IT SEEMS hard to believe it is now half a century since steam operations ceased on British Railway's Southern Region. This lavishly produced limited edition photographic album (1000 copies) by Strathwood Publishing features a wealth of excellent colour images depicting the Southern Region from the late 1940s through to the end of SR steam. It is also a real treat to see such good-quality material reproduced in a large A4+-sized landscape format volume.The author Kevin Derrick has assembled a fascinating variety of images to reflect the varied locomotive classes and main areas of Southern Region where they operated. In addition to images by named photographers, extensive use has been made of the archives of Colour Rail, Rail Photoprints and the Strathwood Library Collection. The volume has an introduction by the author's friend Roger Carrell, which recounts a typical small-hours, night-time journey in the late autumn of 1963. As a fireman he worked the 2.40am Basingstoke-Feltham Yard Goods with BR 5MT 73082 and the return parcels duty via Clapham Junction with BR 9F 92231 - this is a revealing account of workaday steam-age railway operations.
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