In a, ‘Does what it says on the tin’ kind of way, this book pretty much does that. This is a new Transport Treasury album that covers diesels that are withdrawn, and closed lines, so this book is very much a throwback to the era of the images it contains.

Compiled and written by Evan Green-Hughes the book is 112 pages with entirely monochrome illustrations. The print and paper quality are excellent, with good layout and well written captions.

The eras covered encompass early green 1950’s up to the very early blue period with a handful of ‘double arrow’ images. The images have been selected from the extensive Transport Treasury archives, and very few have been previously published. This alone makes the book worth buying, the reproduction values are excellent with good contrast, detail and clarity. There are a few images which aren’t as sharp as the others but their interest value overrides the offset in quality.

All regions are covered, and there is to my mind a slight bias towards the eastern regions. Perhaps not a big surprise as with closed lines and varieties of withdrawn motive power there’s rich pickings there. Content of the images is good, a variety of styles with plenty of background and ancillary details to pick up on. The layout of the book is tidy and some images are printed in landscape format which I particularly like, and those that are, are well chosen.

It’s certainly a book worth taking for modellers as well as the enthusiast perspective. Most images cover the steam infrastructure and D&E power, which for me offers plenty of interest. In summary it’s a book that for me will be a regular read, primarily for the variety and quality of the images. My only question is may we have a volume 2 please?, perhaps with a more varied geographical coverage and into the 70’s and 80’s.

If the answers yes, the cheques in the post!

This book was purchased from Bill Hudson Transport Books