This is volume 5 in the publisher’s ‘The Railways and Industry series’.

Illustrated with 160 photographs, it illustrates how rail freight in South West England has changed over the last 40 years, not only in types of traction but in rolling stock and the railway infrastructure.

Published in August 2021 by Key Publishing and written by Paul Shannon, this soft-cover book measures around 171 mm x 243 mm, has 96 pages and 160 colour and black-and-white photographs.

It has a published price of £15.99, but at the time of writing, it can be purchased for £14.82 from Amazon.

In six chapters, Paul Shannon travels north-east from Cornwall through Devon and West Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire and the Mendips, around Bath and Bristol, and ends in Gloucestershire.

He chronicles intricate china clay operations in Cornwall, tours the major limestone quarries of the Mendips, and shows how rail freight has maintained a vibrant presence across the counties of South West England.

The book stirs memories of the erstwhile Speedlink services and changes in traffic patterns and day-to-day operations that have resulted from modernisation and streamlining of operations from the 1980s to the present day.

No book on railways in Devon would be complete without a photograph of a train alongside the sea at Dawlish, but the photo on the left below shows a completely different view from the archetypal sea wall image.

Trains from Devon to Cornwall travel over Brunel’s iconic Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash, but instead of illustrating the bridge, the photo on the right shows the parallel road bridge with a freight train on the Bere Alston branch passing under the Royal Albert Bridge.

In railway terms, Wiltshire and the Mendips are synonymous with enormous block trains of stone from the huge quarries at Whatley and Merehead.

As seen on the left below, trains within the quarry sidings are shunted by both the quarry owners’ locomotives and British Rail Class 08s.

For many years, Class 59s had a monopoly working these trains, but as seen on the right below, before their introduction, pairs of Class 37s or 56s were entrusted to this work.

The photos below are from the ‘Around Bath and Bristol’ chapter. Instead of illustrating scenes from the vast train shed that is Bristol Temple Meads, the author shows the area has its share of rural branch lines.

The photo at the top left is Ashchurch, where, in pre-Beeching times, was one of the few examples in the UK where branch lines crossed main lines on the level, with these being branches to Upton-on-Severn and Evesham crossing the main line from Birmingham to Bristol.

At first sight, the casual reader might mistake the views on the right as being on Cornwall’s Fowey branch, but they are in Gloucestershire, alongside the Severn Estuary.

The book sets out to describe rail freight in Southwest England, and it succeeds admirably. Major industries generating freight in the region are china clay quarries in Cornwall and stone quarries in the Mendips, but they are just a small part of the types of freight that could be seen in the area in the 40 years covered by this book, especially the long-gone Speedlink services.

Paralleling the change in types of freight has been the relentless encroachment by Class 66s. Memories are stirred with views of their predecessors, such as Class 33, 37, 45, 46, 47 and 56s.

The area has no industrial heartlands, and the author has taken advantage of its often-rural nature to bring out the best in his subject.

Most photographs do not treat the train or locomotive as the prime subject but as a contributory part of the overall scene. The result is a book that has plenty of interest throughout.

The captions are fully descriptive and include extensive details of the trains, their origin and destination. A minor criticism is that some black-and-white photographs are lacking in contrast, but that doesn’t detract from their overall value.

The book is a valuable record of freight in South West England over the last 40 years and can be recommended as a worthy addition to any railway enthusiast’s bookshelf. Overall, it deserves a rating of 4.5/5.

The book is available to purchase from Amazon and Key Publishing.

We would like to thank Key Publishing for providing RailAdvent with a copy of the book for review.