Description

This was one of the first, if not the first, “part-work” to deal with railways. Launched at 9d per copy in August 1911 (although some later issues carry paper stickers increasing the price to 1/-) It was also about the first time that a quality railway publication was within the reach of a prudent schoolboy, prepared to sacrifice sherbet dips, gobstoppers, “The Magnet” and “Chatterbox” for a couple of weeks. Each issue included a colour frontispiece of the railway’s crest, a full page colour print of one of the company’s passenger carriages, and a stunning double page spread of a locomotive. In this case a Holden 4-4-0 No.1853, in the glorious elaborately lined out Royal Blue livery adopted for passenger locomotives.. From the pagination in this book it would appear that it was intended to form, the last part of bound volume 1. “Our Home Railways” was later issued as a two volume set, but these and two modern single volume reprints were less than satisfactory, in that for production reasons, the colour plates had to be “grouped” together, divorced from the text relating to their railways. One of the modern reprints even reproduced the colour plates in black & white… These individual parts are worth having for the colour plates alone!

PREVIEW BELOW – MAY TAKE A WHILE TO LOAD.