From charming rural branch lines to the glamourous Night Ferry, the accounts in Williams’ new book are sure to give a nostalgic thrill to anyone with the least longing for the lost age of steam.
Anecdotes detail eccentric lines where crews would stop services to pick mushrooms, then fry them on the firebox; luxurious carriages are lovingly detailed, producing a pang in anyone familiar with drab modern services.
Alas, at times the detail’s perhaps too loving for the general reader; anyone unaware of the functions of bogies and flanges, for whom even common engines’ names are unfamiliar, will not find Williams holding their hand and explaining. A shortage of illustrations doesn’t help, and the prose is marred by habits suggesting an over-enthusiastic amateur, in particular an addiction to the seldom-advisable description ‘famously’.
