Paul Atterbury

The London and North Eastern Railway, or LNER as it was familiarly known, was one of the Big Four companies that took control of Britain’s railway network following the 'Grouping' in 1923. This network represented a challenging mixture of mainline and rural passenger routes, suburban services, and freight and industrial lines across the east coast of England and Scotland. Despite this challenge, the LNER became famous for its style, speed and efficiency, with record-breaking high-speed routes capturing the public’s imagination, supported by iconic locomotives such as the Flying Scotsman and Mallard. Full of beautiful photographs, this is a perfect introduction to one of Britain’s best-loved railway operators during the Age of Steam.

A collection of the timeless, the priceless and the unforgettable, this beautiful compendium accompanies the beloved BBC One TV series.

Britain is a country in love with its railway past. Nowhere else do the workhorses of the age of steam exert such a pull; in no other country is the nostalgia for the days when the railways extended to every corner of the kingdom so strong. However, the history of station buildings and signal boxes, steam and diesel engines, goods and postal services, main lines and branch lines is only part of the story told here. As a cherished part of Britain’s heritage, it is the impact of the railways on a human level that has truly captured our imagination. In more than 50 photographs, many of which are previously unpublished, Paul Atterbury reveals the people who ran, maintained and used them – the people for whom the railways were a way of life.

Nothing is more evocative of the golden age of travel than the railway poster. Speed to the West shows some of the best railway posters used to promote the romance of holiday travel to the West Country, a region formed by Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. There are stunning and iconic landscapes, immediately recognisable, painted in wonderful colours that bring together the excitement, spectacle and nostalgia of the golden age of train travel. The general history of holiday express train development is covered including a detailed history of the Atlantic Coast Express and Cornish Riviera Express together with other named trains that served the West Country. The result is a visually stunning collection of posters. It is a journey of nostalgia, displaying the best of British railway advertising of the past and present. AUTHORS: Richard Furness has been interested in railways from his earliest recollections. Living close to the railway lines in the historic and industrial part of East Shropshire, he grew up to the sights, smells and sounds of the steam locomotives. Richard has been writing books on railway-related subjects for many years. He is the author of the successful and critically-acclaimed Poster to Poster series. Co-authored by railway expert and BBC Antiques Roadshow presenter Paul Atterbury.

Today there is a nostalgia in Britain for the golden age of the railways, a period usually defined as the first half of the 20th century. Steam was king, and Britain still enjoyed a remarkably comprehensive railway network, a network whose tentacles connected towns, villages and even hamlets across the entire country. At its heart were rural routes and branch lines, the latter often the creation of small companies driven by local needs and local finance. Firmly at the centre of British life, these lines were, for so many remote areas, a social and economic lifeline. Today, branch lines are part of a lost world, an era when railway maps of Britain showed lines crisscrossing every county – many of which had distinctive, but also lost, names. By bringing together old maps, images of old branch lines and modern photographs of relics that can be discovered today, this book celebrates a Britain of fond memories.

Since the 1970s Keith Strickland has travelled the world in search of steam, camera in hand. In this outstanding book he has gathered together his finest images which show the contrasting style of steam travel today in Europe, Africa, China, Cuba, India and beyond. This unique look at steam around the globe presents the reader with fascinating insights into the locos in action, stations, passengers, industry and the daily lives of those who make a living beside the tracks. These superb photographs capture the heady atmosphere of steam railways and the sheer pleasure of trains as a means of travel. It is a book that will appeal as much to the armchair and travelling tourist as to those with a passion for steam. In his capacity as an active worker for the charity, The Railway Children, Keith Strickland is donating all his proceeds from this book to them to improve the lives of children in the Third World who have made railways stations their impromptu homes.