Although diesel traction had been introduced to the county of Somerset as early as 1958 it was not until 1966, and the closure of the Somerset and Dorset Railway, that steam finally disappeared from the county.
The Gloucester & Sharpness Canal - An Illustrated History draws on contemporary sources and throws new light on the construction, operation and maintenance of the canal.
Here are some fascinating insights into life in the Forest of Dean , its people and places, captured in rich selection of old photographs gathered by Humphrey Phelps.
On 1st September 1939 evacuee children arrived at Cirencester, the first of 'a sorry procession' to leave the cities for the comparative safety of the Cotswolds.
The branch lines of Worcestershire are especially interesting because of their variety, ranging from parts of the Severn Valley Railway, one of the country's largest preserved main lines, to former main lines, right down to lines which have always been branches.
The branch lines of Warwickshire had unusually interesting and evocative station names, from the pleasant and graceful Henley-in-Arden and Salford Priors to Maxstoke, which suggests a particularly efficient locomotive fireman.
The branch lines of Oxfordshire were not so numerous as those of some other counties, but they carried a wide variety of locomotives and rolling stock, and included specialist lines such as those for Morris Cowley, as well as branches of the Great Western Railway.
Although the majority of the branch lines of Hampshire belonged to the London & South Western Railway, they offered the opportunity to see a wide variety of locomotives serving both rural outposts and the major towns.
The range and number of lines in Gloucestershire, and the type and diversity of the locomotives operating both branch and main lines, make it a particularly interesting railway county.
The Branch Lines of Buckinghamshire gives the reader a marvellous wide-ranging view of over 100 years of rail travel in this area of Britain during an era of rapid change.
Most of the branch lines of Berkshire were offshoots of the Great Western Railway, although the company was not without its competitors: both the South Eastern Railway and the London and South Western Railway gave alternative routes to London.
Steam Around Sheffield, the latest work by prolific railway author Mike Hitches, documents how Yorkshire's 'Steel City' and its environs were faithfully served by steam locomotion for many years.
Having been established as a seaside resort since the seventeenth century, Scarborough was an attractive destination for the new railways of the mid nineteenth century, and the town became part of George Hudson's empire by the late 1840s.
This delightful collection of pictures is a valuable record of many of the historically important buildings of the town of Stafford, a town which boasts a history of over 1000 years.
This fascinating collection of over 200 archive photographs and postcards - many not seen before - illustrates the history of Plymouth from the late 1800s to the early 1950s, including the early days of horse-drawn trams and early automobiles through to the blitz of 1941 and the reconstruction of the city in 1947.
If you were told that from about 1920 to 1950 a school in Gloucestershire was visited almost every week by interested groups from all over the UK and many from abroad who wanted to study the teaching methods inside and outside the classroom, which school would you think it was?
Oxford: Town and Gown is a unique look at the relationships between universities and their local communities, the result of a wide-ranging sociological survey carried out by Peter Collison in 1960s Oxford, at the pivotal moment when the world depicted by authors like Evelyn Waugh and Thomas Hardy changed forever.
Viewing a landscape from above, either from aircraft or from the tops of hills, Northumberland Viewpoints enables us to see beyond one small spot, and to place landscape features in a wider context.
Market Harborough and the Local Villages offers a captivating glimpse into the history of Market Harborough and the villages surrounding it through an eclectic collection of photographs.
A collection of photographs of Lowestoft and Southwold and the villages in between, dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with separate sections on Fishing, Lifeboats, the Seaside and People.
Following on the success of the first The Last Days of Steam in Gloucestershire, here is a second superb collection of photographs depicting the railways of Gloucestershire during the revolutionary period of 1959 to 1966.
Huddersfield at War takes us through the years between the announcement on 3 September 1939 that England was at War with Germany, to the VE celebrations on 8 May 1945.
