Move your mouse over image or click to enlarge

British Railways Illustrated: Special #01 'Steam to Diesel on the Southern' (IR801)

$25.00 AUD

Product No.: IR801
Title: British Railways Illustrated: Special #01 'Steam to Diesel on the Southern'
Author(s): Not Stated
Illustrator(s): N/A
Publisher: Irwell Press
ISBN: 9781906919801
Condition: New
Binding: Softcover
Dust Jacket: None
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Year: 2015

Features: 79 Pages with Black/White Photos.

British Railways organised its sheds - to be designated Motive Power Depots - on the LMS model established in the 1930s. This in theory had a 'concentration' depot at the head of a Motive Power District with an 'A' code and subordinate 'garage' depots. Repairs and maintenance would be, literally, concentrated on the 'concentration' depot while the 'garages' served in a way that their title suggested, with much less attention carried out.

Even on the LMS, however, anomalies abounded, in which the 'A' shed possessed little in respect of repair facilities while nominally 'garage' sheds were much better equipped and so it is little wonder that while, on the pages of the Ian Allan abc, the sheds of every Region seemed to arranged precisely alike, the codings often meant little more than that. Each Region had its shed codes organised on the LMS model but as for the activities at the sheds themselves, these went on much as they had done under the Southern, GWR, LNER and indeed much as they had done on the pre-Group companies that had preceded them.

So it was that in London 73A 'East' met 70A 'West' curiously within a short stroll of each other, in a somewhat down at heel corner of London near to the Thames. The old LSW lines and the terminus at Waterloo were served by the ancient and rambling premises at Nine Elms while the principal shed for the old Brighton and Chatham sections had emerged as Stewarts Lane.

More or less the entire range of Southern locomotives could be found at one time or another in this closely confined area of Battersea and it is principally through the mirror of this remarkable London 'locomotive town' that it's possible to illustrate the variety of Southern Region steam in the early 1950s, finishing up this BRILL Special with the Southern's very own main line diesel fleet.