The Titfield Thunderbolt Bookshop

Saturday 24th March 2012 Just In From Wild Swan the much anticipated next part of Peter Tatlow's multi volume magnum opus on LNER wagons. Part 4A covering opens and vans and every bit as good as earlier volumes - £33.95. Also two new Foxlines, "Return to Pwllheli" and a new edition of "The Llangollen Line", and obscure title of the week goes to Paul Webb's "Sylvasprings Watercress". All of these titles and many more entered on the database, including Oakwood's new history of itself, more interesting than I had expected and with a nice group photo of the current staff at the helm included to boot. All of the "British Bus Publishing" range now in stock, including the new 2012 First bus handbook. Due In Next week will see "Pannier Papers No 4", "The North London Line" and "Mountsorrell" from Irwell and from Kevin Robertson "Southern Way No 18", "Impermanent Ways Devon" and "The Other Side of the Southern" covering minor mishaps. Secondhand Also in the shop is the first part of the large collection of books that belonged to my late friend Geoffrey Ford, formerly the University Librarian at Bristol and a great enthusiast for the LNER, amongst many other things. I will not be able to list all of the books on the web, but at the time of writing there is a complete set of Locomotives of the LNER and GWR by the RCTS, other RCTS volumes, the first three volumes of LNER wagons from Wild Swan and pretty much everything else that you would expect any serious LNER enthusiast to have bought, and more besides. Contact me for availability and prices, I will not be looking for any more than the "going rate", possibly a little less, but am looking to find good homes for all of his books. I will happily reserve any "wants" you may have ahead of visiting the shop if I have them. Other News The previously mentioned "Branch Line Video" DVDs in stock are now all added to the database and the "whats new" page currently lists all books added to the shop stock since the 15th February last. A notable addition has been all of the available IRS "regional" locomotive books, together with their latest handbook 16EL. I hear that Bill Beckett of Xpress fame isn't very well and so wish him a speedy recovery, his "District Controllers View" for the North Cornwall line is in the meantime proving very popular. Noisy Trains On the personal modelling front I have finally got around to fitting the South West Digital sound chip into my 1/32 scale North British diesel D6319 and am very happy with the results - hugely entertaining (to me at least) and adding a whole new dimension to running trains in the garden. Some rather shaky videos have been uploaded to youtube and here is a view from this morning: Getting Bigger Back in the shop I have been undertaking a program of extending the bookshelves in order to accomodate the growing numbers of books stocked. Utilising the ubiquitous Ikea "Billy" range, the main bookcases have grown an additional shelf and in the centre of the shop is now a new double sided bookcase. Their "Benno" DVD towers have been used to provide shelf space for the Branch Line DVDs and the expanded IRS stocks and I am now embroiled in the process of rearranging pieces of plywood, old library shelves and sundry bits of "Billy" around the counter to hold all of the modelling bits and pieces. That's the end of the advert for the company that put paid to Habitat(!) and here are some snaps of progress so far:

Towards the end of the day at the end of a busy week Harry and Charlie demonstrated the uses of old and new technology on the sofa, while at right we see the "new books" display as it currently appears.