The South Western main line is one of the most important railways in the south of England. Colin Boocock spent a significant part of his life living on and researching the history of this centre of railway operations in the South and South West of England. This book looks at the network over the last seventy years, from Nationalisation through to the present day. The system provides a vital link between the South and South West of Britain and London, operating a mixture of commuter services and important main line passenger trains. Throughout the seventy years covered in this book, the South Western network also had significant flows of heavy freight between the capital and Southampton Docks and the West Country. Today there are still frequent, well-loaded container trains from Southampton to the Midlands and the North via Basingstoke and Reading. This volume also covers the transitions from steam traction to diesel and electric in stages from the 1950s through to the late 1980s. AUTHOR: Colin Boocock is a retired railway officer whose career, mainly in mechanical and electrical engineering, spanned forty-one years full-time work on British Railways and Railtrack and a further twelve or so years in part-time consultancy. His career started at Eastleigh Works on the Southern Region, where he was trained in the late 1950s, later going on to work at railway establishments in all of BR’s original Regions including spells in Scotland and Wales, mainly managing the maintenance of locomotives and rolling stock at a senior level. As a life-long railway enthusiast, he travelled widely on Britain’s railways but always had a keen interest in the developments on what he still regards as his ‘home railway’, the South Western. This volume describes in some detail the railway he grew up on: the South Western, its main lines, key railway centres and the fascinating myriad of secondary routes and branch lines.
250 colour and b/w illustrations
