Further along the tracks

Following his first book, the author relates his experiences continuing his locospotting hobby from 1959-62. With black and white photographs, his records cover visits to locomotive sheds, works and time at stations and the lineside finally rounding off his reminiscences with modern colour views of locomotives which made it to preservation.

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The author came to London from Lancashire as a nine-year old having developed an interest in his local buses and Blackpool trams at a very early age. He remained in south-west London living in the Wandsworth and Wimbledon areas for the next 45 years. As a young teenager he took up locospotting joining a small group of fellow enthusiasts who met regularly by the lineside just west of Clapham Junction and for roughly ten years avidly followed his hobby. For the first half of that decade, his hobby was centred largely close to London because of age and money restrictions except for rare trips often family visits - further afield. In this second book, he describes his experiences from about 1960: visiting stations; lineside observations; and more official trips to depots and works, often with the RCTS. He gives us a spotters-eye view of the changes to British Railways at the time: the final steam locomotives arriving; the increasing impact of the Modernisation Plan; seeing elderly locomotives at work or at the end of their service life on scrap lines. After 1958, when he acquired his first camera it was used regularly to build up a library of photographs as finances allowed. Some of these, taken at a later date, have been used to illustrate his travels and exploits in the earlier years of his hobby and later, colour views are used to cover the preservation era.