Steam in England

When it first appeared in 2009, this classic photographic album sold out almost immediately. Now it is available again in case you missed it the first time around.

R.C. ('Dick') Riley (1921-2006) was one of the country's foremost railway photographers. Working in the banking industry gave him the opportunity to travel widely and, aided by his trackside pass and contacts within the railway industry, he was able to access locations and views from which many other photographers were excluded. From his early work through to the end of main line steam in 1968 he took countless thousands of transparencies.

This large landscape format book showcases over 200 colour of his images taken between the early 1950s and 1968. Although many are of the Southern and Western regions, the book also includes a significant number of photographs on both the Eastern and London Midland regions. Dick Riley was also a prolific photographer of industrial railways, and there is a brief selection featuring these fascinating sites, as well as recording aspects of the day-to-day life of the railways such as signs and minutiae, which were largely ignored by other photographers.

The text has been compiled by his close friend Rodney Lissenden, who had access to Dick Riley's personal diaries for anecdotal tales relating to the images concerned.