An Illustrated History of Southern Coaches |
Mike King £35.00
Oxford Publishing Co, an imprint of Ian Allan Publishing, Riverdene Business Park, Molesey Road, Hersham, Surrey KT12 4RG
ISBN: ISBN 0 86093 570 1
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Unique among the 'Big Four' Grouping companies, the Southern Railway earned more from its passenger business than its freight, and electrification over much of its suburban and short distance routes effectively eliminated the need for any new builds of loco-hauled non-corridor stock. Mike King lucidly explains how and why the Southern formulated their policy on carriage production by taking into account what was inherited from the principle constituent companies and the fluctuating nature of the traffic worked. He delves into the subject of liveries and gives us a tantalising insight into the topic of train formations (something the Southern evidently had difficulty adhering to) all in one volume, the rump of which concentrates on carriages and utility vans built between 1923-1948 - give or take a couple of years or so. Although concentrating on passenger vehicles, historians of the Southern Railway will find this book gives a different perspective on a subject they may be reasonably familiar with already. The ever-changing demands on continental traffic being just one aspect of a topic the author allows us a glimpse of, another being the use and re-use of old frames for new stock - a policy of not quite make-do-and-mend but certainly an economical way of using perfectly adequate resources and a practice which was perpetrated as recently as the 1980s. Illustrated with photographs and dimensioned drawings (a vital ingredient for modellers), the book acknowledges the fact that if certain snippets of information are missing or outside the scope of this particular volume, reference as to where this can be found is forthcoming. This, together with a reasonably comprehensive bibliography, gives the book an integrity one would expect from a book of this ilk.
Roger Palmer
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