{"product_id":"through-the-links-at-crewe-top-link-footplate-memories-9780851533773","title":"Through the Links at Crewe: Top Link Footplate Memories","description":"\u003cp\u003eAs a glance through the contents page of this volume shows, few other footplatemen have had as interesting and wide-ranging an experience of firing and driving G.W.R. and L.M.S.R. steam locomotives after the Second World War than the author, 'Piccolo Pete' Johnson. Joining the G.W.R. in 1944, he received rapid promotion in the later war years and by 1952 when he transferred to London Midland Region, had fired a notably wide range of Swindon classes, including such old-timers as 'Dukes' and 'Aberdares'. Thereafter, at the two top link ex-L.M.S.R. sheds of Crewe North and Crewe South, as fireman and later as driver, he worked on almost all the best-known L.M.S. classes, plus those produced by British Railways; he knew the footplates of everything from ex-L.N.W.R. 'Super Ds' to 'Duchess' Pacifics, 2F shunters to straight-boilered 'Scots', 'Britannias' to Derby Compounds, to name but a few. . . . He fired, for example, 'The Irish Mail', 'The Ulster Express', 'The Royal Scot', the 'West Coast Postal', 'The Welshman', 'The Pines Express'. He knew the road from Glasgow and Perth south to Euston, and everywhere in between that Crewe men worked to, from Manchester west to Holyhead, Blackpool down to Shrewsbury and Birmingham, during his sixteen years of main line passenger and freight work - firing or driving - up to the end of steam. Another twelve years followed driving big diesels and fast electrics out of Crewe, and to the present day he is still working on these on the West Coast main line he knows so well.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSoftback, 14x21cm, 128 pages, black \u0026amp; white photographs\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCondition: Good\/Very Good - minor damage to spine\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bradford Barton","offers":[{"title":"Secondhand (297)","offer_id":58169058296191,"sku":"9780851533773","price":10.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1910\/7111\/files\/9780851533773.jpg?v=1786561622","url":"https:\/\/rail-books.co.uk\/products\/through-the-links-at-crewe-top-link-footplate-memories-9780851533773","provider":"Rail Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}