Back in 1947 someone called S.N. Pike
- we know nothing more about him
- published three little pamphlets, each mapping in forensic detail one of Britain`s main line rail routes. Now Aurum reissues all three in one handsome volume
- adding a fourth in the same style to complete the set. Pike produced booklets on the LNER (the East Coast main line), the LMS (West Coast main line) & the Southern Railway network the Brighton line & all its ramifications)
- but for some reason he never got around to doing one on the Great Western (the route from Paddington to Devon & Cornwall). What subsequently became of S.N. Pike we don`t know. But now Aurum completes the set, to make one nostalgic guide to Britain`s railways as they were just after the War. The books are full of period interest
- the East Coast line, for example, still goes past Alexandra Park racecourse, sees a tangle of colliery sidings all the way up through Yorkshire, & passes 20 places where ”GPO mail bag catching nets” are erected close to the rails”. When today`s high speed trains swish to Paris so fast that the landscape beyond is a blur, this delightful book reminds you what once could be seen on a long railway journey.