Book & DVD Reviews by Nigel Harris In this section, we’ll be highlighting the newest and best railway literature, DVDs and other products which have caught our eye, which we hope will help you make decisions about additions to your library and collection. On the main part of the page, you’ll find our honest, objective reviews of the products concerned. Do they do what they say on the tin? Do they do it well? Are they good value for money? Are they worth buying now, or maybe waiting for them to appear on the second-hand market? Should they be avoided at all costs?! We’ll always tell you the truth. The most recent reviews about the newest products are at the top, so just scroll down for older reviews from the archive. Over on the right, you’ll find a column listing the essential reference books we use all the time in the office and which we rate highly. If you have a favourite book you think we should add to our ‘essentials’ then do let us know and we’ll check it out. Some of these books and DVDs are available in the RAIL Shop Just click on the cover to read more about it. New Reviews: 
Older Reviews:         
| EDITOR'S CHOICE - BEST BUY | | British Transport Films Collection (18-disc boxed set)
(British Film Institute, ISBN/EAN 5035673008065). www.bfi.org.uk/filmstore. (NH-posted December 24 2008) For those with a long-standing interest in railways, there are some pieces of ‘common currency’ we probably all have in our collections! These ‘must-haves’ include good-quality rail atlases and possible a framed print by Terence Cuneo, David Shepherd, or Phil Hawkins. There may even be a Peter Handford steam locomotive recording or two, on a scratchy old vinyl LP or EP. And somewhere, you may also have an old VHS tape of one (or more) of those classic British Transport Films such as ‘The Elizabethan’, ‘Snowdrift at Bleath Gill’ or ‘This is York’. They are classic films, shot from the first post-war decade as specialist ‘shorts’ in the 1950s to not only promote the railway as a means of travel for leisure, but also to widen interest and knowledge in what the railways were all about in a technical and operational sense. There were also the wonderful ‘travelogue’ short films, made to promote leisure use of trains to beautiful parts of Britain. Produced by the visionary and legendary (in his industry – he was unknown outside of it, other than as a rolling credit at the end of each film) Edgar Anstey, no corner of rural Britain seemed to escape the lush camera work and lyrical scripts of these truly lovely and very evocative films. Now the entire collection of 125 films - a whopping 38 hours of viewing in all - is available as a superb, high-quality 18-DVD boxed set, complete with library slip case and a specially-produced booklet giving historical detail and background about all the films. It’s not cheap at just short of £100 (a bizarre £97.86, following the VAT reduction to 15%!) but it is nonetheless a fantastic offering in terms of value. Make no mistake, this is a rich treasure trove of amazing documentary programmes depicting a Britain and its people now long gone. Anyone who has an interest in 20th century railways and Britain should have this collection: it is an absolute gem. Shot largely during the 1950s, these films are without doubt a little rose-tinted (they were promotional films, don’t forget!) but they nevertheless capture the spirit and appearance of the 1950s Britain of Enid Blyton….before Beeching closed the branch lines….before the generally ghastly town redevelopments of the 1960s….before motorways……and therein lies their unique appeal and charm. No, they don’t show the reality of fume-filled factories or shabby back-to-back terraces in industrial Lancashire - but they do show their people disembarking from trains at Blackpool and trooping off to boarding houses for their summer holiday. ‘Holiday’ shows a typical summer at Blackpool, with dancing on the pier, beaches so packed you cannot see a square inch of sand, and families paddling or playing with the printed tinplate buckets and spades of more innocent, less materialistic times. There are some amazing scenes of an absolutely packed lido hosting a beauty contest of the kind which were then seen as harmless and inoffensive summer fun - but which within a few years were the subject of great controversy. The films reflect these altogether different and more innocent times - they are truly fascinating reflections of a very different, possibly more naïve, world. In ‘Cyclists Special’ we see Cycling Touring Club members travelling out from London on a special Sunday train to Rugby, their bikes hung by the front wheel from rubber covered roof hooks in specially converted vans. Off they all pedal in their windcheaters, saddlebags full of beef paste sandwiches in waxed bread paper