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Irwell Press - The Green - Blue Transition


John M Upton

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Just found this in WHSmiths, from Irwell Press, publishers of British Railways Illustrated and Railway Bylines.

 

Nice glossy perfect bound magazine, supposedly exclusive to WHSmiths although their last similar title was also available through the likes of Ian Allan etc.  Lovely collection of colour photos of the ECML from King's Cross up to Bewick-on-Tweed from the early 1960's to the early or mid 1980's.

 

Some may say the price is a little steep for what is a glorified magazine but it was an instant purchase for me and well worth the money.  Not sure how many of the images have been seen before elsewhere but the reproduction is excellent.

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I had a look through it recently - very good pedigree of course as it is authored by Tony Wright and concentrates on the ECML which he knows more about that many folk so it is authoritatively captioned.  Not quite my part of the railway and not enough green for my taste so I didn't buy it but that's just me and my railway interest; if you're interested in transition era pictures and/or the ECML at that time you'd be daft to leave it on the shelf.

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Just found this in WHSmiths, from Irwell Press, publishers of British Railways Illustrated and Railway Bylines.

 

Nice glossy perfect bound magazine, supposedly exclusive to WHSmiths although their last similar title was also available through the likes of Ian Allan etc.  Lovely collection of colour photos of the ECML from King's Cross up to Bewick-on-Tweed from the early 1960's to the early or mid 1980's.

 

Some may say the price is a little steep for what is a glorified magazine but it was an instant purchase for me and well worth the money.  Not sure how many of the images have been seen before elsewhere but the reproduction is excellent.

Many thanks for the positive comments. 

 

The reproduction is far better than in my previous Into the Blue, and I don't think there are any jumbled captions.

 

Very few of the images have been published before. The front cover has already been used by Irwell and a couple of mine have appeared in BRM and on a DVD jacket, but that's all as far as I know. Certainly, the Initial Photos images have not been seen before in print (with the exception of the front cover).

 

There are several more in the pipeline for next year, featuring Scottish subjects, the West of England and the English Midlands. What's interesting is how the age demographic for purchasing railway books is changing. The earliest pictures in the book date from over 55 years ago, and my earliest picture in it was taken 50 years and one month ago, when I was a callow 19 year old. The number of those who buy (or used to) thousands of steam-era books is diminishing with each passing year, and post-steam subjects are becoming more popular as the next generation indulges in its own brand of nostalgia. 

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I had a browse but didn't buy. The impression I got was of a nice range of green diesels but that the blue ones mainly dated from post TOPs period . Deltics with marker lights and Air Con mk2s. I was expecting a true blue/green transition , green diesels with full yellow ends, blue diesels with D numbers and a mix of blue/grey and maroon coaching stock, a very under exposed period in magazines.

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