Cuthbert Hamilton-Ellis

Cuthbert (Chip) Hamilton Ellis FRSA (29 June 1909 – 29 June 1987) was an English railway writer and painter. He was an Associate of the Institution of Locomotive Engineers and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

He attended Westminster school and is reported to have briefly been at Oxford. He published the first of his 36 books, mostly on railway subjects, at the age of 21. As a knowledgeable railwayman he appeared in the 1968 TV documentary 4472: Flying Scotsman and appeared twice in the BBC TV game show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? in railway themed episodes.

He also wrote a small number of novels, such as The Engineer-Corporal (1940) and Dandy Hart (1947). Both of which were fictional, somewhat "voluble [and] long winded", and deeply based on an interest in railway operations, which was also assumed in the reader.

He had an interest in model railways: his 1962 book Model Railways 1838-1939 was said by The Times to have "led the way in charting the early history of this ... hobby". on the Isle of Wight. The National Portrait Gallery holds two photographs of him, both taken in the 1960s.

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