Working on Bulleid Pacifics

The author spent the best years of his working life at Yeovil Town engine shed, cleaning and labouring at first and then as fireman on goods and passenger trains to Exeter, Salisbury and Weymouth. The acme of engine working to him was a Bulleid Pacific and a fascination and wonder began in the days when ‘dieselisation’ and ‘electrification’ were just bad things that might not ever happen. Sadly they did but a love affair with the engines continued through life into retirement. Along with his own reminiscences, Derek has brought together the antics and adventures of a dozen or so mates and colleagues, all of them similarly enamoured of these magnificent and enigmatic locomotives, both in their original form and as rebuilt by British Railways. There is much on Derek’s stamping grounds in the West of England but Bulleids are also portrayed from every depot, Devon to Kent, from which they worked. Hundreds of photographs show them (well more or less!) in every conceivable mode of operation.