Britain's World of Steam

by Paul Catchpole

Price: £19.95

Hardback, colour cover, 96 pages, including two 4-page colour sections, 159 black & white photographs

ISBN 1-900340-14-3

Steam Repatriations and Imports to Britain from Around the World

Locomotives from the former British Empire.
War service steam locomotives back home.
Garratts and other steam ‘Out of Africa’.
European main line locos in Britain.
Narrow gauge steam from Europe.
British built narrow gauge locos
American engines ‘Over Here’.
Polish tank engines preserved.
Guinness Brewery Locomotives.
Steam trams and miniature locos.
Narrow gauge steam from sugar plantations.

Over 200 of the steam locomotives now preserved in Britain have either worked overseas or were supplied to British companies from abroad to operate in the UK. While some of these are familiar to British enthusiasts, many have little-known histories or origins and even the existence of some of those in private hands is generally unknown to the majority of railfans. Since the preservation era steam locomotives of all gauges and sizes have been arriving in Britain, not only from former Empire or Commonwealth countries but from parts of Europe, both west and east, and from other unlikely corners of the World. These include some truly exotic species of the iron horse! Quite a few of the locos in this book have not been included in other published works simply because they fall outside the regular categories.

Apart from standard gauge European main line locos we now have in Britain examples of gauges 5’6” and 5’0”, 3’6” Cape gauge, metre gauge, 760mm/2’6", 600mm/2’ and various oddities. As enthusiasts have travelled to see steam around the globe they’ve been buying up locos when they are withdrawn to have them shipped home. This particularly applies to narrow gauge locomotives, large numbers of which have been retired and acquired from sugar plantations. Added to all this are the ROD, WD, USATC, Feldbahn and Reichsbahn locomotives that served with armed forces abroad and have been preserved in Britain - and we’ve not forgotten to include British main line steam that toured America in the 1930s or has been abroad in the preservation era. All the locomotives are indexed by origin with works numbers given to aid researchers and to validate identities. Their working histories are described and current locations given.