Steam in the East Midlands and Lincolnshire

The photographs in this volume of Steam in the East Midlands and Lincolnshire cover an area beginning at Derby Headquarters of the Midland following the Midland line to Nottingham and its environs, pausing at locations en-route.Trent, in the southeast corner of Derbyshire, was a station without a town, its position and importance as an interchange junction for five main railway routes, through the plethora of junctions, served London, Birmingham, Derby, Chesterfield and Nottingham. Remarkably enough, trains could depart from opposite platforms, in opposite directions but to the same destination. There was also the constant procession of coal trains off the Erewash Valley line from the nearby Toton marashaling yard.Also featured is the Derby Friargate to Nottingham Victoria, the Great Northern Railway line, and the former Great Central route, along with scenes at Saxby where the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway, mainly single track line diverged, running via Bourne to East Coast resorts. Finally, there are scenes at Grantham, where changing engines in 1954 was the order of the day. Locomotives are photographed at work, at rest and awaiting a call for scrap.

Auteur

Born in 1941 at Breaston, Roderick always wanted to be an engine driver. His dreams were dashed in 1956 when a medical at Derby revealed he had not attained the required colour vision level and was therefore unsuitable for the footplate grade. However, in 1957 he began a thirty-nine year career in trent as a junior porter, and later moved to Trent station as a Telegraph Clerk. After six years, he moved to Leicester and then Nottingham, where he was 'in Control for five years'. In 1978 Roderick moved to Plymouth as Movements Supervisor at Laira T&RSD, where it proved an interesting final eighteen years in the South West.