'Fifty Years Of The Westerns' by David Cross

[Rugd1022]

That nice man from the GPO has just delivered a copy of this new Wizzo book from Ian Allan...

 

A new all colour album of eighty pages, it's predominately blue era stuff but it has a few very nice early shots of green and maroon Thousands, plus D1000 in Desert Sand posing outside A Shop at Swindon. Skimming through I recognised seven photos which have been published before icluding some of Ivo Peters' images, one of which is misidentified as D1071 Western Renown at Sydney Gardens, Bath, when it's actually D1064 Western Regent, this doesn't detract from the photo though which for me has always been one of his best 'modern era' shots. The usual familiar WR locations are covered, the Seawall gets good coverage as you'd expect in such a book, as does the Westbury area with plenty of lower quadrant semaphores on show. There are also about ten preservation era photos towards the back.

 

A 1973 shot taken by the author of D1047 at Exeter is remarkably similar to one of Roger Geach's... they must have been standing next to each other on the day! The stand out shot for me is a sparkling D1047 in maroon en route from Crewe Works to Oxley for acceptance in the Winter snows of February 1963, a lovely image which looks like it was taken on a preserved line.

 

Overall a nice book, but it would have been nice to have seen more early period stuff and there are no shots of the seven blue / small yellow panel locos.... still recommended though .