The Great Western Railway

The first, The Great Western Railway: Volume One Paddington to Bristol (£16.99) by local authors Stanley C Jenkins and Martin Loader is an interesting collection of “then and now” photographs with accompanying explanations and a good introduction, for that 118 mile straight-line stretch of the GWR.

There is no index, but then the book just gets a green light at Paddington and ends with a red at Bristol Temple Meads, taking each station and line feature in turn.

The photos are fairly typically clichéd, so this book will be of interest mainly to rail enthusiasts, who may judge it a worthwhile addition to the huge number of books about the GWR.

Amberley’s second book is Bradshaw’s Guide To Brunel’s Railways, Volume 3: The Minor Lines (£14.99), revitalised by “Brunel expert” John Christopher, the third in a series of books based on Bradshaw’s Descriptive Railway Hand-Book of Great Britain and Ireland, originally published in 1863 and made famous again on TV by Michael Portillo. This volume focuses on the minor lines in the network, roughly scanning east to west, starting with the Slough to Windsor branch, then Didcot to Oxford, the “Old Worse and Worse” (the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton railway), and lines in Wiltshire and Somerset, before some sections in South Wales. There is a map from the 1920s showing the reader all the lines. Bradshaw describes points of interest and some history along each line.

Didcot gets hardly a mention, as it was only a junction in Bradshaw’s time, but John Christopher has restored present-day balance with three pages of well-annotated photos, mainly about Didcot Railway Centre.

Oxford (population 27,560) gets a thorough treatment, including civic buildings, churches and colleges. The quaint “objects of notice near Oxford” inevitably includes Blenheim. The OWW, now our Cotswold Line, starts with Adlestrop, which we all remember, and runs through stations to Wolverhampton via Worcester, famous for Elgar and Lea and Perrins’ sauce.

It is fascinating to see how places have changed, as the accompanying photos are a mixture of the ancient (mostly contributed by Stanley C Jenkins for the OWW) and the modern.

Fans of Portillo’s programme will find this second book particularly enjoyable.