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Weight ~ 1.8944 Kg

(GRATTON) Robert Gratton ~ The Leek And Manifold Valley Light Railway: First Edition, Signed

Author ~ Robert Gratton

Title ~ The Leek And Manifold Valley Light Railway

Edition ~ First Edition, Signed

ISBN ~ 9780953876372

Publisher ~ RCL Publications

Published ~ 2005

Language ~ English

Pages ~ 357

Format ~ Hardcover

Condition ~ Very Good

Large format hardback. Protective plastic cover, not price clipped. Very little shelf wear, clean and bright. Slight discoloration to page edges. Please see pictures for more detail. 

Categories ~ #Railways #Trains #Transport #NonFiction #FirstEdition #Signed #RobertGratton #9780953876372 

This is a lavish book about a minor railway that few people outside the railway community are likely to ever have heard of (and probably not that many within that community). The Leek & Manifold was a narrow gauge line that ran from almost nowhere to nowhere; it opened in 1904 and closed thirty years later. It was one of the earliest closed railways to be officially converted to a footpath. So why the interest?

Well, it ran through an isolated area of great natural beauty; it had some technical points of interest (the locomotives were designed by an engineer who had previously designed engines for India, and he repeated his specification down to heat insulation in the cabs and huge headlights to prevent the engines colliding with elephants – always a problem in deepest Staffordshire; more seriously, the railway used transporter wagons to bring standard-gauge wagons into remote areas, a practice common on the Continent but little used in the UK); and the whole line was built with a Victorian flair for ornateness that we marvel at in our more utilitarian age.