Press Reviews
Transport Treasury Publishing
Press reviews of our books
Our books are frequently reviewed by acclaimed transport magazines, such as Steam World and Railway Magazine.
Western Times – Issue 1 review
The contents comprise a varied selection of illustrated written articles, together with purely pictorial features supported by extended captios. Photos are, for the most part, generous in the sizeof their reproduction, with printing to a good standard.
This is the first edition of a new bi-annual publication that forms part of the Transport Treasury collection of titles. The two editors of this periodical are seeking to record the ‘everyday reality of the Great Western Railway – not just the popular portrayal of the former railway company, with its “…glittering Castles, Centenary stock [and] Paddington to Bristol race track”.
The historical scope of the title extends from 1835 right through to 1977, this latter date being cited as representing the end of ‘Western individualism’ with the withdrawal from ordinary service during that year of the last remaining D1000 class diesel-hydraulic locomotive. Aspects relating primarily to the preservation of GWR artefacts fall outside of the title’s remit, the authors regarding this topic to have been covered comprehensively elsewhere.
The contents comprise a varied selection of illustrated written articles, together with purely pictorial features supported by extended captions. Photos are, for the most part, generous in the size of their reproduction, with printing to a good standard. The images – a mix of colour and black & white views – are of good quality and include examples from well-known cameramen such as RC Riley and P W Gray.
Items of ephemera such as tickets and timetables have also been included where appropriate. Articles published in this debut issue that may be of particular interest to modellers include features on; the Newton Abbot breakdown train; passenger divisions and suburban sets; a study of GWR platform barrows; and station diagrams, including Wargrave, Shiplake and Henley-on-Thames. The second edition of Western Times is planned for publication towards the end of 2021.
Devon resident Jeffery Grayer has trawled through the Transport Treasury archive to produce a wealth of black-and-white images in Kent, East and West Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall, depicting motive power from West Country, Battle of Britain and Merchant Navy Pacifics to 0-6-0 and 0-4-4 tank engines.
I’ve donned my increasingly-used rose-coloured spectacles, writes Geoff Courtney, and all I can see when recalling coastal holidays in the south is constant sunshine, ice creams that tasted like nowhere else, and the absence of the word ‘stress’ in anyone’s lexicon. And, until July 9, 1967, steam, if you were lucky and in the right place.
It was on that summer Sunday that the Southern Region ran its last-ever steam train, a mixed van working out of Bournemouth hauled by Standard Class 3MT 2-6-0 No. 77014 of Guildford (70C), while earlier that day Merchant Navy No.35030 Elder Dempster Lines had drawn into Waterloo from Weymouth with the region’s last steam-hauled passenger train.
Devon resident Jeffery Grayer has trawled through the Transport Treasury archive to produce a wealth of black-and-white images in Kent, East and West Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall, depicting motive power from West Country, Battle of Britain and Merchant Navy Pacifics to 0-6-0 and 0-4-4 tank engines. There’s also sea, of course, and one appealing image is of a handsome Standard Vanguard estate car towing a caravan off an Isle of Wight ferry at Lymington Pier station on August 26, 1954, under the watchful eyes of several people, including two fascinated youngsters.
Described by its compiler as an “unashamedly nostalgic collection.” the book also acts as a travel guide, quoting descriptions of the resorts from Holiday Haunts, published by BR in 1958. Thus, the guide says that if Bournemouth could be said to approach perfection, “nature supplied most of it, skilfully and felicitously aided and abetted by the local authorities’ while Swanage is “favoured by nature and beloved by residents and visitors alike” and Brighton is “the focal point of that delectable part of southern England known as the sunny south.” With that last description come stunning photograph from Howard Place above Brighton shed on July 1, 1951, showing the depot absolutely awash with steam engines.
There is a twist to the cover photo, which depicts Battle of Britain No. 34089 602 Squadron at Ramsgate on February 2, 1952, having arrived with a train from London. The Pacific had been loaned to the Eastern Region the previous November to provide cover for the new Britannias that had been taken out of service for modifications following complaints from drivers that the driving wheels were shifting on their axles. During its stay north of the Thames, it was logged on the Down ‘Norfolkman’ Liverpool Street to Norwich express on November 5.
The Bulleid Pacific was recorded as having been returned to the Southern Region in January 1952. But the cover image taken a month later shows it still carrying a 30A (Stratford) shedplate. Perhaps the men at Ramsgate (74B), to which shed the locomotive had returned, were happy reminding themselves of the time they helped out their east London fellow railwaymen.
British Railway Modernisation-Era DMUs review in The Railway Magazine
Few people know more about first generation BR diesel multiple units and railcars than Evan Green-Hughes.
