The complete steam news magazine

Off the shelf: 2 September 2010

This month's book reviews by Heritage Railway.

From models to the real thing, you’ll find much to inspire you in our selection of good reads.

We have teamed up with Amazon UK to allow you to purchase many of them on-line at reduced prices.

If you have a title you'd like us to review, please drop the HR team a line from our contact page. 

HST: The Second Millennium

By Colin J Marsden (hardback, Ian Allan, 160pp, £24.95, ISBN 978 0 7110 3389 4).

Arguably the greatest item of classic traction not yet represented in the heritage sector, apart from a prototype power car at the National Railway Museum, is the High Speed Train. Their mid-70s introduction set new standards in main line travel and although replacements are being lined up, the fleet is still perfectly adequate for the needs of most travellers today.

HST sets are by no means dinosaurs, and in the first decade of the 21st century, advances in power unit technology have seen most of the power cars have modern lean-burn MTU engines fitted instead of the Paxman originals.

This superbly illustrated full-colour volume details the development of one of the most successful forms of British main line traction of all time since privatisation. Separate chapters look at the re-livery of the sets by the different operating companies, including that Hornby livery worn by a Cotswold Rail HST. There are also separate chapters on each operator’s power car overhaul programme, and the Hitachi/Porterbrook Hybridge Test Project, tested on the Great Central Railway in May 2007.

What followers of Class 125 units will find priceless is a complete list of all trailer stock, indicating the owners and operators in 2000 and 2010 of each. There is much here for both the seasoned and general modern traction enthusiast.

Jack The Station Cat and the August Day

By Alan Cliff (softback, Gwang Holygain, www.jackthestationcat.co.uk 28pp, £2.95, ISBN 978-1906800024).

Jack, the creation of Bala Lake Railway supporter Alan Cliff, celebrates his 10th birthday with a new adventure, one which begins when a Pullman arrives at Tail’s End station.

This is a great series at pocket-money prices for the five to eight year olds who are fascinated by railways and also adore animal stories – and want something to read while waiting for the next train.

Branch Lines of Midhurst: The Later Years

By Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith (hardback, Middleton Press, 96pp, £15.95, ISBN 978 1 906008 78 9).

This volume marks a publishing landmark, for it was 29 years ago that the two authors began working together and produced their first volume, Branch Lines to Midhurst, which quickly became a best seller. It set the stage for the familiar MP series which offers an ‘Ordnance Survey’ coverage of Britain’s railways through archive material.

This volume revisits the three lines, the LSWR route from Petersfield and the LBSCR lines from Chichester and Pulborough via Hardham Junction and looks at their later years – passenger services to Midhurst finally ceased as early as 1955, with freight lingering on until 1964. The last section, from Chicheser to Lavant, remained in use for gravel trains until March 1991, after which the trackbed became a footpath. The Lavant ‘branch’ in its latter days is well featured, while there is a separate section on the 71.4in gauge South Downs Light Railway near Pulborough.

The South Staffordshire Railway Volume One: Dudley-Walsall-Lichfield-Burton including the Black Country branches

By Bob Yate (softback, Oakwood Press, 312pp, £19.95, ISBN 978 0853617006).

This heftyish volume details the story of one of the Black Country’s greatest railways, a line which was originally conceived to bypass the bottleneck of Birmingham as a through route from the north of England to the south and South Wales, yet was overwhelmed by the volume of trade generated from its heartland and these goals were quickly forgotten.

In a region badly beset by road traffic congestion, it is surprising that the Walsall to Lichfield line was closed in stages as recently as 1984-2001, and the southern part from Dudley to Bescot in 1993, although that has been earmarked for an extension of the Midland Metro system.

While linking to the GWR’s Black Country routes, the South Staffordshire remained firmly part of the LMS and later LMR empire. Accordingly, many of the classic LMS and constituent companies’ locomotive types adorn the pages, with many rare and previously unpublished photographs, right up to BR times and the diesel era.

Rarely does Oakwood fail to produce a fascinating read, and if you have an interest in the history of the West Midlands network, this book is essential.

Steaming Through Three Counties

By Gerald Adams (hardback, Silver Link/The Nostalgia Collection, 160pp, £25, ISBN 978 1 85794 350 4).

Planned before his sudden death while on a railway holiday in Alaska in 2000, the family of the late Gerald Adams continued with his project to publish this collection of photographs from his travels in the 1950s and 60s through and around Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. He realised that he did not have sufficient pictures to fill a book just on these three counties, so he allowed those taken within 10 miles of their boundaries to be included as well.

