'Tit Bits' put him on the rails
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WHEN GEORGE NEWNES, who was created a baronet in 1896, founded the magazine, Tit Bits, and a fortune in 1881, he can have had no idea that nine years later he would become a pioneer of mechanical transport and that one day his publishing company would own Commercial Motor.
He built a house in Lynton, North Devon, and Exmoor Review records that, partly because his hatred of the cruelty to the ponies and donkeys that carried goods and people up and down the punishing hill from Lynmouth to Lynton, he financed the construction of a 900ft electric cliff railway on a gradient of 1 in 13/4 between the two villages. It opened on Easter Monday, 1890.
Newnes' enthusiasm and cash went into the famous narrow gauge railway from Barnstaple to Lynton. Another pioneer enterprise was a motorbus route over some 12 hilly, winding miles from Ilfracombe to Blackmoor Gate. A keen motorist, Sir George owned a substantial share in the French Darracq company.
Temple Press, founder of Commercial Motor, became a subsidiary of the Newnes publishing group soon after the 1939-45 war. IPC, the present owner, took over Newnes some 21 years ago.