Rail Data Review Details

Title:	Petroleum Rail Tank Wagons of Britain
Author:	R Tourret
Publisher:	Tourret Publishing, Abingdon
Format:	Book
Subject:	Wagons
Category:	Detail
Spec:	304 pages, 12in x 8in, board-covers, 688 B&W pictures. ISBN: 978-0-905787-09-6
Publication date:	2009
Summary:	A massive tome detailing the oil tank wagons used in the UK over a 125 year period.
Review:	This book, a revised and enlarged edition of one published in 1980, is huge! With almost 700 photographs, along with 125 diagrams, it covers the huge variety of oil tank wagons built between 1865 (the first known example) and the present. The bulk of the book is taken up with a section outlining the history and wagon fleets of each of several hundred oil companies, distributors and wagon hirers, preceded by shorter chapters describing the industry as a whole, and the evolving technology and design of the wagons. The acknowledgments show that Mr Touret conducted a large amount of research, and the diagrams (including whole wagons, detailed components and company logos) are virtually all his own work. It has to be mentioned that there is no index, and little in the way of tables of data. Most of the information on things like dimensions and numbers (both pre-TOPS and TOPS) is there, but included in the narrative. This does make it rather hard to quickly look up things, although you will usually find something of interest along the way (such as the short-lived close coupling tried out in the 1960s). Another point is that the book is not quite comprehensive. Particularly for the earlier wagons, the text often provides details of certain wagons without stating if there were others. For example, Corn Products Co Ltd apparently had tank wagons numbered 1, 37 and 41. It is not explicit whether the other numbers were used. The lack of available information surely accounts for this, and also perhaps for the author not attempting to tabulate the wagon information. Despite these quibbles, this book is a magnificent work and must have been a labour of love for its author. The £33 price may seem high but is fair given the number of pages and photographs. Since writing this, I have read comments on one of the wagon forums that mentioned a number of errors in the book, specifically to do with number ranges and traffic flows. A few mistakes are inevitable in a work of this size but it is unfortunate these were not picked up during proof-checking.
Reviewed:	15/12/2009 by Thomas Young (Comments made by others can appear in the notes section towards the bottom of this page)
Sample pages:	(Click on any image to view full-sized in a new window) Cover Most of the text is a continuous narrative but it contains a lot of detail. Diagrams include some by Mr Tourret (as here) and some official.
Notes:	No notes have been left yet. ?There may be some notes posted but which have not yet been approved.
Edits:	This item has not been edited.