BRITISH RAILWAY (BR)

Latest in 'The Book Of' series, charting in depth the life and times of the 172 Class 5 4-6-0s in the 73000 series, the popular BR successors to the LMS 'Black 5s'. Extensive and detailed coverage extends to the variants of course; the Caprottis, the air pump fitted examples and so on. The exceptional range of photographs show both the detailed engineering and construction of the 73000s and the varied work they carried out, across all the Regions of BR. They were both workhorse and warhorse on BR and constituted one of the most numerous and successful of the Standard designs.

Over the last seven years or so the Irwell Press 'Book Of' locomotive studies has covered many of the principal express classes. Some have been reprinted while others are out of print; others remain to be reprinted. The idea of this Pictorial Accompaniment is to serve up a wider range of photographs for the particular classes covered and this first one, for the Britannias will, it is hoped, presage further efforts directed at some of the other classes covered so far. It accompanies, supplements and complements the latest 'Book Of', The Book of the Britannias by Richard Derry.

A follow up volume to Volume 1 by Richard Derry, The story continues with contributions by Phil Atkins of the NRM, Allan Baker and Richard Hardy.

This ‘Book Of’ varies somewhat from others in that it omits the usual works histories. A lot of the information survives of course though not from the engines’ days abroad. But the plain fact of the matter is lack of space. We hope readers will be content with the allocations and that this will be enough of a ‘fix’ so far as tabulation is concerned. As for ‘details and differences’ in the case of the WDs these were probably the least pronounced/confusing/maddening of any large BR class (in terms of ‘mods per engine’ they must be minimal) and we’ve elected this time to note them in pictures as we go along, in the captions. we hope fellows in the engine picking fraternity will approve.