NEW JUNE 2021.  This book is in the same series as 'Land of the Vikings' (File RG041), and shares the same style of printing. Llike that one it is undated but seems to be from about 1928. It is clearly sponsored by the LNER, though the company is nowhere mentioned by name in the credits. Richard Clay's of Bungay imply again that they were the publisher: they were and still are a major printer, but during that period publishing was not a common core feature of their work.

The LNER presumably commissioned Dell Leigh to write a set of pen pictures describing some of their places and activities. He must have been given a line pass and granted permission to go where he wished behind the scenes - footplates, running sheds, Works, signal boxes, the bridges of their ships and so on. The result is fifty-two short articles, typically about three pages long. He has a good turn of phrase: thus for Edinburgh Waverley he explains there is a bottle-neck of lines at each end, and describes it as "a sieve through which trains are shaken".

Most parts of the LNER are covered, except for some reason the former GCR lines. From Great Eastern territory there are two articles relating to signalling at Liverpool Street, one describing the work of a ticket collector on the station platform there, a weekend spent in the Felix Hotel at Felixstowe, a couple of pieces on fishing at Lowestoft and Yarmouth, no fewer than four articles on shipping services out of Harwich, and one on the work of the customs sheds at Parkeston Quay.

The title of each article is appropriate but not necessarily informative, such as 'A cup of tea' or 'Hidden hands'. To give you a better idea of the content of the book, therefore, we have compiled a special key to them all which you can view HERE.

If you purchase this item, you will download two files. One is your own copy of that key to all the articles, to choose what you would like to read. The second is, of course, the book itself: you can use the bookmarks provided to go straight to your chosen piece.

The files will be available to download as soon as payment has been made. You go to your account and click on ‘Downloads’. New customers create an account as they place their order.