Few people know more about first generation BR diesel multiple units and railcars than Evan Green-Hughes. A prominent figure in the DMU preservation movement, he has been involved with the rescue and restoration of many DMU vehicles. And while locomotives often take the headlines, it is old DMUS that tend to give us the biggest hit of nostalgia when we visit a heritage railway.
The author has tapped into that with a fascinating selection of monochrome images from the early years of the BR Modernisation era units. Organised as a photo album, with images reproduced at a decent size throughout, the book also features detailed captions, offering historical context and highlighting important details of this diverse family of trains. Chapters are organised into broad topics, from the early prototype units and ‘Lightweight’ sets, through BR and contractor-built sets, Cross-Country, Suburban, Low Density units and single railcars, plus accidents and depot views.
Most images date from the BR green era, depicting a long-lost railway of steam-age infrastructure, locations and lines that closed decades ago, despite the success of DMUs in attracting passengers back in the postwar years.
With so many different classes to cover, each design only gets brief attention, but these build up to give a broader, overall picture of the diverse designs and the duties they worked. While many of the designs live on thanks to the efforts of preservationists, some have been lost forever and this album provides a welcome reminder of popular types such as the Swindon-built Cross-Country and Inter-City units.
Somerset & Dorset Demise review in Steam World
Credit is due to the compiler of course for his selections and immensely detailed captions.
Railwayman Derek Fear didn’t have to worry about depot permits – as a railwayman, he could wander around Bath Green Park at will, and he had the foresight to capture the final years of the Somerset & Dorset Railway on colour slides.
Although the sad story of the S&D has been re-run many times, there is always room for a collection of unpublished images, and this study from the Transport Treasury archive certainly comes up to the mark.
Credit is due to the compiler of course for his selections and immensely detailed captions. There are views of Green Park’s ‘Jinty’ 0-6-0T No. 47276, painted green for its (35-second) role in the 1965 comedy film ‘The Wrong Box’, and at Bristol Barrow Road where a truly filthy ‘9F”‘ 2-10-0 No. 92243 stands disgraced after failing prior to working the LCGB’s ‘Mendip Merchantman’ railtour.
In the final months, the dreadful state of most of the surviving engines is interrupted by those that were polished up for the final railtours, although it did them little good because they still ended up in the scrap lines with all the others.
The reviewer’s beloved BR Standard Class 5 4-6-0 No. 73001 (with odd Doncaster and Derby front footsteps) is amongst them, dumped lifeless at the side of Green Park shed on January 6 1966, a few days after its final Bath-Bournemouth turn when it was reported as sounding very “off”. This book is a true tonic for jaded S&D devotees.
The Twilight Years of Taiwan’s Sugar Railways review in the Taipei Times
Taiwan in Time: Chasing the last sugar trains
Through firsthand accounts and evocative images taken between 1994 and 1998, Dafydd Fell and Wang Hsiang paint a detailed picture of Taiwan’s sugar railway during its twilight years in this excellent book
By Han Cheung / Contributing Reporter
Of the more than 3,000km of sugar railway that once criss-crossed central and southern Taiwan, just 16.1km remain in operation today.
By the time Dafydd Fell began photographing the network in earnest in 1994, it was already well past its heyday. The system had been significantly cut back, leaving behind abandoned stations, rusting rolling stock and crumbling facilities.
This reduction continued during the five years of his documentation, adding urgency to his task. As passenger services had already ceased by then, Fell had to wait for the sugarcane harvest season each year, which typically ran from November to March or April. Many trips to remote locations required overnight stays. He would ride out on his bicycle early in the morning and sometimes wait in the bushes for hours — and on one occasion he was nearly arrested.
The evocative photographs appear in Fell’s latest book, The Twilight Years of Taiwan’s Sugar Railways, which offers a fascinating glimpse into a vanished past and rural Taiwan in the 1990s. Alongside the technical details that will surely delight railway enthusiasts, Fell weaves in his personal experiences, observations of Taiwanese society and broader historical context. Further depth is provided by co-author Wang Hsiang (王翔), a fellow railway documentarian who has conducted interviews with more than 200 retired sugar rail workers and their families.
“Taiwan in Time” ran a two-part series in 2024 about the rise and fall of Taiwan’s sugar railways, (“The sugar express,” Sept. 8, 2024 and “The sugar rail reaches its peak and goes downhill,” Sept. 15, 2024). These diminutive trains were used not just by the sugar plants but also transported other goods and thousands of passengers per day from localities that the Taiwan Railways Administration did not reach.
Due to the mechanization of sugar harvesting and the advent of road transport, the network began to decline in the 1970s. Passenger services ended in 1982. The series devoted only one paragraph to the 1990s; Fell and Wang’s book fills in this often overlooked chapter with immense detail.
