Mortons Books Southern Steam Revival Back Issue

The Southern Railway was an amalgamation mainly of the South Eastern & Chatham Railway, London Brighton & South Coast Railway and London & South Western Railway.

After the arrival of Oliver Bulleid as chief mechanical engineer in 1937, despite the war, the SR belatedly found itself with 140 of the most free-steaming, modern, powerful express engines to have run in Britain... and the Bulleid Pacifics lasted right up to electrification to Bournemouth in 1967.

The Southern Region of BR had rural branch lines, cross-country routes and long-distance main lines, and the make-up of the SR system led to the survival of some relatively old classes of steam engine.
It has been a long time since the Bluebell Railway ran its first trains with a couple of 0-6-0Ts but the heritage lines in the south of England go from strength to strength.

The electrification of such a significant proportion of the SR main line system, resulted in virtually no main line steam action on the region throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, and in the meantime, active Southern steam was in many cases often seen far away from home territory.

This book traces in detail the history of each of the 89 existing steam locomotives of the Southern Railway or its constituent company’s designs, paying particular attention to the no less than 65 engines to have been steamed in preservation.