Caledonian Railway Miscellany

320 A4 format pages, printed on heavyweight gloss paper, 339 B&W photos & two colour prints, all devoted to the staff, locomotives, places served, and the like on the Caledonian Railway, from the 1860s up to the Grouping in 1923.

The Caledonian was certainly the most charismatic of Britain's railways for most of the period covered, operating the most luxurious trains, largely hauled by locomotives by Drummond and McIntosh, in one case the train being the fastest in the world at that time. At a more basic level the Caledonian moved vast tonnages of coal every day.

But whilst many of the photographs touch on these things, this is a very intimate portrait of life on the Caledonian, and especially the people who worked on it, be it on the footplate, on the tracks, in the stations, or the Company's workshops.

The vast majority of the photographs were taken on glass-plate cameras and are pin-sharp as a result, and well worth looking at with a magnifying glass as there is so much detail in them.

Even if you are not specially a 'Caley' man (or woman), I have never before come across a book which illustrated so vividly what life was like on railway of the time.

A sheer delight and a book you will return to frequently for many years to come!

Hardback