THE name Peter Gray is synonymous with evocative railway photography from the heady days of steam.
?West Country Branch Lines: A Colour Portfolio? (Ian Allan Publishing £14.99) follows in the wake of the author?s previously acclaimed colour albums featuring the railways of Devon and Cornwall. While his other publications focussed on the main lines of both the Southern and Western Region here he turns his attention to the branches.
And so we embark on an armchair journey of secondary routes commencing in Gloucestershire and travelling westward through Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.
While now extinct, or at best a shadow of their former selves, many of these branchlines were once well-travelled routes bringing visitors to their coastal directions.
There was a seasonal influx of bucket-and-spade passengers migrating to the guest houses and hotels of such magnetic destinations as Torbay, Kingswear, Ilfracombe, Looe, Newquay and St Ives.
Peter Gray, who lives in Torquay, also turns his camera inland to visit the former GWR station of Tavistock South before moving along the line to Lydford station where a Launceston train is waiting to depart behind a GWR 2-6-2T 4555 which later survived into preservation.
A visit to the Callington branch features steam at Bere Alston and Gunnislake. Still in Southern country, a Standard tank meanders across open land towards Maddaford with a two coach Okehampton to Wadebridge train while Dartmoor rises majestically in the background.
The long periods of calm interspersed with bouts of sudden activity as trains converged on Halwill Junction was a powerful attraction for every railway photographer ? including Mr Gray!
Halwill was the link between the line from Okehampton and routes from Torrington, Bude and Padstow. For a country station it seemed, at given periods, to offer the bucolic equivalent of the bustle of Clapham Junction.
The author?s picture, taken in the autumn of 1964, shows three steam locomotives having arrived with their trains and a diesel multiple unit already in the bay platform.
In what is a stunning collection of colour photographs Peter Gray?s engaging images embrace a rich array of locomotive classes from Bulleid Light Pacifics, Castles and Manors to the delightful smaller locomotives that once held sway on the secondary routes.
While the trains are the focal point in the pictures the images also offer fascinating visual asides recalling the dress styles of the early sixties and long gone station furniture.
Here is a delightful reminder of the halcyon days of steam ? an era when the rural railway offered a profusion of variety.
l A book that gives an intriguing slant on our railways is Railway Stations From the Air by Aerofilms (Ian Allan Publishing £35).
For more than 80 years the Aerofilms company has been recording Britain?s changing landscape, both urban and rural, from the air.
Within the collection are countless images that show to good effect the railway industry ? forming an excellent reference to historians and railway modellers to the evolving relationship between the railway and its surroundings.
This publication features some 120 different locations nationwide from Dingwall and Lossiemouth in the north to Brixham and Ashburton in the southwest.
The stations have been selected with a bias towards branch line termini or attractive locations.
Ground level photographs complement each of the aerial photographs to show the railway infrastructure in more detail. In addition to aerial and ground level photographs the book also includes information about the lines? history and much else.
l For fans of the pedigree locomotives of the former LMS system two photographic albums from Ian Allan Publishing are just the ticket.
The Power of the Duchesses by D Jenkinson features black and white and colour images of this impressive class of pacific. Originally designed as the ?Coronation? class they first appeared in 1937 with the first examples being streamlined. Withdrawal of the class began in 1952 with the last examples being withdrawn in 1964.
In the same series The Power of the Jubilees by G Morrison and J Whiteley does similar pictorial justice to this sleek Stanier designed class of 4-6-0 express locomotive.