Cornwall Transition from Steam – R C Riley archive Vol 6

Compiled by Jeremy Clements (Transport Treasury Publishing, softback, 112pp, £14.50, ISBN 978 1 913251 17 8). Cheques payable to Transport Treasury Publishing, 16 Highworth Close, High Wycombe, HP13 7PJ. THIS publication combines the best of both worlds – Dick Riley's photographs and Cornwall's railways in the 1950s and early 1960s steam era, writes Geoff Courtney. As compiler Jeremy Clements says: “In the years of Dick's visits, Cornwall remained remote through geography and by virtue of the River Tamar. This would change with the completion of the long-awaited road crossing, which coincided with the end of steam in the west.

“The images impart an impression of a world where railway personnel knew well not only their colleagues but also a sizeable proportion of the local population they served. The steam population was also of localised character. It was familiarly Great Western but subtly different in its composition. Fewer classes were used and many individual locomotives were long-term residents.”

Hopefully, says Jeremy, the book captures the flavour of an interesting and individualistic corner of the (Great) Western Region's empire. It certainly does just that, in abundance. I immersed myself in its contents accompanied by my log book of various trainspotting days in the west from 1958-62, one of which was August 12, 1961, when I recorded every train passing through Exeter St David's over a 3½-hour period. Okay, I was in Devon, not Cornwall, and the occasional‘Warship'spread its diesel fumes around the station, but book and log temporarily relegated Covid-19 and the trials of today to the backburner.

Photographs of a number of the locomotives I recorded at Exeter on that summer Saturday feature in the book, among them the first to be logged after my arrival, No. 1002 County of Berks. Indeed, this Hawksworth-designed 4-6-0 appears in a number of the book's images, including a view from the footplate on the Par-Newquay line and a delightful shot of driver Osborne and fireman Grainger posing beside the nameplate at St Blazey shed.

Others in the book I recorded at Exeter include No. 5053 Earl Cairns –“a foreigner from Old Oak Common”, writes Jeremy – near Baldhu, west of Truro, on a perishable parcels train whose rolling stock includes a Gresley LNER vestibule brake van, an LMS passenger brake van and a similar BR Mk.1, while a second image of the same engine shows it on

Penzance shed with a full tender of coal awaiting its next turn of duty.

Another is of No. 4087 Cardigan Castle passing Saltash goods yard in September 1960. When I recorded that locomotive at Exeter nearly a year later on an Up Wolverhampton express it was already 36 years old, but faced a further two years of work before ending its railway career.

Viaducts, main and branch lines, goods trains, people and the approaching diesel generation – each has its own chapter, and trainspotters of the era will surely be delighted by the 22 pages devoted to photographs of steam at motive power depots, for these, whether bunked illicitly or, less daringly, with official permission, were one of the main ingredients of our hobby.

There's Penzance (83G) and its sub-shed Helston, St Blazey (83E) and sub-sheds Bodmin and Moorswater, Truro (83F), and Launceston (sub-shed of Plymouth Laira 83D). A striking overhead image is of the small two-road Moorswater shed taken by Dick from a train travelling nearly 150ft above on the Cornish main line's 1881-built Moorswater viaduct. Whether almost 150ft up or on terra firma, Dick's photographic skills shine through every page, aided and abetted by Jeremy Clements' insightful and informative captions. Both cratftsmen have done the GWR and BR's Western Region proud.