Big Freight the Book by Nick Meskell

Following the success of the Train Crazy Big Freight DVD series I have been repeatedly asked for a similar product but in the format of a book. After much deliberation about format, size and style, well, here it is! The idea here is to keep away from politics, corporate image and all the other mumbo jumbo surrounding railways these days and produce a good old-fashioned high-quality pictorial book, looking at the current freight scene.

If you've watched our Big Freight DVDs, you'll know that we always try to include a great variety of trains from all over the UK, with a mixture of different flows, filmed from picturesque landscapes to industrial settings, yards, stations and cities. Most freight in the UK is hauled by Class 66 locomotives today and like the DVDs, a great variety of different flows are included over the coming pages. You may recognise some of the images in this book from the DVD locations we've filmed at and using the best work from some of today's leading railway photographers, the next 80 pages are basically the best of UK freight today. Starting with EWS/DB Schenker trains and working loosely through the freight operating companies, all material is from the 2006-2010 period and apologies now, I just love full page images!

A massive thank you goes to Andy Brown, Jamie McEwan, Jason Cross, Jim Ramsay, John Longden, John Turner, Neil Harvey, Paul Robertson, Ron Jessop, Stuart Harrison, Terry Eyres and Tom Pickles who all contributed images; to David Umpleby for researching and helping with the captions; to Jason Prescott for his pyrotechnics with the images and to my wife Mary Meskell for her constant support.

Enjoy the book

Nick Meskell

July 2010

Front cover: Powerhaul is here with 70005, the first of six Class 70 locomotives currently operating in the UK. This is Bagworth on 16th March 2010 with 6Z21, the 11.16 Crewe Basford Hall to Stud Farm engineers train. (Jason Cross)

Left: Despite the mass introduction of the Class 66, the Class 67 and now the Class 70, it's good to see that the humble Class 37 is still operational with a number of companies. This is 37416 passing the rarely seen industrial setting on the low level line at Warrington on 13th March 2009, with two HAA wagons en-route to Allerton for repair. (Tom Pickles)