Sir Nigel Gresley - The L.N.E.R.’s First C.M.E.

Simon , I would be interested in being able to pre-order. I subscribe to Strathwood’s email notifications solely to hear when your book is published, and receive 2 or 3 emails a day, which is a bit wearing.

 

The best thing you can do is email Strathwood and ask them to set up an order directly at this time, I’m afraid.

I think we are not far away from the book being printed. I’ll get in touch with Kevin over the weekend to confirm.

 

I note World Of Railways is carrying an interview with Kevin Derrick of Strathwood and it will feature in BRM:

https://www.world-of-railways.co.uk/wor/news/interview-of-the-month-strathwood/

 

I am now preparing research and papers towards the next book, which will be Oliver Bulleid.

However, it occurred to me that perhaps there was something I could do on Nat Pres first to give a bit more back.

I have been preparing bibliographies for a number of projects and a few posters here have reached out to me to ask for details of recommended reading. I am thinking a thread that might cover recommended reading for different subjects would be a jolly good idea.

E.g. separated out into railways and then sub divisions for different subjects.

What do we think? I am happy to share the names of the sources I have to that end for a start.

 

Generous offer. I would very much welcome that Simon. Especially if it could be a bit of a conversation about 'must reads'.

 

I will put something together this week.

Yes, I think it would be a good opportunity to discuss the "must reads" - and maybe the suggested reads versus the rest.

 

Perhaps other peoples recommendations might also be allowed. In my case a study of Haymarket as a working depot was enhanced by reading books written by Harry Knox - expensive perhaps but full of rare information that you only get from experience. Another interesting writer is Harry Friend - a Gateshead driver who wrote about the changeover period from steam to diesel; his writings appeared in Rail and I'm not sure if they were ever published in book form.

 

Oh that’s totally the intention. Give me a few hours and I will set up a thread.

I am thinking for future reference we should use the Harvard referencing system for creating the bibliography.

 

It's a long time since I had to wrap my head around academic referencing systems, and those I used as a historian were not the same as those used in other disciplines. An explanatory note, with worked example, might not go amiss.

 

One step ahead of you, but in agreement.

 

I am delighted to announce that the pre-order page for my next railway history book, Sir Nigel Gresley: The L.N.E.R.'s First C.M.E. is now live on the Strathwood Publishing website.

It is 460 pages long in a large format portrait copiously illustrated throughout with a wealth of archive colour and black & white photographs from the steam era, tables & graphs and printed on high-quality glossy art paper.

https://strathwood.co.uk/collection...n-e-r-s-first-c-m-e-launched-15-november-2023

 

Great. Have ordered the book. I can now unsubscribe from Strathwood notifications, not that they told me about the pre-order.

 

I believe the intention is to do more obvious promotion when the book is actually in stock.

 

Chapelon's 240P was built by 1925. Gresley's W1 was completed at the end of 1929. Chapelon's 240P was performing spectacularly before the W1 had even started being built. That's why Gresley and Bulleid visited Chapelon in France in 1925 and got ideas to improve the P2 and build the W1.

 

When I originally wrote that, I was not referring to the 240P.

The P2 wasn’t on the drawing board in 1925, and was not in development until 1932.

The W1 was on the drawing board from 1924 and went though multiple guises.

Arguably its genesis comes from approximately 10 years earlier with some of the compounds built for the GNR, and much of his fascination of high pressure boiler work (including that at ALCO).

 

I'm sorry, but some of this is flat out wrong. The 240Ps came into service in the early war years, contemporary with the 141Ps, some time after the 240.700 (later 240A), for which the first 4-8-0 rebuild was completed in 1932.

The prototype Chapelon Pacific on the other hand, 3566/231.701 was completed in 1929, after a protracted rebuild which was decided upon in late 1926, Chapelon having joined the PO from the PLM a year or so earlier. It wasn't duplicated for three years after completion and then the PO rebuilt a lot of Pacifics into improved Pacifics and 4-8-0s quite quickly.

(Dates sourced from Chapelon's own book)

 

Thanks for this. We need to review what’s been written in the Chapelon thread then.