This volume picks up the story of North Eastern Railway architecture at the start of 1877, when William Bell began his almost forty year stint as architect, and follows it through the LNER and British Railway periods down to 1995, when the York railway architects office was disbanded, in the run up to railway privatisation.
The Bell period saw many ambitious new buildings, such as the stations at Darlington Bank Top and Tynemouth, a considerable enlargement of the company’s workshops, and some fine office buildings, as well as a wide range of small stations and other works. An outside architect, Horace Field, was called on for a new headquarters in York and an office in London, both of considerable quality. This volume also looks at some building types which have not received much recognition – such as the railway’s stables and housing.
The last three chapters show how railway architecture evolved and adapted to a very different world from that in which the NER’s buildings were conceived.
As in the earlier volumes, this book sheds new light on the personalities involved, and is fully referenced to enable the reader to pursue the story further or in more detail.
This 256 page A4 size publication is printed on gloss art paper throughout with a casebound colour cover. There are in the order of 260 monochrome photographs and line drawings together with 24 pages of colour illustrations.