Irish railways since 1916

Michael H C Baker

Littlehampton Book Services Ltd.

Although much has been written about London's trams over the past 50 years, on the trams themselves, the routes and the overall tramway network, there has been relatively little published on what it was actually like to use and work the trams on a daily basis.  Michael Baker grew up in London during the final years of the London tramway system and much of the travelling undertaken during his formative years was on board the surviving network, for him the most normal and favoured form of transport available. This book reveals his abiding love for the trams that were so much a part of his life growing up, until in 1951, when he was still in his teens, the trams were taken away. Based upon his own personal memories of using the trams, this book is also based largely on personal testimony from those who worked on the system over its final years of operation and those who travelled on it daily.  The result is a highly entertaining portrait of one of the country's greatest transport networks and is illustrated with a lovely selection of evocative photographs to stir many happy memories.

Lost Voices of the London Tram

Ian Allan Publishing Ltd

"The Great Southern Railways Company came into existence on 1 January 1925, being a not altogether willing but a financially necessary amalgamation of no less than 26 concerns. Twenty years later, in 1945, CIE (Corias Iompair Eireann) was created out of the Great Southern and the Dublin United Transport Company. In 1950 CIE was nationalised, bringing together all forms of public road, rail and water transport operating entirely within the Republic of Ireland. CIE tentatively embarked on dieselisation in 1947 with five shunters, followed by two main line locomotives in 1951. Later that year the first railcars arrived and the end of steam was at hand. There had been some steam railcars in the 1920's as well as the famous Drumm battery electrics of the 1930's, but the AEC/Park Royal diesel cars, based closely on those introduced by the GNR in 1950, were the first real break-through. In 1955 wholesale delivery of diesel-electric locomotives began, first from England - principally Crossley-engined Metropolitan Vickers - then some shunters from Germany, and finally the highly successful General Motors Bo-Bos from the USA. 'Maeve', the most famous and most powerful locomotive - steam or diesel - ever to run in Ireland, worked her last train in 1958 and was subsequently moved to the Transport Museum in Belfast. Steam working on CIE ended altogether in 1965, other than for occasional outings by preserved engines, chiefly those belonging to the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland." (from the Introduction to 'The Railways of the Republic of Ireland: A Pictorial Survey of the G.S.R. and C.I.E., 1925-75')

The Railways of the Republic of Ireland: A Pictorial Survey of the G.S.R. and C.I.E., 1925-75

D.Bradford Barton

Ireland's Railways Past and Present (British Railways Past and Present) (British Railways Past & Present) (v. 1)

History

Europe

Past & Present Publishing Ltd

Irish Railways Past & Present: County Dublin (The Railways of Ireland Past & Present)

Silver Link Publishing Ltd.

Dublin (Railways of Ireland Past & Present)

Think of Sussex Buses and almost automatically that means Southdown: think of locations and that means Brighton. Well, you will find plenty of pictures of both within these pages, but there is much more besides. Although Southdown was far and away the biggest cheese in Sussex, three other BET concerns, Aldershot and District, Maidstone and District and East Kent, worked into the county, as did London Transport. Trams operated beside the seaside in Brighton and Hastings, their systems and the little four-wheel cars which operated them being replaced by almost silent, streamlined (well perhaps not the early Hastings ones) trolleybuses in the 1930s. Eastbourne was the world's first municipality to operate motorbuses  -  applause please. Brighton, ah, Brighton deserves a new chapter. Not only did Brighton Corporation operate trams, then trolleybuses and motor buses, but the town was also served by Thomas Tilling's Brighton and Hove and District which was eventually swallowed up by Southdown. In NBC days, the Corporation misguidedly adopted a pale blue livery, which like the NBC green did not wear very well. Privatisation saw the emergence of the Brighton, Hove Bus and Coach Company which would by the mid first decade of the 21st century become the jewel in the crown that Southdown had once assumed. With routes spreading far beyond the City of Brighton and Hove, some of them once operated by Southdown, notably to Lewes, Tunbridge Wells, and Eastbourne, a livery of basically red and pale cream and thus recalling days gone by, but designed by Ray Stenning's Best Impressions and thus totally of the 21st century, buses named after notable Brighton inhabitants, ranging from world famous statesmen and stars of stage, screen and radio, to good men and women who have improved in various ways the lives of their fellow citizens, all part of an imaginative publicity drive which has seen the graph of the growth of bus travel in the city climb steadily and reap a number of well deserved awards.

Sussex Past & Present

Silver Link Publishing

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Books by Michael H C Baker