Frank Hornby's Railway Diary 1952-59

A railway enthusiast from the age of 5, Frank Hornby started loco-spotting while at school, and began to travel around the UK by train from about 1941. This title describes his journeys made throughout Great Britain and Northern Ireland during the 1950s, providing a first-hand picture of what was on offer to railway enthusiasts in those days.

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A railway enthusiast from the age of 5, Frank Hornby started loco-spotting while at school, and began to travel around the UK by train from about 1941. Since that time he has kept copious diaries of all his travels - dates, times, routes taken, depots visited and locomotives and trains observed. Full of fascinating detail, these diaries now number many volumes, and are still being kept by octogenarian Frank to the present day. Silver Link asked Frank to make a selection from his many journeys during the 1950s, and the result is this unique first-hand record of British and Irish railways during that decade, long before the Beeching era changed everything for ever, when a staggering variety of motive power was there to be seen, and many hundreds of miles of railway, since lost, were there to be travelled. Setting out from his home in South London, Frank describes visits to the West Country and Wales, the Midlands and East Anglia, Scotland and Ireland, the diary entries are supported by more than 125 photographs taken by him during those trips.