Middleton Press: Long may its success continue into the future

SINCE the founding of Heritage Railway almost 22 years ago, I have been a massive fan of the Middleton Press (MP) Ultimate Rail Encyclopaedia offering.

Drawing on archive and modernday photographs, track plans and vintage maps, each volume condenses years of painstaking research into a handy facts-at-yourfingertips hardback, available to the general reader at a bargain price.

Every significant point on the particular route covered in each volume is featured, from stations and locomotive depots down to industrial sidings and ancillary points of railway interest.

I have never read an MP volume where I have not been delighted by the discovery of ‘something new’ to me. The expanding series is to railway history what Ordnance Survey maps are to cartography, and the value of each volume as an indispensable reference work will grow with the passage of time.

Vic Mitchell was there at the start of the operational heritage railway movement seven decades ago, when the Talyllyn revivalists planted the seeds of the sector, which today is not only a major slice of many a tourist economy, but also an educational resource beyond compare.

His achievements in the literary field have matched that, and I long for the day when his successor completes his dream of 100% coverage of the national network, past and present.