wrapping, packed alongside yellow rain capes, for a day’s touring before the train back to London in the evening. I didn’t actually spot any bottles of Tizer – but I bet they were there somewhere! As ever, it’s the everyday, taken-for-granted detail which makes the most compelling viewing. The town and village scenes in the pre-motorway age, with their ‘Major Road Ahead’ and other signs and street furniture of this bygone age. Village squares, country lanes and buildings looking as they always had in a very traditional sense make excellent nostalgic viewing for those that remember these more relaxed post-war days. Or they are educational for those who never witnessed the England of Dad’s Army and the Famous Five. There’s not a cycling helmet to be seen and as the hardy souls pedal by, the narrator tells us: “….it’s clubs like these that have stamped themselves into the British character”. On DVD No. 1, one of my favourite films is ‘Letter to Wales’ in which TV and film actor Donald Houston (you’ll know his face) posts a letter at Paddington to his native Wales. It is at the same time a both highly imaginative and yet rather unsophisticated film that chops and changes between the black and white and colour sequences which it strings together - but which still retains its charm. The actor (who you never see speak a word) wanders around Paddington narrating the film as a voice-over stream of personal thoughts in the night bustle. Surviving GWR signs in the background and large ad hoardings on Brunel’s end screens for Eagle Star speak eloquently of the time. These thoughts, marshalled through a nostalgic and affectionate script, are a simple but effective film-making device to allow the stringing together of a collection of otherwise disconnected pieces of film showing all sorts of aspects of life in Wales, some shot in colour, some in black and white. It’s a blatantly simple way to use a lot of left-over material from the cutting room floor, but it works. One incredible sequence shows the ramshackle narrow gauge railways (and health and safety nightmares!) of how slate was quarried in Snowdonia, split and dressed into roof slates and then transported off for shipping. Watch carefully as a quarry worker roped around the waist (no harnesses back then) almost falls from the working face as he releases a huge lump of slate, which crashes to the quarry floor. The sequence showing a pair of quarrymen hand dressing slates is a wonderfully detailed reminder of a classic skill, expertly carried out. I could go on… and on… about this collection. I could tell you about the moody, evocative film about Waterloo, directed by the young John Schlesinger. Frankly, I could talk all day about this wonderful collection of films. But we’d be here all day. It’s a fair bet that the general interest ‘travelogue’ type films of 1950s Britain will also appeal to many other family members who don’t give a hoot about trains and railways. They will be enjoyed way beyond those who love the railway. This collection is an all our yesterdays showing the Britain of our parents and grandparents in the last decade before the tsunami of change in the 1960s that either swept most of it away or changed it forever. This series could also prove of tremendous use to the railway modeller in its depiction of the British landscape and its buildings, farmland and vegetation in the 1950s. I’ll leave it there for now – but I’ll produce further mini-reviews of this fantastic collection as I work my way through the 18 DVDs over the next few weeks, and post them here – so do drop by again to find out about the rest of this collection. This is very highly recommended, without reservation. This BTF Collection is available to buy from the BFI Filmstore at BFI Southbank, London SE1. Smaller collections of BTF films are also available. |  | RECENT BOOKS: (February 2009) | | | Level Crossings by Stanley Hall & Peter van der Mark Ian Allan, £19.99 (ISBN 978-0-7110-3308-5) When it comes to rail safety, there are few who can match Stan Hall in terms of experience, expertise or clarity of expression. I really don’t want to descend into cliché but Stan has probably forgotten more about rail safety, accidents and investigations than most folk will ever know. A retired career railwayman since pre-Nationalisation days, Stan had a wide-ranging, very successful career, including spells running the very large goods yards at Peterborough and as Deputy Station Master at King’s Cross. He specialised in safety and accident investigation and latterly chaired more than 100 accident inquiries for the British Railways Board. Stan is responsible for a library of books about rail safety, accidents and investigations and I’ve been privileged to have his support as an expert adviser, consultant and feature writer throughout my