The Last Years of Steam in Shropshire and the Severn Valley covers most of the railways across the county and the locomotives that worked over them. In the main, the time period is the ten years or so from the mid-1950s up to the end of steam working in Shropshire. This book will appeal to railway enthusiasts, modellers, and those interested in local history.Whilst there are main line photographs, this book mainly visits the now largely vanished secondary routes and branch lines throughout the county – a feast of Salop steam. The Severn Valley Railway is seen in the pre-preservation era over its entire distance from Shrewsbury to Bridgnorth, Kidderminster, and Hartlebury.Virtually all of the photographs, a mixture of black-and-white and colour, have never been published before. With one exception, all the photographs were all taken by the author, his late father, or his friend the late Alan Maund.Despite the word ‘Steam’ appearing in the title of this book, the time period covered saw the introduction, in quantity, of steam’s diesel replacements, and these are seen, particularly the single unit railcars introduced by both the GWR and BR to improve the economics of rural branch lines.
| BOOK ISBN |
9781781552940 |
| FORMAT |
248 x 172 mm |
| BINDING |
Hardback |
| PAGES |
128 pages |
| PUBLICATION DATE |
15 June 2014 |
| TERRITORY |
World |
| ILLUSTRATIONS |
Colour photographs throughout |
Michael Clemens and his late father in the 1950s and 1960s lived in Worcestershire, but travelled all over Britain, from Penzance to the north of Scotland, filming many now long closed railways and the steam locomotives that worked on them. The movie film collection, the largest of its kind in the UK, has been released by the author on thirty videos starting in the 1990s. The author’s website can be visited at www.michaelclemensrailways.co.uk and contains many hundreds of pages of railway memorabilia. This is his first book for Fonthill Media. Other titles in the series include: The Last Years of Steam Around Central Wales and The Last Years of Steam in Shropshire and the Severn Valley – all published by Fonthill Media in 2013.
