Northern Rail Rover

Allan Heyes was, like many, a man who was saddened by the rapidly impending demise of steam in the mid and late 1960s. However, unlike some who just sat and watched, or who recorded ever fewer numbers in their spotter's books, he did something about it, setting himself up to record the scene on film and capturing not just the subject but the environment. Steam finally disappeared from use on Britain's railways in August. This is no mere 'book of trains and engines'. Instead it is a photographic record - a tribute even - to steam in its actual working condition. No glitz, no glamour, just the machine and where it worked, a tribute going back to the days of George Stephenson. In this book, Allan Heyes aims to recreate, using his personal pictorial record, the final years of the steam locomotive and its working environment in the North of England and Central Scotland. The accelerating demise of steam in the spring of 1964 was a call to action which continued unabated until August 1968.