Do you remember collecting birds' eggs and cigarette cards? Or the first appearances of wrapped sweets like Mars and Milky Way? The 1930s was a time of great progress, as engines took over from horses, and electric light from gas and oil. In the background, change was everywhere, with the Mallard speed record, the abdication of the King, and the increasing spectre of the impending Second World War. It was a time of home cooking, and day-trip holidays, when families kept chickens and children played with bows and arrows. This delightfully nostalgic book will take you right back to a different age, recalling what life was like for those growing up in the 1930s.
The Branch Lines of Buckinghamshire gives the reader a marvellous wide-ranging view of over 100 years of rail travel in this area of Britain during an era of rapid change. The county's branch lines show a remarkable diversity – they include the Great Western Railway, the Great Central Railway, the London & North Western Railway and the Metropolitan Railway, while the Midland Railway just entered the northernmost tip of the county. Branches varied in character from the sleepy rural Brill line, closed in 1935, to the highly efficient Chesham branch which is now electrified. Colin Maggs offers a thoroughly researched account of Buckinghamshire's main railway routes and he looks at, and illustrates, each branch line in detail. The book is fascinating reading for railway enthusiasts, modellers and local historians. Buckinghamshire has two former main lines, now relegated to branch status, while the former Bourne End to Marlow branch, once a sub-branch from the High Wycombe to Maidenhead line, can now only be reached from Maidenhead. There are two freight-only branches, both serving the Recycling Group's Waste Terminal at Calvert, and there is a movement afoot to reopen the Bicester Town to Bletchley line. This lively and carefully researched account provides a wide-ranging view of over a century's travel on the county's railways. The Branch Lines of Buckinghamshire is comprehensively illustrated with over 150 photographs and will appeal strongly to enthusiasts and modellers alike.
Who won in a race between a train and a pigeon? How can you warn bats to leave a railway tunnel? Before the era of the car, which railway company carried the most prisoners? Colin G. Maggs has collected all of these answers – and more! – in Amazing and Curious Railway Tales, a compendium of stories, curiosities and little-known facts about Britain's railways.
The story of the Birmingham to Gloucester line really began when the London & Birmingham Railway, with Robert Stephenson as its engineer, opened to the capital of the Midlands in 1838. The following year, another future section of the Midland Railway was authorised, this being the Birmingham & Gloucester Railway. Gloucester was already approached from the south by the Bristol & Gloucester Railway, this having developed from the Bristol & Gloucestershire Railway, a horse-worked coal tramway connecting mines at Coalpit Heath with Bristol. The Birmingham & Gloucester was taken over by the Midland Railway in 1845, the line becoming part of the London Midland & Scottish Railway in 1923 and British Railways in 1948. Colin G. Maggs, one of the country's leading railway historians, tells the full story of this line right from its inception up to the present day. As well as detailing its history, he describes the line, its locomotives, rolling stock and train services. Well-known features of the line, including the famous Lickey Incline, are also covered in this wide-ranging book, featuring over 100 illustrations.
A new edition of a classic text. Although diesel traction had been introduced to the county of Somerset as early as 1958 it was not until 1966, and the closure of the Somerset and Dorset Railway, that steam finally disappeared from the county. Here Colin Maggs has brought together a superb collection of photographs which retell the story of those last days of steam in the area. Depicted in this volume is the unusually wide variety of locomotive power which was to be seen throughout Bristol and Somerset during this era. Alongside the standard GWR and BR classes, are the many MR and LMS types which worked down as far as Bristol, some even making their way through Somerset. Here Southern and, very occasionally, Eastern Region engines were to be found, while the Somerset and Dorset line was the home of the unique class of 7F 2-8-0s. Accompanied by the author's informative captions these evocative pictures, often with a backdrop of splendid scenery, recapture the atmosphere of the end of the age of steam in Bristol and Somerset.
Colin Maggs tells the story of railways in Somerset, from their earliest days to the present, in this volume which includes photographs from the author's own collection.
The Reverend Alan Newman is a unique railway enthusiast. Starting with a love for the GWR, as a young lad he moved to a house with an ex-MR line at the bottom of his garden, so changed his allegiance. Unlike most lads, he delighted in aged locomotives with character, rather than the latest express engines.
It was a railway just waiting to be made. The capital, London, was in the east; Bristol, second city in the land, 110 miles to the west or a sea journey of 672 miles. By the late 1820s, technology had improved to a state where the very latest form of transport, a steam railway, could make a far superior link than travel by canal, sea or road. This in-depth study of the Bristol to Bath line by the master of West Country railway history, Colin G. Maggs, covers the line's conception, construction, opening and its dramatic effect on the district from the nineteenth century to the present day. It illustrates many aspects of the railway: the first English Pacific locomotive, GWR diesel railcars, gas-turbine locomotives and the pioneer HST, as well as damage and uses during the Second World War and the many accidents that occurred, including one that could have proven fatal to the author. The GWR Bristol to Bath Line is illustrated with maps and over 200 photographs showing every aspect of the line, which passes through sylvan scenes and industrial ugliness. This book also contains appendices giving financial and traffic information, along with descriptions of all stations. This fact-filled, authoritative study offers a rare insight into the development of an integral section of the British railway.
Colin G Maggs has gathered the recollections of locomotives crews from the West Country to produce a record of the realities of running a railway during the great days of steam.
Sorely neglected by railway authors, the line between Bristol and Taunton was part of the Bristol & Exeter Railway. A fascinating line, it was built to serve a moribund coalfi eld and a grand harbour scheme which proved a dismal failure. The line had many interesting features: two short dock branches, one of which had a telescopic bridge; several industrial concerns with their own locomotives; vital wartime factories; the busy holiday and excursion traffi c to Weston-super-Mare, which required a special station. Wind strength had its effect on the railway, as on the horse-worked Weston-super-Mare branch, when an adverse wind blew it was quicker to get out and walk. The line has also had more than its fair share of accidents and mishaps. The B&ER favoured express tank locomotives, some magnifi cent specimens with 9-foot-diameter fl angeless driving wheels. The human side is not to be ignored, however: there are details of navvies' lives and deaths, of a spat between Brunel and his resident engineer, and the daring robbery of a mail train. Colin G. Maggs, one of the country's leading railway historians, covers all these details and more in this gripping and well-researched story, illustrated with over 200 images.
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