'Pioneer' on Volk’s Brighton & Rottingdean Seashore Electric Railway. Only a few days after it opened in November 1896, the railway was put out of action by a severe storm. It reopened in July 1897 and ran without major incident until damage to the trackbed meant it couldn’t operate during the summer of 1900. Then in 1901, Brighton Corporation exercised its right to remove some of the track to enable sea defences to be built, and the project came to an end. The vehicle was named ‘Pioneer’ but popularly known as ‘daddy long-legs’.


Photo: Rail Archive Stephenson