Narrow Gauge Album 1965-1985 in Colour

Michael Whitehouse

Lightmoor Publishing 2019  £25

Narrow gauge railways in the British Isles following the Second World War were either on their last legs, had already closed or were about to. The passenger narrow gauge lines in Ireland had all gone by the 1960s and those in Scotland had perished long before. Preservation, in the form of voluntary run railways, was in its infancy. The Talyllyn was the first, followed closely by the Festiniog Railway, although the majority of the survivors were still commercially run, the Snowdon Mountain, Vale of Rheidol and Isle of Man being examples. This book covers the changing years of the narrow gauge. In Wales, a metamorphosis was underway. Narrow gauge lines were being exhumed or improved to carry an increasing number of tourists. In England, there remained a few industrial concerns, such as the sand line in Leighton Buzzard, which either bequeathed their steam locomotives or provided access to preservationists. In order for these narrow gauge lines to survive at all and then move forward to enter the tourist industry and be accepted as economic generators, they had to change, sometimes rapidly and often without much thought to past heritage; that would come later. We chart their progress, in glorious colour pictures, as the railways hastened to get themselves fit enough to carry larger numbers of passengers than had perhaps ever been dreamed of.