Steam enthusiast Andrew Britton, who grew up near the Great Western route between Oxford and Birmingham, has put together this comprehensive pictorial survey of this route between Fenny Compton, north of Banbury, and Birmingham Snow Hill.
The photos are mostly from the last few years of steam in the 1960s. The book is divided into three sections, each covering part of the route: Fenny Compton to Warwick, Budbrook to Solihull, and Solihull to Snow Hill. Each section contains detailed descriptions of each station and shed along the route in terms of the trains that could be seen there in the 1960s along with a brief history of the location in question. There is a good variety of station and lineside photos of passenger and freight trains, mostly steam-hauled but a few diesel-hydraulic “Westerns”, Blue Pullman trainsets and DMUs are also featured along with artefacts such as tickets and working timetables. Towards the end there are several pages dedicated to Snow Hill including station exterior views. This is followed by an appendix on names trains such as “The William Shakespeare”, “The Cambrian Coast Express”, “The Cornishman” and “The Inter-City”, a solitary titled train whose name would eventually be adopted for all long-distance services.
Hardback. 304 pages. Over 500 colour photos.