Shire Library

A beautifully illustrated guide to the trains that took over as the Age of Steam was drawing to a close in the 1950s. Ideal for anyone interested in Britain''s railways and the evolution of rail transport.

After the Second World War, the drive for the modernisation of Britain''s railways ushered in a new breed of locomotive: the Diesel. Diesel-powered trains had been around for some time, but faced with a coal crisis and the Clean Air Act in the 1950s, it was seen as a part of the solution for British Rail.

This beautifully illustrated book, written by an expert on rail history, charts the rise and decline of Britain''s diesel-powered locomotives. It covers a period of great change and experimentation, where the iconic steam engines that had dominated for a century were replaced by a series of modern diesels including the ill-fated ''Westerns'' and the more successful ''Deltics''.