The Erewash Valley Line

Published by Amberley Publishing www.amberley-books.com

165mm x 240mm, 96 pages, colour, softback. £15.99

For those who don’t hail from the area, the Erewash Valley route runs roughly north-south between Chesterfield and Loughborough via Alfreton and Ilkeston and the legendary freight hub and depot that is Toton. A map of the line is helpfully provided by the author, who has been familiar with the route since childhood. Many of the pictures are his own, though others have been called on to fill the gaps. The images, in the normal Amberley format of two captioned images per page, take the reader on a northbound journey from the early 1970s to the present day. The line’s origins in the coal industry

mean that unsurprisingly there are plenty of shots of MGR coal trains until their demise in recent years. But what really stands out is the sheer variety of diesel locomotive traction (see also Comment, p4) to have plied Erewash rails over the years. There are some surprises, too, including a Deltic (at the Midland Railway – Butterley), a passenger train leaving Toton and even a steam loco. Although predominantly a freight artery, the route has also had a, sometimes perfunctory, passenger service, yet these are largely ignored, with local DMU-operated trains completely omitted.