A -- for me -- highly fascinating book: which I have owned for some years, but only recently re-read. Coming Up With The Goods ["pun intended"] by Michael Pearson, published 1999 -- when the then-obtaining EWS rail-freight undertaking, was fairly new.
To me -- one of the septuagenarian hopeless-sentimentalist school of (non-?) thought, who tend to feel that everything which was worthwhile on Britain's railways, ceased to be during the 1960s -- this book gives at least, pause for reconsideration. Brings home that there was in fact very interesting stuff happening on a variety of Great Britain's rail lines, after "the evil year of '68". Also gives rise to, on my part, some degree of shame concerning my having 90% disregarded and set at naught, Great Britain's post-1968 rail scene -- save for "getting in the bag" hitherto not-travelled-by-me lines, until I wearied of that pursuit also, and mostly ceased to engage in it; including my never having become au fait with our rail system's sundry diesel loco types since first introduction of same (Pearson knows them all, and joyously identifies them in their haulage roles on his assorted EWS journeyings of which he tells). Attempted self-exoneration to some degree: I am a highly non-technical sort; my railway enthusiasm has always tended strongly to the aesthetic / vague-and-woolly-love side, so that -- for all my adoration of steam traction -- I was for long, none too good even on the niceties of different steam classes. Resembling here, my a-lifetime-ago hero and role model Bryan Morgan, who was very much "about" the aesthetic and sentimental, not the technical, aspects of the hobby; who writes, "I doubt if the Walschaerts gear holds any very mind-cracking secrets, but I simply cannot be troubled to learn even how to spell it".
Pearson's book concerns assorted non-passenger journeys, in great geographical and functional variety, carried out by EWS on Great Britain's rail network in the late 1990s. The author travelled -- with official permission -- on the runs involved; most often, in the loco cab. There are comprised a "round dozen" of chapters: a journey per chapter, with a pretty-much universal twelve pages per chapter -- albeit big pages with smallish, though excellently clear, print -- and in each chapter a map, of excellent clarity, of the relevant journey, and numerous illustrative colour photographs of various sizes: one is inclined to feel the book to be an impressive "much in little" feat.
Mr. Pearson's erudition and comprehensive coverage, have me in awe -- plus, he writes smoothly, literately, and in an agreeably chatty and readable, often humorous, fashion: having the reader greatly wishful of being themself able to experience his journeys of a couple of decades ago (many of which -- at least as per my poor understanding of the country's rail situation -- are not happening, and cannot be experienced, nowadays). The author's journeys and their routes and what seen along same; and relevant historical reflections; and the nature and rationale of the traffic carried on each; and the railway employees with whom / under whose guidance he made the runs -- conversations with them reproduced, and their careers and positions, and reminiscences, told of -- sometimes all-but "thumbnail" mini-biographies; contribute to IMO a beautiful balance of all aspects, and very-readably written of. This guy strikes me as a writer of much talent -- to the point that he could successfully tweak, to generate interest, that celebrated mythical and boring document the List of Huntingdonshire Cabmen.
An interesting thing, at any rate to such as me: some few of the older locomen, talking and time spent with whom the author recounts, had in their youth worked regularly on steam locomotives in everyday service. A couple of decades back, it was entirely possible for this to be the case with someone in late middle age; and indeed for him to have worked on steam earlier and longer than just for its final few BR years.
The dozen-odd journeys cover a splendidly varied-and-inclusive geographical spread of England and Scotland (Wales gets sold a bit short; but in an imperfect world, someone or something usually ends up having to be the loser). I won't weary people with the entire list -- a sample is: Ayr to Fife with coal; Bristol to Penzance with the mail; and King's Lynn to Doncaster with sand. The last two, have to be my best-liked chapters in the book. Bristol to Penzance... tells of a scene which obtained a couple of decades ago but has now effectively vanished: night mail trains nationwide (this in the West Country, only one of many) with Travelling Post Office sorters frenetically doing their thing en route, and a public posting-box slot in the coach side, affording people a very last chance of getting correspondence notionally "collected" and sent on its way that day. On this journey, the majority of the author's time is spent not on the loco, but in the sorting coaches, observing the postal staff's doings and -- their gruelling work-load permitting -- talking with them.
A lot of the recounted journeyings are over main-line trackage; but some involve also remote, long-since freight-only, branches or "twigs" of the system -- one such (on a journey not among those I name here) covering a remnant few miles of a branch which lost its passenger service in 1925 ! Part of the appeal for me, of King's Lynn to Doncaster... is that its earlier half or so, traverses parts of the world where my childhood and adolescence were spent. Its starting-point is very much an out-of-the-way freight-remnant location: Middleton Towers, three miles east of King's Lynn on the one-time secondary route K.L. -- Dereham, which lost its passenger service -- and, I understand, freight beyond Middleton Towers -- in 1968 (I had the good fortune to travel over the route, once, a few years before closure). At Middleton Towers, sand was quarried on a big scale, hence the retention of the three-mile stub: the chapter's train conveys sand thence -- initially over a highly roundabout route -- to a glassworks near Doncaster: as ever, the run is delightfully and fascinatingly recounted.
Altogether, an offering which is becoming one among the small list of my "very top favourite" railway books; and one which I feel I could heartily recommend to not-far-off any enthusiast, whatever their particular angle on the hobby.
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