Steam Nostalgia in the North of England is a pictorial story of British
railways in the north of England, in those heady days when steam ruled
the rails. In the 1950s it was decided to phase out steam on British
railways and to modernise the system. At the time train spotting was
very popular, mostly among schoolboys, who spent the majority of their
free time engrossed in their hobby, bunking into railway sheds and
avoiding the shedmaster to gain the excitement of climbing aboard one of
these huge locomotives, as they sat cold or simmering in the bleak and
dirty engine shed. They would also wait patiently by the side of the
permanent way, hoping to 'cop' the few engines that had yet to be
underlined in their Ian Allan ABC of British Railway Locomotives: the 2s
6d local edition or, if they could afford it, the Combined Volume at
10s. Some used the basic cameras of the day to photograph these
behemoths of the silver road. This book takes the reader on a trip to
such fondly remembered days, moving through the northern railways of the
1950s to the 1970s and taking in the last years of steam. Offering 180
previously unpublished photographs taken by Philip Braithwaite, a
respected railway photographer with an extensive archive, Steam
Nostalgia is narrated by Paul Hurley, a freelance writer with many books
and articles to his name.
