More Tales of the Old Railwaymen

Aurum Press. Very Good/Very Good. 2002. First Edition, First Impression. Hard Cover. 185410862X Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Original cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks. Numerous photographs and illustrations. 192 pages clean and tight. This follow-up to "Tales of the Old Railwaymen" features ten more railwaymen - all in their eighties or even nineties - looking back on a lifetime working on the railways, with a wealth of tales. These are memories of a long-lost era before World War II, when you could still follow quaint professions like under-shunter, wielding your 7-foot-long wooden shunting pole, or French polisher - lovingly polishing the wood-veneered interiors of Great Western Railway carriages - and when railway clerks stood in rows at sloping wooden desks appending "Your humble, obedient servant" in quill-pen to the bottom of every company letter. Here are stories of the Midland and Great Northern Railway - known to its staff as the "Muddle and Get Nowhere Railway" - where drivers were not unknown to stop their trains near Sandringham to help themselves to the odd rabbit from a poacher's snare, and of young engine cleaners' pranks that involved blowing up the cabin stove by dropping a detonator down its chimney. And, above all, here is the subtle, hot and sweaty, and even loving art of firing and driving a great steam locomotive, with its glowing firebox, Yorkshire Hard steam coal and gleaming brass. .