editorship of RAIL. Stan’s latest book tells the story of the humble (and indeed rather grand) level crossing, which (obviously, when you think about it!) dates from the very dawn of the railway, when wheeled vehicles were horse-powered but still needed to cross the tracks where bridges were not deemed worthwhile, or impossible to provide. That need survives today and the level crossing, while still catering for the occasional horse drawn cart, also allows cars, motorcycles, buses, vans and juggernaut lorries to cross the railway where bridges are still not viable. The level crossing is, as a result, also the railway’s biggest source of potential catastrophic risk today – not because of any problem with the railway, but almost invariably because of often jaw-dropping abuse by road users. Level crossings come in all shapes and sizes, from sprawling six-track high-speed crossing such as Helpston, which, north of Peterborough, embraces both the East Coast Main Line and the Midland Line to Leicester, which runs parallel to it at this point, to barely used rural so-called ‘occupation’ crossings linking farmland either side of a railway. In between there’s the whole range of manned, unmanned, CCTV-fitted or entirely unsupervised crossings with their wide variety of full and half length barriers (skirted and unskirted; manned and unmanned) with their flashing red and yellow lights, sirens, telephones and warning signs. The traditional white-gated level crossing with the signalbox alongside is much rarer today, but still to be found on secondary railways. That said, the importance of a main line, or its high density of traffic, is no bar to 19th century operations in the 21st century – as at Woodcroft, just north of Peterborough, where the level crossing spanning the two Midland lines and the four sets of ECML metals which is protected by hand-worked gates, operated by a crossing keeper who dashes back and forth from his lineside hut to open or close the gates, when told to do so by the signalman, just up the line at Helpston! This 128-page hardback is the definitive guide to the British level crossing and so it’s been slotted in not just here in reviews, but also at the head of the column on the right in our list- of ‘Essential reference’ books. But this is much more than merely a work of reference – it’s as much a highly enjoyable nostalgic volume as it is a look at current and possible future practice, via co-author Peter van der Mark’s closing chapter on overseas practice in terms of road traffic control, design, separation from rail traffic and safety measures. It always amazes me that level crossings are as dangerous as they are. Motorists would never dream of dodging around the traffic at a traffic light-controlled busy crossroads, or taking a chance by ignoring a red light and dashing through the crossroads in the hope that they won’t hit another car. So why do the same drivers ignore red lights and sirens at a railway crossing? It can’t be about misunderstanding (it’s a red light for goodness sake!) so the problems must be caused by a clear decision to ignore a stop signal. It beggars belief – but there you are, it happens, even though it is an affront not only to common sense, but all natural instincts for self-preservation! This very clearly-written and laid out book looks at how crossings began, from the railway building boom of the 1830s, and proceeds largely chronologically, taking in the parallel growth of motorised road transport and the way the approach to level crossing copntrol slowly changed. We learn that the first automated half-barrier (AHB) crossing was intalled at Spath in 1961 on the now-closed line between Ashbourne and Uttoxeter. Back then, there was an illuminated sign too which said ‘second train coming’ as a warning to impatient motorists when barriers did not immediately rise after a train passed. This represented a dramatic change in level crossing policy because not only did crossings look very different, but there was also a fundamental shift in responsibility for safety. In the past, the railway was 100% for safety and control at main line level crossings – the signalman took the decision when to close off the road to the railway and was in complete control of safety management. With the AHB, and other modern forms of crossing, with their bells, lights, signs and phones, this safety management and responsibility was passed from the signalmen to road users themselves. Safety was thereafter in their hands and depended utterly on the danger signals being seen, understood and properly acted upon by the road user. For the first time, road users had the ability and opportunity to abuse, ignore or simply misunderstand the signals indicating a train’s approach – and the result is that level crossings are the last remaining