In more than 280 black-and-white views, we have a record of one man’s exploration of the locality in the last decade of the steam age. He kept meticulous records to accompany his journeys and to accompany his pictures.

His journeys are recorded year by year, in an attractive presentation book-type layout. There are special chapters on the Lickey Incline and the Severn Bridge.

Many readers who were making similar forays at the same time will readily identify with his exploits, while the publication of a wealth of previously-unseen pictures is to be warmly welcomed.

An Illustrated History of the Atlantic Coast Express

By John Scott-Morgan (hardback, Oxford Publishing Company/Ian Allan, 128pp, £19.99, ISBN 978-0860936343).

While today’s West Somerset Railway is indeed a brilliant achievement at every twist and turn, sadly more of the great routes to the north coast of the south-west peninsula did not survive into preservation.

These included the ‘Withered Arm’ routes to Ilfracombe, Bude, and Padstow, all of which were associated with the legendary ‘Atlantic Coast Express’.

Of course the single track lines and such remote destinations did not justify a full express train, so the ‘ACE’, which was given its name in 1926, was divided at various points on the way, with a train of just one or two coaches that had started at Waterloo in a much longer rake reaching the specific destination.

The origins of the ‘ACE’ date back to the LSWR’s Ocean Mail expresses introduced in late Victorian times as a rival to the GWR’s similar services.

The ‘ACE’ was like many other named trains suspended during World War Two but restored in 1947, when Bulleid’s light Pacifics took over from the N15 King Arthurs.

Despite the fact that timings improved throughout the 1950s, holiday patterns were changing, as more people went to the seaside by car and chose to stay outside the mainstream resorts popularised by the railways. The final 'Atlantic Coast Express' ran on 5 September 1964 and by the end of January 1967 the ‘Withered Arm’ was all but dead, the last resort destination, Ilfracombe, losing its railway in 1970.

This volume which contains more than 250 black-and-white pictures of the ‘ACER’ and the stations that it passed through examines the reasons for its introduction and looks at the locomotives and rolling stock that comprised the train.

There is a detailed description of the route from Waterloo accompanied by personal reminiscences from those who remember the train.

It is an absorbing read that will be greatly welcomed not only by Southern Railway aficionados but those interested in the transport history of the West Country.

Rail Blue

By Paul Shannon (hardback, Ian Allan, 96pp, £16.99, ISBN 978 0 7110 3425 9).

For many sixties enthusiasts, the loss of steam and so many routes was bad enough, but to have the rolling stock of the entire network with its regional variations painted into a single uniform livery was the final straw.

What BR paraded as the ‘Age of the Train’ was for linesiders a dull and sombre “one size fits all” period, who either sought a bolt hole in the preservation scene or who hung up their cameras and locospotters books and stayed at home.

Yet for many, the seventies and eighties had an appeal of their own, and to those who grew up in the period, it is their nostalgia.

The book contains a splendid selection of portraits the locomotive types of the period in action at locations right across the country, from Class 03 shunters and Southern Region EMUs to West Coast Main Line electrics and Western diesel hydraulics, which were among the earlier casualties of this period.

First appearing in the form of the XP64 stock out-shopped from Derby in 1964, the first chink in the Rail blue armour came in 1977 when Stratford depot repainted two Class 47s in a special livery for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. The formation of BR’s business sector in the 1980s brought many widespread changes, but Rail Blue was still to be seen on many locomotive types right up to privatisation in the early nineties.

Today, the livery is very much in the heritage category, although the double arrow logo is immortalised at a definitive road sign to indicate directions to main line stations.

For those who have happy memories of the Rail blue era, this one is for you.

Oswestry to Whitchurch including the Wrexham branch

By Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith (hardback, Middleton Press, 96pp, £15.95, ISBN 978 1 906008 81 9).

Much attention is now being focused on Oswestry as the path for the revival of the lines north to Gobowen and south beyond Llynclys and to Llanyblodwel becomes clearer. However, this volume concerns the easternmost extremity of the Cambrian Railways, the line to Oswestry which will not be revived.

The Oswestry, Ellesmere & Whitchurch Railway linked all three places on 27 July 1864, two days after the line became part of the new Cambrian Railways. As the many pictures show, the route later became the haunt of Dukedogs, Dean goods, Manors and moguls.

The line from Oswestry to Whitchurch closed permanently on 18 January 1965.

As with most MP books, this is the only step-by-step guide to the line; archive photographs and vintage plans being used to provide a unique survey.

For more reviews, see this months issue, available to buy online!