The Class 47 diesel locomotive was a mainstay of British Rail, with 512 built in the 1960s. As such, they were a daily sight throughout the UK, working express passenger and heavy freight trains as well as more mundane local passenger and wagon-load freight all over Britain. For rail enthusiasts, 'bashing' emerged as the art of trying to ride behind as many locos as possible. Largely due to their prolific numbers, the 47s were often disliked by bashers and the 47s were often given the disparaging nickname 'Duffs', but to those who followed them, they were 'Brush', an abbreviation of Brush Type 4, which was how BR originally referred to them. However, as time passed and other classes of locomotive fell by the wayside, a far greater appreciation of them is now the norm. This book records 1982 to 1985 and many days spent trying to travel behind all 507 of the Class 47s that were still in traffic at that time. There were triumphs and disasters in the course of these travels, but you got to go the length and breadth of the country and the book contains a wide variety of colour photographs of Class 47s at work from Inverness to Penzance.

This, the first of two volumes covering the railways of Cornwall, follows the railway through the changing landscapes of the county. It takes the reader from the rich farmland west of St Germans, through the unique Glynn Valley down to Bodmin Road and the freightabundant area of Lostwithiel and Par before reaching clay country on the way to the final destination of St Austell. In addition, also explored are the branch lines, which range from the rural line to Looe, the splendour of the River Fowey on the clay line to Carne Point and the varied and ever-popular Newquay branch. Lavishly illustrated with 180 full-colour photographs, many set in glorious countryside, this book shows a variety of locomotives. Service trains dominate the images, though there are many charter trains featured, some with exotic traction for the far south west. Taken from the short days of winter with piercing low sunlight, to the long days of high summer when the upside of the Cornish mainline is lit, allowing a different perspective, the photographs capture not just the trains, but the beautiful landscapes, rivers and coastline of the Duchy.

It is now over a decade since the much-loved Great British Railway Journeys series set off on its incredible run discovering the cultural, social and engineering landscape of the United Kingdom through the prism of George Bradshaw's Handbook to rail travel. Veteran politician and ex cabinet minister Michael Portillo has since presented eleven seasons of this ever-popular show on BBC Two, covering every part of the existing train network in Britain, as well as others that were closed as a result of the Beeching Report in 1963. Across a decade of these journeys, Portillo has celebrated how every corner of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland was opened up by the railway line as a result of the Industrial Revolution, thus giving fans a unique insight into our shared past of train travel since the Victorian era. With the anniversary, this new collection will celebrate Michael's top fifty journeys from the hundreds he has covered, adding more insight and analysis to some of the greatest railway lines, stations, bridges, viaducts and tunnels the Victorians built to create the world we now live in. From Paddington Station to the Clifton Suspension Bridge; the Southend Pier line to the milk wagons departing from Blake Hall Station. An unrivalled narrative to be treasured. Greatest British Railway Journeys is both a celebratory and charming ride through our country's beloved history - all from the unique position of a train seat.

1980 to 1995 was an extraordinary time for the railways of Britain, especially the freight sector. In 1980 there was a unified, monochrome railway. Freight traffic was still abundant, with marshalling yards active and many branch lines still operating. There were hundreds of collieries. In the early 1980s, Sectorisation arrived. The freight division was separated from the passenger side and further sub-divided into different freight sectors. New locomotives were introduced, and the older types started to disappear. As the eighties progressed, the freight sector was constantly changing. The mixed freight train became a thing of the past but new traffic flows developed, particularly in containers and aggregates. The coal sector steadily declined and branch lines became disused. In the early nineties three new freight companies were created in anticipation of privatisation and then finally privatisation itself arrived, with all freight traffic being taken over by an American company. It was a period of enormous change and adaptation, and the story is told here through the images of two photographers who were keen observers of the railway scene throughout the whole of this fascinating period.

Join Thomas and his friends for a festive adventure! In this beautifully-illustrated picture book, Thomas and Percy must work against the clock to clear the snow and deliver the presents for Christmas. Can they make it in time? Thomas and Percy were really excited for Christmas Day. They were busy getting their jobs done when they found out that the presents hadn't been delivered to the villagers! Find out if our beloved engines can save Christmas in this wonderful picture book adventure. Thomas has been teaching children lessons about lift and friendship for 75 years. He ranks alongside other beloved characters such as Paddington Bear, Winnie the Pooh and Peter Rabbit as an essential part of our literary heritage.