area of major catastrophic risk of disaster. I discussed this situation at some length in a recent blog after Network Rail released the latest batch of truly horrifying CCTV footage of ‘near misses’ by foolhardy drivers taking potentially fatal risks at level crossings. And as Ufton Nervet showed, some years ago, the AHB crossing, or non-gated level crossing, offers no obstacle to those of suicidal intent. This book is lavishly illustrated with quality mono and colour photographs showing crossings of all kinds – and the older pictures of traditional crossings are, frankly, a treat in their own right. The text is rich in historical and other detail, including relevant accidents and statistical detail. The arguments and issues about level crossings are objectively discussed – including at private crossings and even on bridleways and footpaths which cross railways of all kinds. It would be easy at a first glance to overlook this book, dismissing it without too much thought for being either overly-technical or just plain ‘anoracky’, given the highly specialist nature of the subject. Don’t be fooled - and don’t make that mistake! This is a truly excellent, enjoyable and thought-provoking piece of work, produced by acknowledged experts. It’s an absolute ‘must’ for anyone involved in, or interested in, the changing role of the railway from the horse-drawn age to the motorway age. Buy one now – once it’s out of print, you;re unlikely to find too many copies in the second –hand bookshops. My copy is assured of a place on the shelf. Buy it now. (NH) |
 | BOOKS: (December 2008) | | | North Wales Coast Diesels: A pictorial history 1959 to 2008. by Steve Morris, £14.95
(Ty Mawr Publications, ISBN 9-780955-235412). (RC-posted December 24 2008) The North Wales coast is rightly a favourite of enthusiasts with its varied freight and passenger trains. While most of these have now long gone, there are still two locomotive hauled trains along the route each day, while until the turn of the century it was a haven for Class 37 haulage, before ‘47s’ took over the Manchester-Holyhead trains until 2004. Today, the route from Chester to Holyhead sees two Class 57 hauled trains per day (a 57-hauled Virgin ‘390’ and a top-and-tailed ’57 Arriva service) while the freight trains have somewhat diminished in volume. This book is a good pictorial reference that highlights what a variety of traction once plied its trade along the line. The book is split into locomotive classes, with a section at the end devoted to railtours. Each section has an informative introduction, explaining the duties of the Class featured in the chapter. While Class 25s, ‘40s’ and ‘47s’ feature heavily; there are also images of the only known Class 27 to visit the line, plus a pair of Class 73s are shown hauling a railtour. Most of the images are black and white, even the most up-to-date pictures. However the quality of some of the images is poor. Some picture quality issues aside, this is a good book and worth the £14.95 cover price. | | | Seventies Spotting Days: Around the Western Region by Kevin Derrick, £19.95.
(Strathwood, ISBN 978-1-905276-13-4). (RC-posted December 24 2008) As a west country native, this book, featuring 96 pages of colour photography, instantly appealed to me, transporting me back to the 1970s and showing me a glimpse of the fantastic railway operations my father would tell me about! There’s even a breath of Welsh colliery steam! These were the days when diesel-hydraulics and later Class 50s dominated express services while cross country trains were mainly in the hands of the now long-withdrawn Class 45 and ‘46’ ‘Peaks’. This first Strathwood ‘Seventies Spotting Days’ book is split into 15 sections including Bristol, Cornwall and ‘bunking’ Old Oak Common, while there is also a section for the famous sea wall between Dawlish and Teignmouth, which I was drawn immediately to. There is a chapter devoted to the rundown of Swindon works showing the disposal of the ‘Hymek’s, ‘Warships’ and ‘Westerns’. Another chapter looks at the fledgling preservation scene in the area, including the restoration of Great Western Railway steam locomotives. The images of Paddington, a station I use regularly, show just how much has changed in terms of both the infrastructure and trains. The captions make very pleasant easy reading, and often cross-refer the railway scenes to the music and events of the time. Which explains why even Barry Manilow gets a mention in the same breath as the sea wall at Dawlish! The captions are informative - but it is the quality of the images that will attract you to the book. This is definitely recommended – but I have to ask, did the sun really shine as much as this in the 1970s?!! | | | Seventies Spotting Days: Around the London Midland Region by Kevin Derrick, £19.95.
