LSWR West Country Lines Then and Now By Mac Hawkins

LSWR West Country Lines Then and Now By Mac Hawkins

Hardcover

ISBN 1840133228

Publisher: Grange Books 1999

Used – Like new. This book is in an excellent condition. The cover have some very slight signs of wear and the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains perfect. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. The book is protected with a Cellophane cover. Rubber stamp on the front first page.

This is a photographic album of the London and South Western Railway - subsequently part of the Southern Region - in the days of steam, including the Atlantic Coast Express services and the lines of the "withered arm", compared with the same sites today, seen in precisely-matched shots. The detailed captions pick out points of both local and railway interest, and provide an historical narrative of changes on the line and its land, and in its surroundings.

From the cover: “In this unique album, Mac Hawkins presents a collection of photographs of the once-great London & South Western Railway at work throughout the West Country, together with his own precisely-matched shots of the same sites today and extended captions, documenting the fascinating story of the lines.

Few sections of the former LSWR lines in the West of England survive intact, and they are only a shadow of what they were in their heyday. Following Dr Beeching’s now infamous report of 1963 the West of England main line from Waterloo, by which the famous ‘Atlantic Coast Express’ served many of the West Country’s seaside resorts, was downgraded to a secondary route and most of it reduced to a single track, with many of the stations west of Salisbury being closed.

Train services from Waterloo, once the LSWR’s terminus in the capital, to the West Country via Salisbury are fairly infrequent compared to just thirty years ago. Since the cessation of steam all trains have been diesel hauled, but with the introduction of Class 159 diesel multiple units in 1993 these were destined to be the last regular locomotive-hauled trains to traverse the line.

However, much of the former LSWR system in the West Country no longer exists. Only the branches to Barnstaple (now known as the Tarka Line) and to Gunnislake from Plymouth survive, together with a portion of the former main line as far as Meldon, which is now run as a single-line branch. With some of the stone traffic recently withdrawn, the latter’s future is by no means certain and it may not survive the 1990s. The branches to Bude and Padstow, which became known as the Southern’s ‘withered arm’, were closed in 1966 followed, in 1970, by the Barnstaple-Ilfracombe line with its notorious gradients. A few structures remain, together with stations now used as private dwellings; but with much of the track now overgrown and slowly reverting back to nature, this work offers a last glimpse of the former glory of the LSWR in the West of England.”

Foreword or introduction by Sir William McAlpine. Matching Pictorial boards. 221 pages.