An Illustrated History of Southern Coaches

Although the Southern Railway inherited a vast stock of coaches and vans from its three main constituent companies in 1923, It soon started to develop its own range of coaching stock for locomotive-hauled and, increasingly, electrified services. Under designers such as Maunsell and Bulleid, the SR produced numerous classic designs of coaching stock, many of which continued to give service well into the BR era; indeed, many of the non-passenger vans supplied to the SR before 1948 continued to be seen throughout the BR network until the early 1990s and some remain visible in sidings in the 21st century, more than 50 years after they were constructed. One of the most common trends in railway modelling is the almost insatiable demand from modellers for highly detailed sources in order to enable them to improve the detail of proprietary models and kits and to help with the construction of scratch-built models. This information - in the forms of track plans, signalling diagrams and scale drawings of locomotives and rolling stock - has become an essential ingredient in the construction of the high-quality layouts that can be seen at many of the country's leading model railway shows. Over the years Mike King has been drawing detailed scale drawings of Southern Railway coaching stock and this book is the fruit of his endeavours. Incorporating more than 80 drawings, reproduced to the most popular modelling scale (4mm to the foot), along with detailed tabular material and some 200 mono photographs, An Illustrated History of Southern Coaches is the most detailed reference book yet published on the subject.