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Railway Cranes – Volume 3
I am pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of volume 3 of my father’s series on railway cranes. This will be available from mid September and on the 23/24 September it will be formally launched at Scaleforum with my father in attendance if you want to speak to him. This will be on the Crecy book stand along with a selection of their books (including volume 1 if you haven’t got this, volume is out of print at present).
For this volume we move away from breakdown cranes to permanent way cranes. This is a big topic and has even less standardisation than breakdown cranes (and there ain’t much in that!). Thus the book is not intended to be a comprehensive review of all such cranes but rather more a review of the main types and development of them.
The book covers from the relatively early days (given the scarcity of material on early cranes, this is a slightly relative concept) upto the contemporary Kirov cranes.
If you can’t make it to Scaleforum, then it can be ordered via your preferred bookseller or direct from Crecy http://www.crecy.co.uk/railway-cranes-3.
The one book in the series that is still to be done is one of cranes mounted on engines. My father does not feel that he knows enough to write this one so if there are any that feel that they (or collectively) know sufficient, I know a publisher that would be interested………….. (PS this is not a mikey take, it would be great to finish the story!).
Railway Breakdown Cranes – Volume 2
The second volume of the old man’s book on Railway Breakdown Cranes was published last week.
This substantial tome is full of high resolution photographs and drawings of all the breakdown cranes built for the railways in the UK. It deals with cranes that have relieving bogies, which means mostly cranes from the mid 1930s. Volume 1 deals with the earlier cranes that did not have relieving bogies (although there was a period where both types were built).
I know I am biased, but it is a really good book. Available from Noodle Books (http://www.noodlebooks.co.uk/index.htm) and I understand that 190 were sold in the first weekend! I also understand that something like 1700 of the first volume have been sold, so there are only 300 left of this!
At the moment this will be the end of the series as the two volumes cover all of the breakdown cranes built in the UK. There is a slight chance that there will be a volume 3 on permenant way cranes though – perhaps, maybe!
highland miscellany 