BOOK
REVIEW OF THE MONTH
Colonel Stephens Light Railway Locomotives
Brian Janes
Pen & Sword Books, 47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire S70 2AS. Tel: 01226 734222. Web: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk Description: Hardback, 260 × 248mm, 206pp. ISBN: 978 1399 023436. Price: £25
History has treated Holman Fred Stephens quite unfairly. His is remembered for the ramshackle nature of a quite large numbers of light railways that he managed before his death at the early age of 63 in 1931, without family or relatives. We regularly see images of a motley collection of elderly locomotives and rolling stock at their end of their careers, often broken up where they stood.
This was not how it should have been. Stephens always aspired to purchase new equipment, but never had the capital. As the Victorian dream of low-cost transport for rural areas evaporated in favour of road, he had little alternative to explore the second-hand
