In the original dustsheet. Binding the same as the dustsheet.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

The Lost Joy of Railways will transport you back to the 1950s and 1960s, with this nostalgic look at Britain’s railways in their glory days. Packed with hundreds of never-before-seen photographs, journey logs, trainspotting notebooks and ephemera, The Lost Joy of Railways is a vivid recollection of the whole atmosphere of the railways during that glorious era when we were trainspotters.

Divided into the six regions of British railways, each chapter documents the favourite stations and engine sheds that were a magnet to the spotter…

Western Region – Top spots include London Paddington, Oxford, Gloucester and Bristol Temple Meads, with a section on the miracles of Barry Scrapyard. Southern Region – Top spots include London Waterloo, Bournemouth, Exeter Central and Salisbury, with a section on Eastleigh Works which started life in 1891.

Eastern Region – Top Spots include London Liverpool Street, London King’s Cross and Doncaster, with a section on The Great Escape; only 50 former LNER steam locos have been saved for preservation, far fewer than any other ‘big four’ railway companies.

London Midland Region – Top spots include London Euston, London St Pancras, Birmingham New Street, Liverpool and Carlisle, with a section on The Great Escape discussing the preserved locos from the LMS.

North Eastern Region – Top spots include Leeds, York, Darlington and Newcastle, with a section on BR Standard Locos.

Scottish Region – Top spots include Glasgow central, Edinburgh Princes Street, Edinburgh Waverley and Perth, with a section on BR Diesel and Electric Locos.

Records of trainspotting trips and the final days of steam are also included, along with feature pages on famous railway photographers, schedules, works, scrap yards, dastardly diesels and essential clothing, equipment and survival kit for spotters. The Lost Joy of Railways is a time machine that will carry you back to those innocent, glorious years when railways were still an integral part of our everyday lives.

Review: Important to understand what this book is and what it isn’t. It is not a comprehensive review of steam locomotives, a history or even a photo catalogue. It is about train spotting as a hobby and, to a lesser extent, about the luck of the draw concerning which locomotives survived the purge and were preserved. It is a collection of images, organised by regions and by locomotive depots (sheds); a sort of scrapbook. Therefore, it illustrates well how a trainspotter might have organised his own hobby if he had been serious enough to travel around the country collecting his numbers and carrying a camera. The book is very nicely produced and the quality of the photographs is surprisingly high. It will mostly appeal to members of the authors generation who shared the hobby at the time.