Great Western Steam: The Railway Photographs of R.J. (Ron) Buckley

The evocative photographs of railwayman Ron Buckley reveal the story of steam on the Great Western Railway. The GWR was regarded by enthusiasts as having huge pride in its locomotive design, producing clean uncluttered lines and incorporating engineering excellence that saw the 'Saint' and 'Star' classes lead the way. The less glamourous side was the amount of coal traffic it carried from the South Wales coalfields. Ron Buckley's photographs show the changing scene throughout the GWR and its successor, the Western Region of BR, from the mid-1930s until the end of main line steam in the 1960s. Whilst the modern express passenger locomotives plied the main lines, a wealth of pre-grouping locomotives carried out the more mundane work on secondary and branch lines, and ageing Victorian 4-4-0s and 0-6-0s and 0-6-2 tank locomotive classes from the pre-grouping Welsh railways continued working well into the 1950s.