Published by Amberley Publishing in July 2022 and written by Patrick Bennett, this softcover book comes in the usual Amberley format of around 234 mm x 165 mm with 96 pages and 180 colour photographs. It has a published price of £15.99, but can be purchased online from Amberley Publishing for £14.39 or from Amazon for £11.19.
There is a very brief introduction that describes the background to the development of railways in Derbyshire, and the various different railway companies that sprang out from its mineral wealth. A small niggle is that the author places Birmingham to the west of Derby when it is very much to the south.
Following the introduction is a hand-drawn map of Derbyshire's railways, with coloured lines representing the different railway companies' lines within the county. However, it is let down by using shades of dark blue or purple for three of the companies, which are difficult to differentiate on the map, and omits many locations that are shown in the book. Also, the map's title is “The Midland Railway” when that it is only one of the railways depicted, and whilst the Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway is mentioned on the book's cover, it is not marked on the map.
The book seems to be divided into sections, although the section headings are not very prominent and seem to be confusing as to their purpose. For example, page 5 is headed “The North Midland Railway”, followed by the “Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway” and the “Midland Counties Railway”. But the focus on railway companies changes in subsequent sections, with “The New Line”, “The Ecclesbourne Valley Railway”, and “The Erewash Valley Line”.
Further sections digress further, with “The Erewash Valley Extension”, Between “Derwent and Erewash”, and “Through The Peak”.
Poor photographic reproduction has resulted in captions sometimes being rendered meaningless, such as the photo at centre-right which refers to “wagons on the left”, but requires a magnifying glass to detect that they are actually in the left background. A minor point is the photo of 58104 at centre-left, which is an obvious mistake as this class only contained 50 locomotives numbered from 58001 to 58050.
The left page below shows how the author tailored the page layout to include much historical information within the captions.
The right-hand page below seems to have a confusion of identity, with a section titled both “The London & North Western Railway” and “The Cromford & High Peak Railway”. It is only further in the section that the book tells us that the Cromford & High Peak was a constituent of the London & North Western.
Throughout the book, the size of some photographs has been much reduced because of the extensive captions, as on the right-hand page below. Although very useful for background reading, it would have been better to take full advantage of the limited page size with larger photographs.
Many captions assume the reader has prior knowledge of the locations, such as the top-right photo below, which states it is the “third side of the layout at Dinting”, with no explanation why it was a “third side”. Similarly, the lower-right photo shows Hadfield when it “was still on a through route”, but no explanation as to a through route to where.
What could have been a useful book illustrating the railways of Derbyshire has been let down by a seemingly random selection of sections and sub-sections. Also, as the book is divided into sections, a contents list should have been included. Whilst at first sight the map at the beginning looks useful, a large number of the locations mentioned in the book are not shown. For many years, the main passenger trains through the area were in the hands of ex-LMS Black 5 and Jubilee class 4-6-0s, yet there is only a single photograph of a Black 5 and none at all of Jubilees. Similarly, until the 1980s coal was the mainstay of freight traffic throughout the county, yet there are very few photographs of such trains. Recommended for those whose interest in railways lies in Derbyshire.
The book is available to purchase from Amazon for around £11.19.
We would like to thank Amberley Publishing for providing RailAdvent with a copy of the book for review.
