The Train Now Departing by Ivo Peters, etc. (Hardcover, 1988)

The Train Now Departing by Ivo Peters, etc. (Hardcover, 1988).

Steam locomotives are uniquely attractive.

They have an almost human character which, allied to an immense power drawn from the basic elements of fire and water, makes them far more than mere machines.

Published to accompany a six-part

BBC tv series, this lavishly illustrated book records six love affairs with steam railways during their last working years, the 1960s, when a third of Britain's rail network was 'axed' by the infamous Dr Beeching.

Included are 16 pages of full-colour photographs dating from this era, some never published before.

David Wilcock, editor of Steam Railway magazine, recalls the last neglected years of steam in the Pennine Hills and considers the future for the threatened Settle-Carlisle line.

By contrast, David Rowlands looks at the quaint and charming system of narrow. gauge lines on the Isle of Man, distinguished by their brightly painted Victorian locomotives and carriages. For Mike Arlett, narrator of the BBC television programme

'Return to Evercreech Junction', the railway memories are of trips to the seaside on the Southern lines from Waterloo.

Railway historian Eric Tonks describes the rich variety of industrial railways that survived into the 1960s from the time when every mine or steelworks had its own shunting engine. Professional sound recordist Peter Handford recalls his quest to capture the sounds of the steam age on tape. Some of his fondest memories are of journeys to the wilds of Scotland.