JIM BLAKE's second volume of his photographs featuring the London Underground cover the period from 1985, shortly after the Thatcher regime's destruction of London Transport and its re-birth as London Underground Ltd., to 2021 when the Northern Line gained its new branch from Kennington to Battersea Power Station. This was a turbulent time in the system's history, encompassing the withdrawal of the last pre-war passenger rolling stock (in 1988) and then the abolition of two-person operated...

JIM BLAKE'S latest book on London's buses may come as a surprise, since he usually concentrated on older vehicles in the fleet. However, the unpopular, unsuccessful DMs and DMSs were still part of London Transport's history, so he recorded them too, particularly towards the end of the short working lives.Forced by central government to buy "off-the-peg" standard manufacturers' products, rather than their own tried and trusted designs, LT opted for Daimler Fleetlines for their first...

In this new album from Pen & Sword, transport historian and photographer Jim Blake presents a selection of pictures he took around the country in British steam's final years.British Railways withdrew their last steam engines with almost indecent haste in the mid- to late–1960s, many having seen only a few years' service before consignment to the scrapheap. Jim's pictures graphically show how not only the locomotives themselves were neglected in their final years, but also their working env...

Using photographs from Jim Blake's extensive archives, this book examines the turbulent period in the history of London's buses immediately after London Transport lost its Country Buses and Green Line Coaches to the recently-formed National Bus Company, under their new subsidiary company, London Country Bus Services Ltd.The new entity inherited a largely elderly fleet of buses from London Transport, notably almost 500 RT-class AEC Regent double-deckers, of which replacement was already und...

"A compilation of photos taken in the difficult period . . . when LT and London Country were plagued with maintenance problems. A valuable record." —West Somerset Railway AssociationContinuing with images from transport photographer Jim Blake's extensive archives, this book examines the second half of the 1970s, when both London Transport and London Country were still struggling to keep services going. This resulted both from being plagued by a shortage of spare pa...

A critical examination of London Transport's ill-fated MB and SM buses, which failed to meet expectations and ended an era. PURCHASED to replace London Transport's ageing RT-type fleet, and also to ease staff shortages by extending one-man operation, the MB-types were not only a disappointment, but an unmitigated disaster! Their successors, the SM-types, were if anything worse, being underpowered as well as equally unsuitable for London operation. In this new volume of his photos, Jim Blak...

The renowned transport photographer and author of British Railways in Transition looks at municipal operators in England and Wales in the 1960s.Going back to the very first horse-bus or tram operations in Victorian times, many towns and cities throughout Britain had such operators, owned and run by the town or city councils. Most of them had tramway systems, many of which were replaced by trolleybuses from the 1920s onwards. In turn, after the Second World...

A pictorial history of buses and coaches of the period, drawn from a British transport photographer's vast collection.British Buses and Coaches in the 1960s is an overview of the bus and coach scene during a decade of great social and economic change in Britain's history. This volume looks at the interesting and varied number of bus and coach operators that still existed, before and just after the formation of the National Bus Company in 1968.With ...

Just as life in Britain generally changed dramatically during the 1960s, so did London Transport's buses and their operations. Most striking was the abandonment of London's trolleybuses, once the world's biggest system, and their replacement by motorbuses. Begun in 1959 using surplus RT-types, it was completed by May 1962 using new Routemasters, designed specifically to replace them. They then continued to replace RT types, too. Traffic congestion and staff shortages played havoc with Lond...

LONDON'S HISTORIC, iconic Underground railway system in the period from 1968 to 1985 was a very different place to what it is in the 2020s. Much of its rolling stock dated from before World War Two, and with the exception of the new Victoria Line and the isolated Woodford to Hainault shuttle, trains were all two-person operated as the 1970s dawned. Transport photographer Jim Blake recorded most of the system on film before it would change forever, concentrating on the older rolling stock a...

This book looks at the wonderful variety of buses and coaches operated by British Electric Traction group fleets in the 1960s, featuring previously unpublished photographs from Jim Blake's extensive archives.Not only did these fleets, which served most of England and Wales, have a splendid variety of British-built buses and coaches with chassis manufactured by the likes of AEC, Crossley, Daimler, Dennis, Guy and Leyland with bodywork by such firms as Park Royal, Weymann, Metro-Cammell, Eas...

In this new photographic album from Pen & Sword, transport historian and photographer Jim Blake presents a fascinating selection of pictures of a form of public transport now sadly missing from Britain's streets trolleybuses.