South and West from Waterloo

This lovely new collection of photographs covers the area in which the London & South Western Railway operated, which subsequently became part of the Southern Railway in the Grouping in 1923 and then Southern Region under BR on Nationalisation. As well as the main line from London Waterloo to Basingstoke, Southampton and Bournemouth, the book covers other lines in Hampshire and Dorset, the Lymington branch, the Swanage branch, Weymouth, and the holiday routes via Salisbury into Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, with detours to the Lyme Regis branch, the Exmouth branch, Wadebridge and Torrington, terminating at the Atlantic Coast at IlfracombeThis book presents an evocative pictorial record of the end of the 1950s and the 1960s on South Western lines. The photographs record the whole railway scene of the time, including the stations - from busy main line stations to unspoilt branch line stops and rural halts - and detail of railway infrastructure such as signalling. It portrays a way of life on the railway that was soon to disappear with the end of steam and the closure of many lines in the 1960s.