Terminal Blue Volume Five Euston, Marylebone & Broad Street, 19771986

no secret of my admiration for these 100-page A5 format black-and-white photo books produced by Ted Reading, covering the main London terminus stations during what many people see as a halcyon decade in railway history, when BR blue locomotives and blue and grey coaches dominated.

The author describes this fifth volume of Terminal Blue as the penultimate – and what a fantastically atmospheric series of photo books these are.

This volume focuses mainly on Euston, with about half of the book dedicated to the busy station, while Marylebone and the lost station at Broad Street also feature.

With Euston being so prominent in the pages of this volume, so are the various AC locomotive designs that plied their trade up and down the West Coast Main Line. As with the previous volumes, the sheer amount of content and variety is shown to good effect.

The book goes a little off-piste with some slightly more contemporary views of Watford Junction from the 1990s and a trip on the Caledonian Sleeper from 2015, but the author can be forgiven for including these views as they are relevant to the other content.

The Marylebone section of the book features mainly DMUS, as would be expected, but steam specials and locomotive-hauled trains are also included, along with views from Marylebone Diesel Depot. The final few pages take a nostalgic look at the dying days of Broad Street, which closed in 1986.

These books are self-published by the author and are well-compiled and put together.

It is a fantastic series of books that are well worth adding to your collection. I just wish someone would invent a time machine that let’s us go back to see it for real just one more time. These books are also only produced in limited numbers, so don’t hesitate. Buy it – you’ll be glad you did!

AMC