The complete steam news magazine

Off the shelf: 10 June 2010

This month's book reviews by Heritage Railway

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. 

Branch Lines East of Norwich: The Wherry Lines

By Richard Adderson and Graham Kenworthy
(hardback,Middleton Press, 96pp, £15.95, ISBN 978 1 906008 69 7)

The publisher’s great stage-by-stage historical survey of the network now expands into the furthermost corner of Norfolk. Included in this volume are the lines from Norwich to Yarmouth via Reedham, Lowestfoft to Reedham, Brandall to Yarmouth via Acle and the Yarmouth Tramway.

Following the standard format, every station, industrial siding is covered, often with hard-to-find and previously unpublished pictures. Thus we have the internal system at the Anglo-Netherlands Sugar Beet Corporation’s Cantley plant, which in 1912 became Britain’s first sugar beet factory. This is one of many fascinating delights to be discovered. As usual, if you want to research any line in detail, check out the MP volume first and save yourself years of spadework.

 

British Railways - PAST AND PRESENT 61: BIRMINGHAM

By Geoff Dowling and John Whitehouse
(softback, Past & Present Publishing Ltd/The Nostalgia collection, 144pp, £17.99, ISBN 1 978 1 85895 260 4).

What is particularly fascinating about this latest volume in the long-running and popular series which compares views of the steam or early diesel era with the same locations today, is that is has avoided the obvious. Rather than concentrate on the city’s two main termini, there are many views of suburban stations, some of which are no longer with us, and a full potted history.

It is an excellent place to start for those who wish to delvemore thoroughly into Birmingham’s transport past in a ‘dip in and browse’ style. The routes featured include the routes to Smethwick, Handsworth, Perry Barr, Longbridge to Halesowen, the Cross City line, theMidland Railway line to Whitacre Junction and the Tyseley to Shirley route.

 

The Making of The Railway Children

By Jim Shipley
(softback, Keighley &Worth Valley Railway, The Station,Haworth, Keighley,West Yorkshire BD22 8NJ, 48pp, £3.95, ISBN 978 0 9024 38 33 0).

Everything you ever needed to known about the making of the EMI big screen children’s classic – and how in turn it made the KWVR – is contained in this superb booklet.

Filled with archive photographs from the location filming, it recounts the story from the viewpoint of the railway’s volunteers, many who doubled up as extras.

It has been produced specially for the 40th anniversary of the film, which has just been re-released on DVD.

 

The Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway

By Malcolm Ranieri
(hardback,Halsgrove Publishing, 144pp, £14.99, ISBN 978 1 84114 813 7)

Sit back and savour 144 pages of some of the best collections of heritage railway photographs you will ever see. Malcolm Ranieri, for long one of Britain’s top linesiders, and a Heritage Railway contributor, has produced this stunning tribute to his local line, selecting his best views from over a decade, in all seasons.

Most of the locomotives that have been based on or visited this ever-improving railway – Ravingham Hall, City of Truro, Black Prince, Foxcote Manor, Green Arrow and many, many more have been captured at their finest hour. Every photograph begins at inspirational and goes on from there, and in view of the appropriate dominance of Swindon types, this is surely one of the ‘must buy’ books of GWR's 175 years.

 

The Cars of Pullman

by Joe Welsh, Bill Howes and Kevin J Holland

(hardback, 176pp, £25, MBI Publishing, ISBN 978 0 7603 3587 1)

The Pullman Company’s fleet of more than 8000 cars carried up to 39 million passengers per year, nearly a third of the population of the United States at the time.

With mainly colour illustrations, not only of the cars themselves, but classic American trains, such as a New York Central Hudson on the ‘20th Century Liimited, and Pennsylvania Railroad K4s Pacific on the ‘Broadway Limited, not to mention the passengers themselves, this is a glimpse of American Society before the aeroplane and the automobile became the preferred modes of travel. It was not that long ago, but times have indeed changed, the three authors, all experts in the field, have assembled a detailed study of not just the coaches themselves, but a whole way of life.