This book tells for the first time the definitive history of this innovative 15-inch-gauge railway on the Blakesley estate in rural Northamptonshire and the Victorian transport engineering family that created it. The Bartholomew family, although almost unknown today, represented a waterway and railway engineering dynasty in Yorkshire for many decades. Prior to the railways, two Bartholomew brothers were in engineering control of virtually the entire waterway network of the West Riding. Blakesley's Squire, Charles William Bartholomew, created a miniature estate railway based deliberately not on British ideas but on state-of-the-art equipment from America and Germany, which was to act as a model for such lines in Britain for the next century. For the first time, this book attempts to outline the evolution of the American 'Cagney' miniature railway products, which he adopted, in comparison with the 'minimum gauge' ideas of Sir Arthur Heywood. The Squire was also one of the very first - in 1905 - to produce in-house a petrol locomotive, and followed this by commissioning the world's first steam-outline version - a locomotive able in 2009 to celebrate, in working order, its centenary as the world's oldest surviving internal combustion locomotive. The line survived the Squire's death in 1919, and functioned in a declining role into the 1930s, when much of it went to create a similar line in Sussex, a role newly revealed by the author's researches for this book. The family also became embroiled in one of the biggest fraud scandals and court cases of the Second World War, involving a middle-aged spinster family friend. The line's remaining equipment was also acquired by this lady, before being repossessed by the family and sold on for a somewhat nomadic existence around the North East. Amazingly, one complete locomotive, parts of another, and a carriage bogie have survived into preservation, the first and last being in the author's care.

A colorful souvenir photo book that captures the excitement of what's in store for visitors when they explore the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. Nestled in the rolling hills and lush farmland of Strasburg, in beautiful rural Lancaster County, a sprawling complex of train buildings, tracks, exhibits, and historic railroad equipment make up the museum, which has preserved and interpreted the Commonwealth’s rich railroad history for half a century. Photos and informative captions show the range of vintage railroad equipment on display, including approximately 100 locomotives and railroad cars spanning the mid-19th through late 20th centuries. Many smaller artifacts, including uniforms, tools, dining-car china, and more, round out the collection. Whether visiting for the first time or exploring it again and again, this colorful keepsake book is a perfect souvenir of your time on the tracks.

This new railway atlas by Stuart Malthouse is a complete labour of love and has taken many years to compile, showing as it does the railways of the South West and Central Southern England in astonishing detail. It shows a much wider range of railway types and their features than on most existing maps. The area covered extends from Cornwall in the South West to Hampshire in Central Southern England, as far north as Bristol and Swindon. Industrial railways are shown as well as passenger railways, and each map is accompanied by a detailed key of the public and private railway systems with dates of operation and gauges, stations and topographical features, together with detailed opening and closing dates and name changes. A chronology of the public railway routes also accompanies each map, which includes independent public railways or independent private railways with public rail involvement. The atlas is prefaced by 76 pages of detailed information about the railways and a detailed chronology.

John Beckett started to take railway photographs in 1954. In is innocence he tried at first to use a pre-war camera with a nominal shutter speed of 1/100 of a second. Four years later, after a change of cameras, the first of his pictures to be published appeared in the Railway Magazine. Since then he has supplied a steady drip, rather than a stream, of pictures to the railway press and to various authors. In 1968 he also contributed to the photographic collection published under the title of images of steam by `Fenman' where he appeared as Quintus. This book contains a selection of his collection of photographs taken in the Southern Region of British Railways in the period 1956-1968. At that time he visited areas of particular interest from the Kent coast in the East to Padstow in the West. It is not claimed to offer a complete coverage of all that happened then and there, only a collection of railway activities that caught his attention or that offered the chance of a good photograph - his reminiscences in fact.

For countless holiday-makers, a trip to the seaside resorts of the West Country used to mean travelling on the network of lines operated by the Great Western and the London and South Western railways. Before the reshaping of British Railways following the Beeching Report in 1963, a wide variety of trains operated in Devon. This book chronicles these trains during a period of dramatic change, as lines were closed down, steam traction was phased out and the thundering express and the hard-working tank disappeared. A wealth of these lost images can be found within this evocative collection of over 200 photographs. Comprising the work of both amateurs and professionals, the book also reveals glimpses of the stations, the people who worked on the lines, and of the high days and disasters. Brought together here as a collection, they pay homage to the great days of steam.