‘EXTRAORDINARY’ RAILWAY
Established in 1907 during the Japanese colonial era, the majority of Taiwan’s sugar railways ran on a narrow 762mm-gauge railroad. The diminutive trains were nicknamed wufenche (五分車), literally “half-cars,” a reference to them being roughly half the size of the standard gauge railway, or that they ran at about half the speed of regular trains.
Fell describes it as “arguably the world’s most extraordinary industrial railway network,” noting that it quickly exceeded its original purpose of transporting sugarcane a short distance from the fields to the mills. Within a few years after its inception, the lines began carrying commercial freight and passengers, eventually evolving into a dense, interconnected network that spanned the western plans from Taichung to Pingtung.
During the Japanese era, the individual lines linked up to the Taiwan Railway Administration’s (TRA) Western Trunk Line, but not to each other. After World War II, the government nationalized the sugar industry and built the South North Line (SNL), also for military purposes. Completed in 1953, it marked the beginning of the sugar railway’s glory days.
At its peak, the sugar railway surpassed the reach of the TRA — boasting a larger fleet and more daily train movements during sugar season, Fell writes. It was also technically more advanced in many ways. He also found impressive the diversity of the freight, and how every plant had distinctive features and modes of operation.
Natural disasters, plant closures and changes in transportation gradually reduced the SNL. It’s interesting to see in the photos brightly-colored cars passing directly through towns along the streets; but as urbanization increased, accidents became more frequent, prompting calls to remove the tracks. By the time Fell began photographing in 1994, the SNL was a shadow of its former self; by 1998 it had completely shut down.
FIRST DISCOVERY
Fell first stumbled upon the sugar railway by accident while riding a motorcycle near Kaohsiung during his year abroad as a language student in 1990; he did not know what he photographed then. There was soon a personal connection, as his future father-in-law was the director of the Beigang Sugar Factory. His commute passed the Qiaotou sugar mill, which he saw suddenly come to life during sugarcane season in November 1994. This sparked his determination to photograph as much as he could; despite there still being 1,552km of running track at that time, the railway was rapidly disappearing.
By the time Wang became enamored with the sugar railway, only a single industry line remained. His first expedition was in high school, searching for traces of the tracks that his maternal grandmother recalled once ran through her hometown of Xiancaopu (仙草埔) in Tainan. During his journeys, he met many retired railway workers, several of whom later passed away, compelling him to begin conducting interviews and uncovering information not recorded in the archives.
The book is presented from Fell’s perspective, organized chronologically by harvest season, showing his growing knowledge of the railway and the evolving methods and strategies he used for travel and documentation. Under each image, he provides detailed captions outlining the specifications and functions of the line, station or vehicle, railroad operations such as route signs and signalling, and the design and connectivity of the routes. He also records the various accidents that occurred along the network. Personal anecdotes — from missed classes and angry security guards to burst tires — along with reflections on the most memorable trips and railway features, bring warmth to the photographs.
LOSS AND LAMENT
Fell also discusses the industry and railway’s wider social role, as it provided vital services for residents, from transportation to employment. The Dalin Sugar Factory even offered rides in open cane wagons for relatives visiting military conscripts at a nearby base. Other issues such as politics, pollution and economic decline are also touched upon.
Wang’s interviews shed light on the challenges of day-to-day operations with fascinating anecdotes such as a train plowing into a plane, which routes were notoriously perilous and which crews were disliked for their rowdy, drunken behavior.
Since photos are the focus of the book and the main text is in the captions, the narrative can at times feel disjointed, especially given the sheer number of stations and lines featured. It’s hard to keep track, even with maps as reference. Still, it provides a vivid general and comprehensive picture, conveying the scope of the railway and why it remains beloved.
Throughout the book, there’s a sense of loss and lament as Fell’s documentation was during years of great change. He notes missed opportunities to better preserve it or repurpose it into passenger lines, but instead “poor planning has led to widespread destruction of the country’s rich industrial railway heritage.”
Although some structures remain and five short tourist lines operate today, more tracks have been covered up and converted into cycling paths. Enthusiasts are not optimistic, and Fell implores readers to visit what’s left before it’s too late.
The legacy of renowned photographers on your doorstep
With thousands of satisfied customers across our publishing and photography branches, Transport Treasury leads the way in immortalising the history of rail and road transport. Every caption includes a catalogue code, allowing you to order the images in a format of your choice – from digital, through a postcard, all the way to A3-sized prints.
Shop Books
- Shipped in 24 Hours
- No Quibble Returns
“Saving the nation’s pictorial heritage”
The Railway Magazine, September 2008
Buy Books
Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Get all the latest information on Events, Sales and Offers.