Steam Nostalgia in the North of England

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 Offering 180 previously unpublished photographs taken by Philip Braithwaite, a respected railway photographer with an extensive archive, Steam Nostalgia is narrated by Paul Hurley, a freelance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.