David St John Thomas is sort of a more modern Bradshaw, he's written several volumes of A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain, the one I'm interested in however is Volume 1 THE WEST COUNTRY.
His fifth revised version written in 1981 is just one of the many books I've been taking out of library's recently and I still love it when I find old paintings or photos of Dawlish of how it used to be, or how it still looks the same.
 |
| Water-colour by W.J.Dawson in 1848 |
There are of course only so many books with old photos of Dawlish and I am getting to the stage of seeing the same photos and drawings in different books now but one of is still this one I originally saw in David St John Thomas The Great Way West as it makes you wonder how it must have been to build this section of the south west railway.
 |
| An artists impression of the late 1840s from the Illustrated London News |
When I've been on a train home there's been several times the sea has splashed onto the train itself but never quite like in 1974 when this photo was made into a postcard to make travellers feel lucky when they went to Dawlish on a more pleasant day.
 |
| 1974, the year that most of Dawlish's down platform was missing having being destroyed in an exceptional gale. |
No comments:
Post a Comment