Lost Diesels, Lost Lines

When British Railways replaced steam engines with diesels in the mid-1950s the new traction was brought into use on a system largely unchanged since Victorian times. The situation was to radically change within a few years as the Beeching cuts decimated the network, in the process removing the duties for which many of the new diesels had been intended. As a result, many of the smaller or more unsuccessful classes were removed from the network and prematurely scrapped, in some cases even before the end of the steam era. This book celebrates those lost classes and the lost lines on which they once operated.