Civil Engineers Wagons, Vol. 1: British Railways, 1948-1967: v. 1

This A4 sized 90 page soft back book is an excellent introduction to anyone modelling the early British Railways, (B.R.), period civil engineer wagons.Volume 1 covers all of the 'fishy' designated wagons in use on B.R. it also covers wagons adopted by BR, including wagons built for the GWR, LNER, LMS and SR as are sections on Signal & Telegraph Dept' wagons and also ex revenue earning wagons adopted for use by B.R.My depth of knowledge is very limited, but this volume as given me a reasonable understanding and possible makeup of engineering train wagons used in the B.R. period.Each wagon is dealt with in a fairly brief 2 page spread which includes back and white photos of prototypes, numbers and some wagon allocations are included also.Other sections included are tunnel maintenance wagon conversions and ex revenue earning brake vans and ballast brake vans and riding vans.There are no colour photo's or general arrangement drawings of the prototype wagons and this just spoils for me a great little volume, hence only the four star rating.

fantastic book on the subject of departmental wagons of the period, good for model makers, model trains (to know how they were actually used) though no-one can explain the fish names for wagons, and for historians. the only lack is some colour pictures, they are all in black and white which saves on the printing and yes it tells us the what colours they are at the start of the book, it would have been nice to see a few colour ones, though thinking about the dates they might be thin on the ground, but i get the feeling it was because of the cost of printing colour, but this was the only reason why 4 stars and not 5, it would have been nice to also see the way these wagons weathered in colour where B&W just misses out this detail to some extent.number 2 is out soon with 3 and hopefully 4 to follow, these are on the shopping list - hopefully with colour pictures

It's exactly what you think: lots of good pictures of PW wagons. Ideal for model makers.

David Larkin's books are well known, and very well received. This doesn't disappoint either. Taking us through the early years of BR where much of the equipment used was of necessity adapted. Profusely illustrated it will be an absolute boon the the modeller wishing to make up engineer's trains on their layout.Volume two is now with us, with volume three on the way.So if you want to be able to tell your dogfish from your catfish and know a mermaid when you see one these are certainly for you

Mr Larkin is as is usual in his books, is completely thorough. Some good photos, not all are brilliant and if you want to model a particular prototype then be prepared to do more digging. Concise histories of the various vehicles. Why didn't it get 5*'s? No colour photos is the answer.

Useful book for those interested in the Civil Engineers wagon fleet.This book is also of some use to those interested in the pre war big four, as some of the wagons depicted were built for them and then passed down to BR.

Very good compilation of historical data and excellent visuals

Generally excellent reference work for railway historians and modellers, detailed info and well illustrated.