Southern Electrics: The Second Generation

The Southern Electric system was a self contained, roughly triangular area of lines with its apex in London and its base running along the south coast from Kent to Weymouth. It also made a couple of forays into Middlesex. Here, in some 196 previously unpublished colour photographs, is shown not only the variety of unit types that were around during the first twenty years since railway privatisation, but also the fact that on some services, Southern Electric types have penetrated the Home Counties whilst others have migrated to join their ranks.
AUTHOR: Roger Palmer’s parents gave him a Brownie Cresta camera when he was 14 and two years later, when he had started full time work he bought a 35mm Agfa Silette which itself was replaced by an SLR Pentax some ten years later. From the 1970s he travelled extensively over the British rail system accumulating photographs all the while and for a brief period from the mid-1990s he wrote book reviews for the magazine British Railway Modelling. In 2006 his first book Southern Electric Slam Door Stock - The Final Years was published. His photographic activities continue, and whilst highly sceptical about rail privatisation, believes that the post-Nationalised railway will be a golden era for railway historians of the future as train operating company’s franchises come and go and the units themselves are in a constant state of flux due to changes in liveries and various upgrades and refurbishments. 194 colour photographs and system maps