Footplate: The Victorian Engineman's New Zealand

Reed, 1978. Faded dustjacket spine; tear to top back of dustjacket which has been mended internally with brown paper and covered with loose plastic to protect; foxing to page edges.

This is the saga of steam and steel in a new country. It begins in 1863, when New Zealand's tiny scattered settlements lay weeks apart in terms of travel time and when, fortunately, the arts of railway-making were beginning to bear good fruit.

It is not a formal history but a series of sketches and impressions of the trunk and branch lines.