HSBT promised books

[NewSouthgate]

Back in the November 2009 issue of Railway Magazine there was an article about What Really Happened to Steam. This caused a lot of conversation about several sources of information and publishing/ copying/perpetuating of incorrect details of what happened to final location and scrapping details of steam locomotives. This article promised that after a lot of research by the HSBT team and others that new books would be published correcting all previous onerous information. Whilst realising that this type of research would take an enormous effort does anyone know if these books have ever been printed as it is such along time since the article was printed by the Railway Magazine.

 

[Gloster]

The last I heard (a while ago and from a roundabout source) was that a lot of work had been done, but a number of people involved had died or become too old to continue and progress had slowed. The website is still live, but does not appear to have any News section, although items from the Engine Shed Society’s magazine (most quite interesting) are still being put up, most recently one from spring this year.

 

[NewSouthgate]

Thanks for the response on this. I was looking for this mammoth exercise to come to it’s promised conclusion as like many others I too have purchased many books which they have called to be fictitious.
It will be sad to see it just disappear into the ether as we the general public will never have the opportunity to view information that they claim to be privy too. Rightly or wrongly those before this have published in good faith and have been castigated for supplying erroneous information but to give them credit they have published their work. Let’s face it no one can supply very large amounts of information without errors and I do not condone people supplying them with blatant untruths as happened.
I suppose we will just have to look at the updates that they have so far published in Link and never know if anything is correct for the rest.

 

[Gloster]

My feeling is that they still intend to complete the project, but that they can no longer give a timescale when that will be. I do feel that their comments on those who have been there before were, if justified, unnecessarily harsh in tone.

 

[NewSouthgate]

Must admit some of the published works on this topic do leave a lot to be desired. Recently procured Hugh Longworths “BR Steam Locomotives complete allocations history” the March 2021 revised edition at a reduced price and when you turn to the contents page and it says the Southern allocations begin on page 100 and it actually starts on 102 and LMS starts on 131 and is actually 135 then this basic error makes you wonder about the rest of the contents. Glad I got it at a reduced price and how someone would want to put their name to it is beyond me

 

[Gloster]

Must admit some of the published works on this topic do leave a lot to be desired. Recently procured Hugh Longworths “BR Steam Locomotives complete allocations history” the March 2021 revised edition at a reduced price and when you turn to the contents page and it says the Southern allocations begin on page 100 and it actually starts on 102 and LMS starts on 131 and is actually 135 then this basic error makes you wonder about the rest of the contents. Glad I got it at a reduced price and how someone would want to put their name to it is beyond me

That is more likely to be an editor’s error than a compiler’s one.