"The appeal of these ‘underground’ publications would be lost on mainstream publishers. If the authors had not self-published, the books would never have seen the light of day."
These days, if we saw someone opening up a deck chair on a piece of waste ground next to a railway line, in mid winter, we’d probably assume they were a few sandwiches short of the full picnic basket. But in the 1970s, train spotters did exactly that, and no one batted an eyelid.
In the evening, your school teacher sat in a luggage trolley on Platform 10a at New Street station, with a pad and pen. Shine, rain or snow. Yes, once upon a time, people really were that dedicated to train spotting, and it was contagious. Platform ends got seriously overcrowded with spotters, all somehow trying to turn British Rail’s steps, parcel receptors and ramps into items of makeshift furniture. In the summer, some spotters would just sit, kneel or even lie on the concrete.
The UK’s railway was a very different place back then. Inherently more exciting than it can ever be in the high-tech, heavily standardised and altogether more reliable age of 2019. But spotters in the post-steam era would not have bustled so feverishly without the publishers. Train spotting books, and other published matter, set everything into context. Gave locomotives, and other vehicles, an identity. In this post, I’m taking a retrospective look at the publishing scene that glorified British Rail to the enthusiast in the 1970s and early 1980s.