Reviews
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WOODHEAD LAMENT 1948-1981
By Kevin Derrick
FOR fans of the much-missed Woodhead Line, and there cannot be many who are not, this will be a musthave addition to their book collection.
On the face of it, quite pricey perhaps – but this is fully justified and worth every penny.
It is mainly a picture-and-caption book, with one or sometimes two images per page adding up to around 300 images in total. All are high quality black and white photos printed on quality paper, backed up by informative captions.
As a unique system with its own unique traction, most of the images feature the dedicated EM1 (Class 76) and EM2 (Class 77) locomotives, as well as the ‘Hadfield’ EMUs (Class 506) units that worked local services at the Manchester end. There are chapters on each of the loco fleets before one that takes up almost half the book exploring the route from Sheffield and Wath to Manchester and the main depot at Reddish. Three short chapters then look at special workings, locomotives away at Works, and scrappings.