Kevin Robertson
Steamindex homepage

Bulleid: man, myth and machine. Hersham: Ian Allan, 2010. 160pp.
No mention of patents; clearly has never investigated Bulleid's papers: some of his trite comments on the West Country design might have been avoided if he had seen the steamindex web page on Bulleid.. Writing style is as about as far removed from Sean Day Lewis's elegant prose as imaginable: in parts suffers from severe verbosity. On page 63 H.A.V. Bulleid's book on his father makes a succinct statement of the four design criteria for the West Country class, namely that a minimum weight version of the Merchant Navy class should be sought with the minimum number of changes. Robertson rambles round this topic with preconceived notions that some other strategy should have been followed, notably that too many light pacifics were ordered (if he had read more closely he would have observed that OVSB envisaged 120 light pacifics. Another fundamental which Roberston failed to grasp os that footplatemen dislike preparing locomotives with inside valve gear and much prefered the Gresley and Bulleid arrangements for three-cylinder types where the need to access an inside motion was avoided. There are some absurd observations on the preservation of peat bogs: these may be relevant in the twenty first century. but were not apposite when considering a period in which Ireland was burning peat for power generation to limit expenditure on foreign fuel. On page 136 there is an inappropriate comment on the Crucifix in Bulleid's office: such a practice was the norm in Christian Ireland..
The GWR Gas Turbines - a myth exposed. Sutton Publishing.
Leader: the full story. Stroud: Allan Sutton, 1995. 123pp + 128pp.
Published with Leader and Southern experimental steam (originally published in 1990 and reviewed in Rly Wld, 1991, 52, 346): this latter part includes many photographs taken by John Click.
Leader: steam's last chance. Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1988. 123pp.
The Leader Project: fiasco or triumph. Oxford Publishing Co., 2007. 160pp. Bibliography.
Many illustrations covering all stages of the one completed locomotive, and the sleeve valve fitted Atlantic on test.
Odd corners of the GWR from the days of steam. Sutton, 1999. 146pp.
An odd book with a very large number of pictures of a petrol railcar introduced in 1912, pictures of upper quadrant signals converted from "standard" lower quadrant signals after nationalization, and concrete signal posts courtesy of W. Marriott.