Over the years railways have seen a diverse mix of traffic and many unusual events have occurred. There have been special services for Glastonbury festival goers, consignments as varied as boilers and bees, rural branches like the 'Crab & Winkle' and the 'Strawberry Line', trains to carry corpses, circus trains, a railway with a lifeboat, zig-zag routes, and unusual commercial enterprises such as excursions to watch prize fighters, typing services on city-to-city expresses and cinema coaches. This lovingly compiled collection of titbits captures the fascination and variety of railways with over 250 accounts garnered from the press, friends and colleagues and from the author's own experience of dramatic, intriguing and sometimes hilarious events, creating an immensely readable collection of information and stories from 150 years of railway activity.

A remarkable compendium of oddities, curiosities and little-known facts about Britain's railways.

Remembering the romance of a bygone era, with all the dirt, grime and risks the job entailed! Fast train fireman Ken Issitt worked on the footplate from the late 1940s to 1960, experiencing firing some of the greatest locomotives from the Flying Scotsman to Coltimore and Blink Bonney. The work was hard and conditions were tough but little did Ken know at the time that he was experiencing the last years of steam; he would never have imagined the romantic associations the period evokes today. Through a number of short accounts the past comes vividly to life, via short stories about train crashes, pea-soup fogs, and fires going out. From the beginning of a shift, donning overalls and making up a packing, and from shunting in the marshalling yard to flying along with an express train at 80mph, Ken Issitt describes what life on the footplate was like across the final years of steam, his tales beautifully brought to life by Chris Bates's charming pen and ink illustrations.

The formative years of Britain's railway network produced a host of ideas, activities and characters, quite a few of which now seem not only highly unusual, but sometimes little short of ridiculous. Weird schemes and designs, extravagant behaviour, reckless competition and larger-than-life characters all featured in the genuine struggle of the railway system to evolve. While the dawning of regulation and common sense brought about more uniform and responsible practices, factors like the weather and the innate complexity of railway operation continued to produce a stream of nonstandard incidents and outcomes, from wild storms to unusual equipment. This book, by ex-railwaymen Geoff and Ian Body, captures over 150 entertaining snippets, stories, and strange and unusual facts from an ample supply of railway curiosities.