Book Recommendations?

Just found my Bradford and Barton softcover book - Bankers and Pilots.

On the back is a whole host of footplate memories book:

LMS Locoman - Wellingborough and Willesden memories - George Bushell
St Philips Marsh - memories of an engine shed - D.J. Fleming
Diesels - a driver's reminiscences - L.C.Jacks
Nothing Like Steam - footplate work on the Southern Region - B.W. Aynsley
On the Footplate - memories of a GWR engineman - John Drayton
LNER Footplate Memories - 25 years on and off shed - Charles Meacher
A Locomotive Fireman looks back - Western Region recollections - Ray Gwilliam
North Eastern Engineman - fifty years of steam - P.W.B. Semmens
Through the Links at Crewe - firing and driving memories - 'Piccolo' Pete Johnson
When There Was Steam - memories of a W.R. Fireman - Tony Bartfield
Firing Days at Saltley - two volumes of collections - T.R. Essery
Steam Supreme - recollections of Scottish Railways - R.D. Stephen
Drawn By Steam - memories of a Tyseley locoman - L.C. JAcks
Ganger, Guard and Signalmen - working memories of the Settle-Carlisle line - Dick Fawcett
Buckjumpers, Gobblers and Clauds - on Great Eastern and LNER footplates - Jim Hill
Smoke and Steam - G.N. and LNER footplate memories - Harold Bonnett
Panniers and Prairies - more memories of a WR fireman

I've not read any of these yet - though would dearly love to...enough for a few xmas pressies this year methinks!

 

Thanks so much for the suggestions folks! My Christmas list is expanding all the time... ;-)

If anybody is interested in my suggestions...

I've almost finished Bill Harvey's book Sixty Years in Steam which is excellent. Very much get the impression he was a man who really knew his job well.

Thirty Years at Bricklayers Arms by Michael Jackman was very good, includes a couple of very interesting anecdotes about footplate crews' overalls freezing whilst in the cab during the winter of '47! Also tells a fascinating story about bombing on Cannon Street and moving trains out of the station with explosions around them. Can't say I envy those chaps...

Mendips Engineman by Peter Smith is a cracker-first hand experience of working on a very difficult line but with people like Donald Beale to show you the ropes. Well worth looking out for!

As I mentioned in a previous post-Yesterday Once More by Fred Rich is fascinating as it gives a good look at the pre-grouping days in Brighton. Bert Perryman's 'When Steam Was King at Brighton' is good too-looking very much at life in the works. Favourite story in that one was the young chap who almost lost a foot by trying to stop a runaway wheelset loose in the workshop!

Can't say I've ever been too interested in signalling, but as somebody else mentioned, Adrian Vaughan's trilogy are excellent-Signalman's Morning, Nightmare and Twilight. I almost allowed myself to become a Swindon fan! ;-)

Maybe we need to start the Natpres Bookclub?

 

I've just finished reading "Legends of the Glasgow & South Western Railway: In LMS Days" by D.L. Smith, which I found thoroughly enjoyable. I think D.L. Smith was not an Engineman himself, but certainly knew the GSWR and later the LMS system in South West Scotland very well.
I'm currently looking for "Tales of the Glasgow & South Western Railway" by the same author.

I must admit that I'm not a particular fan of Ossie Nock's work - He was a master craftsman of Locomotive performance and timing from an observational point of view, but was not a Locomotive engineer. I prefer to read the accounts of Locomotive engineers.

The ones I avoid are the various works by W.A. Tuplin. Tuplin was an observer, but his knowledge of Locomotive engineering was not particularly extensive (he was, however, a Mechanical Engineer, working at David Brown's). Some of his explanations and hypotheses are actually quite bizarre, and his books always seem to wander off into vague accounts, ostensibly given by footplatemen (but always un-named), of various footplate happenings. The truth of these is open to question, if other sources are correct. Also, there's usually a description of Tuplin's own solution to the Locomotive requirements of the Railway he was writing about at the time. Usually written in an altogether too-florid style for my liking, I find his works hard going.

Richard.

 

I agree with Richard about Dr Tuplin's books. Very much hard going, in particular his obsession with minute detail differences.

On a different tack, can I suggest that if you want to learn more about how the LNER's Thompson disliked, even hated, virtually anything to do with Gresley and his locomotives, you find a copy of Colonel Rogers' book "Thompson and Peppercorn". Quite revealing from accounts of people who were about at the time of the lengths Thompson went to destroy, discredit, and/or rebuild Gresley locomotives, and the universal horror at his choice of an original A1, no. 1470 "Great Northern", for a particularly disagreeable rebuild.

46118

 

I've read Col. Rogers' book, and have to agree that Edward Thompson comes across as being a thoroughly objectionably-tempered man at times, known for fits of spur-of-the-moment rage. I have yet to start Peter Grafton's "Edward Thompson of the LNER", but that's next on my list after I've finished Eric Mason's "The Lancashire & Yokshire Railway in the 20th. Century"... It will be interesting to see if Grafton's biography unearths a more humane personality in Thompson, or re-inforces the oft-held theory that he was a man with a psychosis where Gresley was concerned.

Richard.

 

I thoroughly enjoy Professor Tuplin's works. I find them refreshing and cut through a lot of the sentiment regarding British steam locomotive design, performance and their designers. I find he writes with a lot of clarity and precision!

 

It's always good to hear differing views... We're all different, and all have varying likes and dislikes. If you enjoy W.A. Tuplin's works, that's good!

Richard.

 

I've and enjoyed LNER Footplate Memories by Charles Meacher, which has been mentioned briefly, but I think he wrote others as well.

 

Is that a reprint of Bert Hooker's autobiography, Nine Elms Engineman (another Bradford Barton soft-back, now out of print)? The original book only takes you to the end of his days as a fireman. I guess a second volume, covering his experiences as a driver, was planned but never published, at least, not by BB.

 

It does seem wise to treat Tuplin's more extreme theories with considerable caution. The trouble is its tricky sometimes reading his books to work out whether what you are reading is one of his highly contested theories or something quite conventional. These links on steamindex are perhaps interesting.

http://www.steamindex.com/library/tuplin.htm

http://www.steamindex.com/jile/jile43.htm#pap528

Another writer/book I think you have to treat with great caution on the technical side is Gibson's "critical appreciation of GW locomotive design"