From Steam to Networker sums up the great breadth and scope of the changes encompassed in this book - engineering and operating changes against an ever present and skillfully drawn social and political backdrop. This is the local railway book par excellence, one tiny railway community, going under the self mocking nickname of ' Cabbage Island ' transplanted to a remote corner of Kent by the SECR at the turn of the century, spearheading the Southern's efforts at electrification in the 1920s and dispensing with steam nearly half a century before it disappeared from BR. Yet it still retained, as successive generations of Southern Electrics passed under its nineteenth century roof, the unmistakable look and air of a steam shed. Two World Wars, closure threats and endless reorganisatin was faced with dogged forbearance and good humour, for Slade Green to emerge today still an advanced centre of engineering excellence. This book records the long history of the depot, which still serves the commuters of the southeast today.
Hardcover,96 pages, 101 b/w illustrations, 29 maps, plans and drawings.