Welcome to British Railways Illustrated Volume 3 No.2. There were days when no-ones' upbringing was even half complete without long and studious attention to the Bumper Boys Book of Trains - something like it surely hovers in the blinking memory of most of us. Truth was, the railways had much to be proud of and, moreover, most of the populace agreed - indeed the doings of our railways exercised the public mind in a positive sense unimaginable today. The LNER had kicked off the exhibition spirit in the 'thirties with a sort of travelling road show and the Festival of Britain brought such things to the forefront of public awareness. So in 1954, that impossibly long ago lost age we are always going on about, it was quite natural that the International Railway Congress should be celebrated by an exhibition, after all the new national railway, apart from all manner of new modern equipment for signalling, communication, goods handling and so on, as well as many new wagon types, had the first engines of a fine new standard steam fleet new electrics, diesels, even a new electric freight(') trunk line across the backbone of the country. Compare the mood of The Willesden Exhibition with today's gloom.

The age-old railway of tradition outside the Willesden roundhouse could probably be no better illustrated than by the humble E1R tanks employed in the West Country. Rebuilds of a much earlier Brighton design, they did not simply potter about in their dotage, safely tucked away on : obscure branches in the west but earned their daily bread and butter blasting up the bank between the Great Western and the Southern at Exeter, heaving and pushing vast stone hoppers and packed trains of holidaymakers. A delicious helping of West Country sunshine and steam. Diesel Dawn this outing contrives a Great Western bent, as well as a number of particularly evocative scenes, combining not only the complexity and fascination of a crowded goods yard but that strangely appealing combination of the 1950s and 1960s, diesels at work alongside steam. Early (GWR 1948 shunters with brass numberplates heralded a later highly individualistic approach to diesel locomotive embellishment.

Shipley is a sort of Station Survey this time round - a little known district in railway terms but hideously complex in its origins, much like anywhere across this swathe of northern England. from Lancashire across through Bradford, Leeds and Sheffield. Peter Kay makes some sense of the growth and decline of Shipley with the aid of step by step diagrams.

Thirties File waxes large this issue with a re-examination of working figures on the Highland section of the LMS. A.N. Marshall will be familiar to many readers for his little life in Steam spot and he duly takes us back to a two week stint in the LMS Northern Division coal offices towards the end of 1932. Here he stumbled upon secrets, the records of coal consumption and repair costs for the previous years. Ever fearful of discovery he hurriedly copied the details down and his discussion of the figures, allied to unique contemporary experience, now emerge blinking into the light of the 1990s for a thought provoking glimpse through swirling Highland mists.

W.B. Yeadon continues his examination of life on the The Dry Side of the country with the unfamiliar nocturnal goings on of the Nights Scotsman and its ilk. CJ- Gammell pursues another poorly recorded aspect that was once everyday life, dear old wooden (though usually tumbledown and work weary) booking halls of yore.

For an end piece we have W.A.C.'Smith with some recollections of the 1955 strike, already touched upon in these columns. It was a miserable and ruinous period in the history of BR, a benchmark, only a year after the glories of the Willesden Exhibition, on the long decline and enfeebling of the railway as a freight carrier. All these years on an extraordinary point remains - it was about so very little money. For the equivalent of little more than a couple of packets of crisps, a shudder went through the railway system which can be felt even today.