Beaulieu auction by Richard Shuttleworth’s niece, then Princess Charlotte Hohenlohe von Langenberg, who had the car repainted in ‘Shuttleworth blue’ and exhibited in her husband`s motor museum in the Schloss Langenberg in Germany. The car was returned to Old Warden by Princess Charlotte in late 1998.