Steam Memories No 3 - A 1950s North Eastern Region Miscellany

Steam Memories No 3 - A 1950s North Eastern Region Miscellany

Steam still reigned supreme on British Railways in the 1950s and the North Eastern Region was host to a wide variety of different classes. There were hundreds of locomotives from the pre-grouping era of the North Eastern Railway operating alongside LNER designs of Sir Nigel Gresley and his successors, Edward Thompson and Arthur H Peppercorn. They were joined by BR Standard types, War Department 2-8-0s and some classes of LMSR origin. Early examples of diesel and electric traction could also be seen, the NER having been an Edwardian pioneer of the latter. The northeast of England was also home to many industrial lines, especially NCB concerns, with their own, sometimes unique motive power.

More than thirty different types of locomotive can be found in these pages, many of which would be gone by the dawn of the 1960s. What sets Mr Williams’ photography apart was his enthusiasm for capturing other aspects of the railway on film, such as unusual signals, infrastructure and archaic rolling stock, and images of these are scattered among the locomotive shots.

This unique photographic archive takes us back seventy years to the end of an era, to the industrial landscape of northeast England which had hardly changed in a century, and the railways that served it.

Hardback, 80 pages, 82 colour photographs