Robert Day (1)Besprekingen

This book could be the perfect Christmas present for someone who has lived in, or visited, Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, and used the railway network. I fit into that category and Robert Day’s book has filled me with nostalgia. My memory is jogged and I am transported back in time as I look at the wonderful photographs he and his father took of the British railway stations, ancillary buildings and other paraphernalia before the face of the network began to change in the 1970s and 1980s.

The pictures are very evocative of an era that has gone and will not return. Today the railway stations are de-humanised. One buys a ticket from a machine or on-line. Everything is focused on efficiency and processing passenger numbers as quickly as possible.

Robert has not only produced a book full of lovely pictures of railway stations, signal boxes, railway bridges, and railway hotels, but has provided informative commentary about the history of the stations and railway companies pictured. He has also used his family experience of using rail transport to highlight the changes that have happened and how reduced the influence of the railway is today.

This is a wonderful book and I have had many hours of enjoyment from browsing through the pages and reading the annotations beside the images. One of the incidental pleasures I felt when looking at the pictures was seeing the old cars from the 70s. That really took me back.

I am not a railway enthusiast, but I still find this book fascinating and I would have been very happy if it had appeared in my Christmas stocking.