A Comprehensive Guide to Railway Request Stops

By Anthony Hart

Published by Pen and Sword Transport www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

225mm x 290mm size, 170 pages, B&W/colour, hardback. £30.00

OCCASIONALLY a book that isn’t quite sure what it is, makes it into print. This is most usually for want of firm editorial direction and it is uncharacteristic of Pen & Sword that this volume is one of those books. A casual glance at the main title suggests that this a reference work, in a similar vein, perhaps, to the Then and Now atlas series (as reviewed in the May issue). To be fair, as far as we can tell, every railway request stop is (at the time of writing in 2017) included, with a useful short summary panel detailing passenger usage, postcode and OS grid number. So far so good, but here the structure starts to unravel, as the stations aren’t presented in alphabetical order as might be expected. Instead, we follow the author on what the cover subtitle describes as ‘a personal odyssey to visit every one’. So now we are embarking on a travelogue, which moves roughly from the South West northwards to Scotland. Black and white line diagrams are provided, but incredibly the request stops are not marked to distinguish them from the others on that stretch of line! And, frustratingly, the stations are visited in an apparently random order, rather than one suggested by the line diagram. While this was obviously a hugely enjoyable undertaking for the author, his decision to also act as photographer meant he was at the mercy of the vagaries of the British weather. As a result, some shots are wonderfully exposed, some are in shadow, while others are drab, bordering on muddy. In the latter camp, again incredibly, is the main front cover image of a GWR Class 150/2. This is all the more unfortunate as the book is profusely illustrated, with good size illustrations and excellently printed on Pen & Sword’s usual high quality paper stock. All in all, this is something of an opportunity missed – all of the ingredients are present, but have not been presented in the best way possible for the reader. We therefore struggle to recommend the book at its full cover price.