Locomotive Stock Books 1960s

Description

The Railway Correspondence and Travel Society began publishing locomotive stock books in early 1935, just a few years after the Society was formed in 1928.  Initially, they were issued as supplements to the Society’s monthly magazine The Railway Observer but later issues were released as independent books.

Information about locomotives  – and railways in general – was scarce in the early days.  The RCTS was a pioneer in gathering, sharing, and collating data for the benefit of railway enthusiasts, usually via The Railway Observer.

After a hiatus in the late-1950s, the stock books were relaunched in 1960, collated by a new team. The format continued to differ from the tabular layout of Ian Allan’s ABC guides which had emerged in the 1940s and were targeted at spotters.  The pages of the RCTS stock books were arranged as compact lists, to be used as a reference source for the mature enthusiast.

Four substantial editions containing many more illustrations were published in the 1960s, marking the demise of steam on the national network. Alongside coverage of the modern fleet, the stock books emerged as the best source of information about preserved locomotives.

The Society is now reissuing these historically important reference books as facsimiles.  It is not possible to match the production standards of a modern original, but we have done our best.  The text has been whitened, blemishes removed, and half-tone images processed into pixels.

There are four volumes in the series.  The books included in Volume 4 are:

• The Locomotive Stock Book 1960 – 12th Edition
• The Locomotive Stock Book 1963 – 13th Edition
• The Locomotive Stock Book 1966 – 14th Edition
• The Locomotive Stock Book 1969 – 15th Edition