Sir Nigel Gresley's V2 Class 2-6-2 locomotive was developed during a period of great success for the London & North Eastern Railway company. The A3 Class and A4 Class Pacifics were breaking records and creating headlines across the globe when the first V2 appeared in 1936. The class was derived from the A3 and inherited many characteristics, such as power, speed and reliability. Employed on both express freight and passenger trains, the V2s soon joined the ranks of their illustrious forebears with both footplatemen and enthusiasts alike. Gresley's V2s documents the vast majority of the 184 locomotives built through evocative colour and black and white images, alongside well-researched captions. The engines appear from introduction in the mid-1930s through the war years and into ownership by British Railways. The photographs capture the V2s at work along the East Coast Main Line and elsewhere, such as the ex-Great Central Railway main line and into Scotland. Engines are seen from the lineside, in stations and on shed. A short section celebrates the only preserved V2, no. 4771 Green Arrow. Whilst the locomotive was operational for a number of years, from the late 2000s no. 4771 has been a static display at the National Railway Museum. There are currently plans to restore the engine at some point in the future, but in the meantime Gresley's V2s serves as reminder of the distinguished service the class provided to both the LNER and BR.

The aim of this series is to appeal to readers of all ages, perhaps for different reasons...For the younger reader there are wonderful pictures of trains, real trains. There will, for example, be tank engines, steam engines, electric trains and multiple units and many more varieties besides! Some will be recognised from train sets, model railways and books, while others will be seen for the first time. For the older reader the books are designed to build into a collection placing the railway in the context of key events thus providing an historical perspective of travel in times past. For those old enough to remember the years depicted, the series will, we hope, provide reminders for many of school days, time perhaps spent train-spotting, shed bashing and generally gricing! The books also make ideal theme gifts for the year of birth, marriage, retirement, starting work and other such events in life. The East Lancs Railway, with its lovingly restored stations and authentic atmosphere is at the forefront of today's thriving preservation movement.Its variety of traction and rolling stock and the ever friendly welcome of its staff make each visit a joy that has had the author and many thousands like him coming back for more.

Almost the entire network of the former Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway system closed at the end of February 1959. Some short sections of the railway were retained for passenger services until the mid-1960s and freight continued to run on a few others, one surviving into the 1980s. Only the passenger service between Cromer and Sheringham on the north Norfolk coast survives as part of the national network, which is now reached by the route of one-time competitor the Great Eastern Railway. Over sixty years after closure, interest in the M&GNJR and its predecessors remains high. The North Norfolk Railway runs its steam trains from the original station at Sheringham to a new one at Holt, a railway heritage centre has been established at Whitwell & Reepham station, and the M&GN Circle continues to research and celebrate this long-closed railway. There is much remaining evidence of the railway and sections of the trackbed provide pleasant walking and cycling routes. Utilising a range of rare and previously unpublished images, Steph Gillett offers a fascinating and nostalgic look back at this fondly remembered line.

The aim of this series is to appeal to readers of all ages, perhaps for different reasons...In this volume: We travel back to the year 1977, as ever an eventful year, that included:* The Centenary Test Match * Red Rum wins Grand National for third time * Silver Jubilee of HM The Queen * Smaller GBP1 note released * Concorde New York service begins * London Underground Heathrow extension opensFor the younger reader there are wonderful pictures of trains, real trains. There will, for example, be tank engines, steam engines, electric trains and multiple units and many more varieties besides! Some will be recognised from train sets, model railways and books, while others will be seen for the first time. For the older reader the books are designed to build into a collection placing the railway in the context of key events thus providing an historical perspective of travel in times past. For those old enough to remember the years depicted, the series will, we hope, provide reminders for many of school days, time perhaps spent train-spotting, shed bashing and generally gricing! The books also make ideal theme gifts for the year of birth, marriage, retirement, starting work and other such events in life.

From best-selling railway expert, Julian Holland, explore Britain's historical railways in All Aboard. The history of Britain's railways is a long and fascinating one, filled with stories of grand endeavours, noted figures and record-breaking feats. Julian Holland brings together a unique miscellany of intriguing tales and engaging trivia - the perfect collection for every railway enthusiast. Stories range from Bulleid's 'Chinese Laundries', trainspotting trips in Wales and Scotland and Liverpool's 'Dockers' Umbrella' to railway artists and clergy, a railway-owned airline and railways that were never built. Find out about * The Royal Scot's 11,000-mile journey in the USA and Canada * A narrow gauge island railway in the middle of the Bristol Channel * How the London & South Western Railway saved the British Empire * Mallard's unbeaten world speed record of 1938 * How to fly by Great Western Railway from Cardiff to Plymouth * The 75-mile network of narrow gauge railways on the Isle of Skye * How another 4,500 miles of railway escaped closure by Dr Beeching All Aboard is a delightful miscellany for every railway enthusiast, filled with fascinating and obscure stories, facts and figures.

Great photos, new maps, and history for 150+ railroads make The Historical Guide to North American Railroads, 3rd Edition the perfect guide for modelers, railfans, and history buffs

This updated edition features a new, larger format and a comprehensive index that makes searching for information quick and easy. Each listing includes historical information, a photo, a route map, and key statistics regarding miles of operation, locomotives, and rolling stock, and much more.