The Railways of Romania

by Chris Bailey

Price: £22.95

Hardback, colour cover, 108 pages, including two 4-page colour sections, 147 black & white photographs, 12 locomotive diagrams, 8 maps

ISBN 1-900340-13-5

During Communist times Romanian enthusiasts destroyed their own photographic collections to avoid being arrested by the police and suffering an unknown fate, such was the fear instilled by a paranoid regime that must itself have been frightened of the enthusiast with a camera. Yet some photographs and factory records have survived safely and through personal contact between their owners and the Author they have been made available for this publication.

Chris Bailey has spent time in Romania talking to railwaymen and locomotive factory staff, and this book would have been a much less significant work without their assistance. Over half the pictures published have come from Romanian photographers, many of them from Serban Lacriteanu, who also contributed to ‘East European Narrow Gauge’.

Data has been provided by staff from the locomotive works, such as details of types, quantities, etc. of locomotives constructed in Romania, including those exported. Information about historical aspects have been verified by local experts, and the Author himself has travelled in the country to see the railways as they are today.

In the chapter devoted to the narrow gauge, he has described and illustrated the state lines and their locomotives as well as the main forestry and industrial railways, including the Covasna inclined plane, all illustrated with maps of the main forestry systems, plenty of photographs and a diagram of the standard class 764 0-8-0T.