RAILWAYS IN AND AROUND NOTTINGHAM

Updated and enlarged edition of the Scenes from the Past 11A in the series, this is a truly nostalgic collection of archive images and the original 1991 text reproduced in facsimile, now a rather dated looking design, but a valuable historical record. 'It all began in the 1980s with a handful of railway pictures which I hoped would be accepted by Becknell Books to emerge as 'The Railways of Nottingham' but they ceased publishing shortly after they received my offering so it came to nothing. Thankfully the project was rekindled and the well written and carefully researched manuscript and good quality images reproduced on the right kind of bright white glossy paper plus illustrations showing the entire railway scene.? With humour and anecdotes, the history covers approximately 140 years. In 1850, the then Midland Station was to be found on a route from Derby to Lincoln to which was connected a branch line running through the northern suburbs of Basford and Bulwell proceeding up the valley of the River Leen and ultimately reaching Mansfield. A few miles to the east of the city at Netherfield a connection went off in a south-easterly direction crossing the River Trent near Radcliffe and joining what is now the East Coast Mainline from Kings Cross to Edinburgh at Grantham. The GNR spread its tentacles beyond the coalfield to reach the breweries of Burton-on-Trent and out as far as the rich pastureland east of Stafford from which district it secured a valuable traffic in milk for London. Much land was available at Colwick, east of Nottingham, and there a facility blossomed to become a main shed in LNER days housing well over 200 engines. On 1st July 1878 a line from Bottesford West Junction on the Grantham Line to Newark was opened. There remain in Nottingham two railway built clock towers, and a journey through the pages of this book take young and old alike to the most relevant places in and around the city and we are rewarded with hours of nostalgic pleasure looking at the engines and coaches, civil engineering works of cuttings and concrete drainage channels, colliery closures, the booking office, and in the colour section of eight pages a smartly turned out LMS Jubilee 46560 Blake Director No. 62667 Somme, Britannia No. 7001 to John of Gaunt, or a Stanier 2-6-4T No. 2550 waiting patiently among this gallery of hundreds of superb archive images, tickets reproduced and beautifully drawn maps. Large sized softback.