Mixed Gauges
John Snell accompanied the late Tom Rolt and David Curwen to Towyn in April 1951 as the only permanent English staff on the Tal-y-llyn Railway, before it opened as the very first preserved railway in the world, and he retired in 1999 as General Manager of the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway, so he really can claim to have been involved in railway preservation as long as it has existed.
In particular John has travelled, inevitably perhaps given he was born in Fiji in 1932, spent the war years in New Zealand, and returned to Britain for further education thereafter; at the age of four he had travelled in both directions across the U.S.A. whilst on a visit to Britain. He was experiencing French and Swiss railways in 1947, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia and Spain, as well as France frequently during the 1950s and 60s, with places further afield inevitably following on. If you were into the railways of that strange place 'abroad', especially from the late 1950s to the mid 1970s, this book will bring the memories flooding back. Not that it stops then, it continues much later in South America and South Africa in particular.
The text is a delight, being informative and interesting, but it is the photographs that will take your breath away, as John is a superb photographer. Whilst the locomotive or train is always the centrepiece, these are not sterile photographs of lumps of machinery, but are full of life with lots of incidental details. And there are 434 photographs in the sixteen ", chapters covering many of the world's railways, large and, quite frequently, small. In fact, the only major systems or countries not covered are India, China, Japan and Russia.
Truly a book to enjoy for a very long time!
Hardback with dust jacket, 256 pages, black & white photographs
Condition: Very Good
ISBN: 9780954713164
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