Last Call for Steam: Chasing Locos in the 1960s

Many years ago, while the author was admiring an ex-works Bulleid Pacific in the local goods yard, a thoroughly bored female school friend asked him, ‘Nigel, why do you enjoy watching steam engines more than going out with girls?’

It was a query he was unable to answer then, and would still find difficult even now, but during the final years of British steam his entire life revolved around seeking out locomotive classes, recording numbers, timing trains, photographing engines and travelling on railways as far and wide as his finances would allow.

Last Call for Steam is author Nigel Kendall’s record of a frenetic seven-year mission to seek out as many BR steam classes and locations as he could. The book is full of photographs and anecdotal vignettes, which come together as an entertaining and informative documentary of how things were during the heady days of steam’s decline throughout the sixties.