A fairly uneventful life carrying china clay, sand, coal and the other necessities of the clay works at Lee Moor betrays the contribution the Lee Moor Tramway made to west country transport history. Built in 1859 with horse-drawn sections linked by cable-hauled inclines, it enabled the clay industry on the south west corner of Dartmoor to thrive until more modern transport overtook it, when it remained as, increasingly, an anachronism. Its two remarkable features were its gauge of 4 feet 6 inches, for it was built as a branch off the 1823 Plymouth & Dartmoor Railway, and its level crossing of the Great Western Railway's west of England main line at Laira where, being the older route, its horse drawn trains had precedence over GWR expresses until as late as 1960. Both the steam locomotives introduced in 1899, to work the section between the inclines, have been restored and preserved, one at the South Devon Railway, at Buckfastleigh, and the other at the Wheal Martyn China Clay Museum in Cornwall.

The author, Roy Taylor, whose personal collection forms the bulk of this volume, was a founder member of the Lee Moor Tramway Preservation Society. He was able to enjoy some practical experience restoring the two locomotives and reconstructing the surviving wagon.

This book brings together a remarkable collection of over 140 photographs, most never published before, illustrating the many facets of this idiosyncratic railway. It makes a very worth while contribution to the social, industrial and transport history of this corner of Devon.

ISBN 0 906294 42 8. 96 pages, 148 illustrations. Hard back with full colour dustwrapper 

£16.00