(Strathwood, ISBN 978-1-905276-13-34). (RC-posted December 24 2008) The second volume in Strathwood’s ‘Seventies Spotting Days’ series covers the routes between London and Carlisle, with the West Coast Main Line and Midland Mainline routes, as well as the iconic Settle & Carlisle route. This is a step back in time to the days when all locomotives carried corporate BR blue and there was plenty of variety on the railways for the rail enthusiast to savour. This 96-page offering features colour photographs with images mainly from platform ends, taken from the trainspotter’s point of view. There are also many pictures taken at open days including an image of such an event at Crewe Works in 1979. As might be expected for this particular region there are plenty of pictures of BR blue ‘25s’, ‘40s’ and ‘Peaks’ while AC electrics are also covered. The book appears to slightly favour the north of the region, but when you have the scenic splendour of the Settle and Carlisle line, and some superb night-time photography at Crewe and Carlisle, it is hard to fault this. There are also some excellent wintry shots, including the cover of a ‘40’ in the snow. £19.95 may seem a little expensive for 96-pages, but it is full of nostalgic images that will remind you of the days before Meridians on the MML and Pendolinos on the WCML. | | | Freightmaster No. 52 Dec 2008-Feb 2009 by Mark Rawlinson, £13.50.
(Freightmaster, ISBN 9-771357 484294). (RC-posted December 24 2008) This, the 52nd and latest volume of the national railfreight timetable, is as informative as ever. This excellent book enables anyone to make sense of the interesting, yet complex and otherwise opaque freight operations in the UK. We use it all the time in the office as it provides information about practically all timetabled freight trains. The format, for those who have not bought a volume before, features a variety of ‘hot spot’ locations including Barnetby, Carlisle, Doncaster, Ipswich, Newport and Willesden over a 24-hour period and includes weekend trains. While some locations may only have half a page, others, such as Willesden have up to six. Maps showing the operations of the bulk freights are included along with the EWS Enterprise network. This is definitely worth the £13.50 cover price. Buy it now. | | | St PANCRAS STATION by Simon Bradley, £8.99.
(Profile Books, ISBN 978-1-86197-951-3). The classic history of St Pancras was written a couple of decades or so ago by respected historian the late Professor Jack Simmons. It’s long out-of-print, I believe, but is worth seeking from second-hand book dealers.
This well-priced paperback is a new history, described by Country Life as “….a beautifully written book…” and by Christian Wolmar as a “masterpiece.” I certainly enjoyed it very much and made sure the review copy made its way into my permanent railway library. Bradley did a great job here and he tells a wonderful story about one of the world’s great railway stations. Very highly recommended. |
| | Dow’s Dictionary of Railway Quotations by Andrew Dow,
(The John Hopkins University Press, ISBN 9-8018-8292-3)
This is a fabulous book – and it does exactly what it says on the tin! Representing years of work by Andrew Dow (former Head of the National Railway Museum, York) this is an authoritative compendium of quotations about railways from 1608 to the present day. There are more than 3,400 entries from 1,300 contributors including speeches, newspapers, songs, poems, Acts of Parliament, TV and radio, private documents and conversations. It’s great to dip into and you quickly realise that some themes (and especially reasons why railways are often criticised!) are by no means new. A wonderful book. Buy it now – and enjoy for decades. | | RECENT DVDs: | | | On and Off the Rails – The British Transport Films Collection Volume 1, £15.99
(British Film Institute, BFIVD590) www.bfi.org.uk/filmstore
We are all a product of our past and that’s as true of industries as it is of people. This twin-disc DVD features digitally remastered classic films from the BTF collection showing our railways in times past – principally the 1950s and 1960s and often in atmospheric black and white.
This first collection of films, from 1951-1980, contains Blue Pullman (which paved the way for HST!), Elizabethan Express (the steam glamour of the East Coast, from King’s Cross to Edinburgh), Snowdrift at Bleath Gill (train snowed in at Stainmore) and John Betjeman Goes by Train. Also included are Under the River, This is York (a real gem and a personal favourite!), The Diesel Train Driver and This year – Lincoln.
A total of 261 minutes, and 14 films provide a feast of rail nostalgia and considerable food for thought. A highly collectable, highly enjoyable glimpse of where today’s railway came from. Very highly recommended. | | | NIGHT MAIL COLLECTORS EDITION, featuring the music of Benjamin Britain and the poetry of W.H. Auden
(British Film Institute, BFIVD522) www.bfi.org.uk/filmstore
“This is the Night Mail crossing the border…” …..the first line of surely one of the most evocative railway poems ever produced and (certainly in my case) guaranteed to stir the soul.
It was written by W.H. Auden and was used with Benjamin Britten’s music accompanying the Post Office’s 1936 film Night Mail – a classic documentary filmed on a budget of just £2,000!
The final section when film of the train is magically matched with Auden’s poetry and Britten’s score is a masterpiece of documentary film-making. This is a digitally-remastered version of the film, in a collectors box, complete with booklet telling the story of the film’s production and other material - and of course the great poem itself!
Also included is the Night Mail 2 1986 film re-make and accompanying new poem by Blake Morrison and three other bonus postal films (from 1936, 1948 and 1963) which add up to an excellent 116-minute/six-film package.
If you just want the original Night Mail on its own, that’s available too at £9.99. | | | ESSENTIAL REFERENCE BOOKS: | | | Here’s a few of my favourite and most-used books. They are invaluable not only in researching and checking material for publication, they’re also enjoyable in their own right for the wealth of information they contain. | | | RAIL ATLAS Great Britain & Ireland by Stuart Baker, £14.99
(OPC, ISBN 978-0-86093-602-2)
Every RAIL reader’s bookshelf should have the most up to date volume in this long-running, quite superb series by Stuart Baker. This is the 30th Anniversary Edition of his classic rail network atlas and it contains every inch of our national railway, complete with all freight connections, freight yards and heritage railways. It's an absolute must for anyone interested in today's network and it's one of our most regularly used works of reference in the RAIL office. That's not just because it's thorough, it's because you can trust it - Baker's work is always meticulous and accurate. He works within the industry so is well-placed to keep his finger on the pulse of what's happening and I can recommend this without reservation. It's one of three quality books which have formed the constantly-used core of my personal reference library for nearly 30 years now. The other two are the now-legendary red and green Ian Allan pre-Grouping Atlas (see below) and the same publisher's 'Passengers No More', by Gerald Daniels and Les Dench, which lists the closure dates of all Britain's passenger lines and stations. Baker's latter-day Atlas and the pre-Grouping Atlas used side by side provide a fascinating, if often depressing, commentary on what we've lost! | 
| | British Railways Pre Grouping Atlas and Gazetteer
(Ian Allan, 0-7110-0320-3)
First published in 1958 and reprinted frequently since, this is another ‘must’ for the bookshelf. Used alongside Baker’s modern atlas, you realise (frequently with astonishment and sadness) just how much railway we once had – and how much is now long-gone. It has an essential place within easy reach on my bookshelves and it's as interesting to browse through in idle moments as it it's useful when doing research or trying to build up a mental picture of railways in a given area. The sheer density and complexity of the network we once had never fails to impress me. One thing's for sure, should a 'Tardis' ever come my way, this book would give me endless inspiration for places to visit! | 
| | Red for Danger by L.T.C. Rolt, £14.99
(Sutton Publishing, ISBN 978-0-7509-4807-4)
One of my top ten favourite railway books, I bought my first Pan edition of this incredible book in the early 1970s and I’ve read it many times. “Never have death and disaster made such compelling reading” said the Times of an early edition (it was first published in 1955). Rolt turns formal reports into exciting, quality prose as he tells the stories of the causes and consequences of all kinds of railway disasters. This superb book explains how our railways became one of the safest ways to travel. You’ll learn something every time you open it. |  | | Essential Reference
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